Use casesPersonal agent
OpenClaw is a self-hosted assistant built around one always-on gateway. It has more official hosting guides than Hermes: two of the sixteen providers deploy it in one click, and four more publish a guide or template.
Short answer: The cheapest machine that runs it as described is Agent 37 at $10.60 a month, then Lizard ($19.00) and Boat ($20.00). 11 of 16 providers run it without a catch. Machine cost only, before any AI model, at list prices checked 29 October 2026.
“I want OpenClaw answering me on WhatsApp or Slack, with its own browser and memory, without keeping my laptop on.”
OpenClaw is an open-source assistant you run on your own infrastructure, for yourself or a team. It replies on the apps you already use, including WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram, Discord, Signal and iMessage, and can read files, run commands, browse and keep memory.
Its centre is the Gateway, which the docs call "the always-on control plane": one long-running program that holds every chat connection and hands messages to the agent. Hosting OpenClaw means hosting the Gateway.
Models run through their own APIs, so no GPU is needed. A team can share one Gateway, but the docs are clear that one Gateway is one trust domain: people who do not trust each other need separate ones.
From its own documentation, each line linked to the page it comes from
At least 1 core, 1 GB of memory and 500 MB of disk; 2 GB or more recommended. OpenClaw's Fly.io guide uses 2 shared CPUs and 2 GB. 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 20 GiB gives the browser room.
Yes. The Gateway owns the chat connections, and Telegram uses outbound polling by default. Webhook mode needs a public HTTPS address that is always reachable.
~/.openclaw (config, a SQLite database and chat logins) and the agent's workspace (memory and personality files). Lose the WhatsApp credentials and you scan the QR code again.
A browser is optional; OpenClaw can drive its own Chrome profile. Docker is optional and tool sandboxing is off by default. No GPU for API models.
Mostly waiting: about 6% CPU on average in Battleships' always-on assistant workload, which names OpenClaw, with peaks near 100%.
battleships.dev, built by the Boat team
Easiest first. “Without a terminal” means someone who does not type commands can get it running from the provider's website.
| Provider | How | Without a terminal? | What it involves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agent 37 | One click | Yes | OpenClaw is one of the six agents on the Personal plans, set up in one click and driven from the browser.Agent 37 Personal ↗ |
| Lizard | One click | Yes | A Deploy OpenClaw template on Lizard's app platform builds the Gateway, creates its access token and gives it a public HTTPS address.Lizard: Deploy OpenClaw ↗ |
| Boat | Preinstalled | No | The OpenClaw command is preinstalled but the Gateway does not start by itself. Turn auto-stop off and run the Gateway as a service.Boat: always-on services ↗ |
| Blaxel | Official guide or template | No | An official tutorial, which says the install is manual: a sandbox, a volume for its files, and onboarding in the terminal.Blaxel: OpenClaw ↗ |
| Cloudflare Sandbox | Official guide or template | No | An official, experimental template: one always-on container with its database copied to R2 storage. OpenClaw estimates roughly $40 to $50 a month. Setup is by command line with Wrangler.OpenClaw on Cloudflare Containers ↗ |
| Daytona | Official guide or template | Partly | OpenClaw publishes a Daytona guide, and OpenClaw is preinstalled in Daytona's default image. Create the sandbox with auto-stop off, connect over SSH and run onboarding.OpenClaw on Daytona ↗ |
| E2B | Official guide or template | No | A ready-made openclaw template and a gateway guide. Sessions end after 24 hours on Pro, so staying on needs your own restart logic.E2B: OpenClaw gateway ↗ |
| Vercel Sandbox | Official guide or template | No | A Vercel walkthrough installs OpenClaw in a sandbox and links WhatsApp by QR code. Sessions end after 24 hours on Pro.Vercel: OpenClaw in a sandbox ↗ |
| boxd | By hand | No | boxd's personal-assistant page is written around OpenClaw: install it, turn off bot protection so chat apps can reach it, and turn off auto-hibernate.boxd: personal assistants ↗ |
| InstaBox | By hand | Partly | The dashboard creates a machine with a browser terminal and desktop; the install is typed by hand.InstaBox: getting started ↗ |
