OpenClaw itself costs nothing. It’s open source, free to install, and free to modify. What you pay Hostinger for is everything around it: the server it runs on, the AI credits that power every response, and a stack of add-ons that show up in your cart whether you asked for them or not.
Five Pricing Facts to Know Before You Buy
These are the findings that change what you should actually click at checkout. I walk through the full detail behind each one further down.
- Hostinger sells two different OpenClaw products at nearly identical entry prices, OpenClaw VPS and Managed OpenClaw, and they are not interchangeable once you have set one up.
- The $11.99 AI credits add-on comes pre-checked in your cart by default. The free web-scraping credits add-on sitting right next to it does not.
- Those same AI credits cannot be refunded, even though they are added to the same cart as a VPS plan that carries the standard 30-day guarantee.
- AI credit pricing is completely flat, about $1.20 per credit whether you buy 5 or 100. The separate scraping credits add-on gets cheaper per unit the more you buy, and starts with 1,000 free.
- OpenClaw checks in on itself every 30 minutes by default, and that heartbeat burns AI credits even when your agent has nothing to do.
Let’s start with the decision that shapes everything else, which of the two OpenClaw products you are actually buying.
OpenClaw VPS vs Managed OpenClaw: Two Different Products
Hostinger sells OpenClaw two ways. Both promise a running OpenClaw assistant. What differs is who manages the server underneath it.
OpenClaw VPS gives you a full virtual private server with root access, and OpenClaw deploys onto it in one click. You control the container, the firewall, the updates, and everything else that comes with owning a VPS.
Managed OpenClaw skips the server entirely. Hostinger handles deployment, security, and updates, and you interact with the assistant through Telegram or WhatsApp without ever touching infrastructure.
OpenClaw VPS Plans and Prices
Hostinger runs on the same KVM lineup as Hostinger’s general VPS hosting, priced on a 24-month term by default.
| Plan | vCPU | RAM | NVMe | Bandwidth | Standard price | Intro price (24mo) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KVM 1 | 1 | 4GB | 50GB | 4TB | $11.99/mo | $6.49/mo |
| KVM 2 | 2 | 8GB | 100GB | 8TB | $14.99/mo | $8.99/mo |
| KVM 4 | 4 | 16GB | 200GB | 16TB | $28.99/mo | $12.99/mo |
| KVM 8 | 8 | 32GB | 400GB | 32TB | $49.99/mo | $25.99/mo |
KVM 4 has the steepest renewal jump of the four, landing at roughly 2.2 times its intro rate. KVM 2, the plan tagged Most Popular, renews at a gentler 1.7 times.
If you are choosing between KVM 2 and KVM 4 for a personal automation setup, the renewal price gap is wider than the intro price gap suggests.
Every OpenClaw VPS plan also includes a Docker manager, one-click updates, a free domain for one year, and free weekly backups, all bundled at no extra cost regardless of which tier you pick.
Hostinger VPS-planer
Managed OpenClaw (AI Automation Apps) Pricing
Hostinger OpenClaw is sold under Hostinger’s “AI automation apps” plan, and the same subscription also lets you run Hermes Agent or n8n instead, switching between them from your dashboard without buying a separate plan.
| Term | Price |
|---|---|
| 24 months | $5.99/mo |
| Renewal | $11.99/mo for 2 years |
At $5.99 a month intro, Managed OpenClaw actually undercuts every OpenClaw VPS tier, including KVM 1.
What you give up for that price is server control. There is no root access, no Docker manager to poke around in, and no option to install anything outside what the managed environment supports.
If you already know you want to tinker with containers or run other software alongside OpenClaw, VPS is the one to buy. If you want a working assistant on Telegram inside minutes and never want to see a terminal, Managed is built for exactly that.
Both products land you in the same place for AI credits and add-ons, so let’s look at what actually gets added to your cart once you pick a plan.
The Checkout Add-ons That Change Your Total
I pushed a KVM 2 OpenClaw VPS order through to the payment screen to see exactly what appears alongside the base plan, and the cart is busier than the pricing page suggests.
Four separate add-ons sit in that cart: AI credits through nexos.ai, web scraping credits through Oxylabs, a dedicated inbox called Agentic Mail, and daily backups. Only one of them is selected for you automatically.