| Morph | By hand | No | Install it in a Devbox over SSH and expose its port. No guide.Morph: Devboxes ↗ |
| Runtime | By hand | Partly | A browser shell from the dashboard, then a manual install in a persistent sandbox. No guide.Runtime: getting started ↗ |
| Sandboxer | By hand | No | Install OpenClaw in a sandbox with auto-stop off and run the Gateway as a service. No guide.Sandboxer: long-running tasks ↗ |
| Sprites | By hand | No | Install it in a Sprite and register the Gateway as a service so it comes back after the Sprite pauses. No guide.Sprites: quickstart ↗ |
| Tensorlake | By hand | No | SSH into a named sandbox on Pro, install OpenClaw and run the Gateway there, with the sandbox kept awake by the Gateway's own traffic. Tensorlake publishes no OpenClaw guide. Crabbox, the CLI from OpenClaw, does have a Tensorlake provider, but it syncs a repo and runs a test suite — it does not host the Gateway, so it is not a route to an OpenClaw agent.Tensorlake: a sandbox as your dev environment ↗ |
| Modal | Not documented | No | Not documented by either side, and Modal sandboxes end after 24 hours. |
Read from each provider's documentation on 29 October 2026. A provider not listed as one click can still be the right home; it means someone has to follow its instructions.
Three starting points for different people, each with its catch
One-click OpenClaw on the same Personal plans as Hermes, from $3.99 a month, with a built-in browser from the $29.99 plan.
Catch: The free plan sleeps after 15 idle minutes, and these plans are separate from the Cloud machines the calculator prices.
The Deploy OpenClaw template gives the Gateway an HTTPS address and a token from the browser, inside a $19 monthly plan that comes back as usage.
Catch: The template runs on Lizard's app platform, billed at $0.025 per vCPU-hour and $0.0125 per GB-hour, not at the sandbox sizes the calculator uses.
OpenClaw documents Daytona itself, and the default image already has it installed. $200 of free compute covers the first month or so.
Catch: Each sandbox's disk is capped at 10 GiB, and a 2 vCPU / 4 GiB machine on all month is about $122.
Beyond these providers. OpenClaw also documents ordinary hosts. Hostinger sells a one-click managed OpenClaw from $4.99 a month on a two-year term, renewing at $11.99. OpenClaw's Fly.io guide estimates $10 to $15 a month. Railway and Northflank have one-click templates with no price on the guide. Render's free tier sleeps after 15 minutes, which breaks an always-on Gateway.
Compare these three head to head: features and cost side by side.
One always-on 2 vCPU / 4 GiB / 20 GiB machine that keeps its files. It waits for messages most of the time: about 6% CPU on average, with peaks near 100% when it browses or runs a command. Change any number; open a row for the arithmetic.
List prices only, excluding model tokens, egressData the machine sends out to the internet, such as downloads to a user or uploads to another service. Some providers charge per GB; most agents send very little., taxes and anything a provider does not publish. How the numbers are made.
Each page compares every provider, with a source for every row
Idle timers, waking and session limits — An always-available agent depends on three separate settings: a lifetime deadline, an idle timer, and a wake path. Providers bundle them differently, and the difference is most of your bill.
Lifecycle: stop, pause and sleep — Providers use seven words for four behaviours. The only question that matters is what is still running when the machine comes back.
Storage: disk, volumes and what persists — “Persistent” can mean the whole disk, one mounted folder, or fourteen days. It can also mean a separate volume that outlives the machine, which is a different product from the disk the machine boots with.
Reaching it: links, ports and who can open them — A machine nobody can reach is not an agent. There are four doors in — an HTTPS link, a raw TCP port, SSH, and the provider's API — and the important difference is who can open each one.
Custom domains — Putting an agent behind your own hostname is a feature some providers sell, some leave to a proxy you run, and several do not offer at all.
Keys and secrets — Three different things are called “secrets”: a value in an environment variable, a file on disk, and a placeholder that a proxy swaps for the real key. Only the third keeps the key away from the agent.