Nexos.ai AI Credits Pricing
OpenClaw does not include its own AI model. It connects to outside providers, and Hostinger’s own credit system, nexos.ai, is the option pre-selected in your cart labelled “Ready to use AI,” priced at $11.99 for 10 credits by default.
| Credit pack | Price | Price per credit |
|---|---|---|
| 5 credits | $5.99 | $1.20 |
| 10 credits | $11.99 | $1.20 |
| 20 credits | $23.99 | $1.20 |
| 50 credits | $59.99 | $1.20 |
| 100 credits | $119.99 | $1.20 |
There is no bulk discount here at all. Buying 100 credits at once costs exactly the same per credit as buying 5. Keep that in mind before you top up in a large batch expecting a volume saving, because there isn’t one.
Credit consumption depends on which model your OpenClaw agent uses. A support article on nexos.ai billing lists the following per-million-token rates:
| Model | Input cost | Output cost |
|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3 Flash | 0.5 credits | 3 credits |
| GPT-4.1 | 2.2 credits | 8.8 credits |
| Grok 4 | 3 credits | 15 credits |
| Claude Sonnet 4.5 | 3.3 credits | 16.5 credits |
| Claude Opus 4.6 | 5.5 credits | 27.5 credits |
| Claude Opus 4 | 15 credits | 75 credits |
Gemini 3 Flash is the cheapest option by a wide margin and fits routine tasks like summaries or simple replies.
Claude Opus 4 costs roughly 30 times more per output token and is meant for deep, complex reasoning, not everyday chat.
Oxylabs AI Studio Web Scraping Credits Pricing
The second AI-related add-on in the cart, “Instant web scraping,” runs on a completely different pricing structure from nexos.ai credits.
| Credit pack | Price | Price per 1,000 credits |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 credits | Free | $0 |
| 3,000 credits | $9.99 | $3.33 |
| 10,000 credits | $19.99 | $2.00 |
Unlike the AI credits above, this one gets cheaper per unit the more you buy, and the first 1,000 credits cost nothing regardless of which plan you choose.
If your OpenClaw agent needs to pull live web data, this is the more forgiving of the two credit systems to experiment with before committing to a larger pack.
Agentic Mail and Daily Backup Add-ons
Two more line items round out the cart. Agentic Mail adds a dedicated email address and custom domain for your OpenClaw agent, separate from your personal inbox, at $1.19 a month.
Daily auto-backup runs $6 a month, and it upgrades something you already have rather than adding backup coverage from scratch.
Every OpenClaw VPS plan already includes free weekly backups as standard. The $6 add-on is the difference between weekly and daily snapshots, not backup coverage you did not already have.
Add every default selection together on a KVM 2 order and the total moves noticeably from the plan’s own sticker price.
| Line item | Amount |
|---|---|
| KVM 2, 24-month term | $215.76 |
| Nexos AI Credits (10) | $11.99 |
| Free domain | $0 |
| Tax | $36.44 |
| Total | $264.19 |
The plan itself accounts for about 82% of that total. The pre-selected AI credits and tax make up the rest, and neither is optional unless you actively remove them before checking out.
That covers what shows up in the cart. The next question is what happens if you want any of it back.
What the 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee Does and Does Not Cover
Every OpenClaw page carries the same “30-day money-back guarantee” badge shown across Hostinger’s site. The badge is accurate for the VPS plan itself. It’s not accurate for everything sitting next to it in your cart.
KVM VPS hosting is covered under Hostinger’s standard refund terms, with one added condition. Your refund request has to land within 30 days of that specific purchase, and 180 days need to have passed since your last VPS refund on any other plan.
The AI credits are a different story entirely. Hostinger’s Refund Policy lists nexos.ai credits and Oxylabs AI Studio credits both under products not eligible for a refund under any circumstance. You can cancel and refund the VPS underneath them, but the credits you loaded into that same order are gone regardless.
Note: The 30-day guarantee does apply to the OpenClaw VPS plan itself. It does not extend to either credit system riding along in the same cart, both of which are explicitly non-refundable in Hostinger’s own policy. Buy AI and scraping credits in smaller amounts until you know your actual usage, since there is no way to get that spending back.
With the guarantee sorted, the harder question is what OpenClaw actually costs to run once you are past the intro month, because that depends far more on how you use it than on which plan you bought.
How Much OpenClaw Actually Costs to Run Each Month
Hostinger’s own cost research puts real OpenClaw spending anywhere from about $6 a month for a light personal setup to $200 or more for heavy, high-volume automation. Server cost is the smaller and more predictable half of that range. AI token usage is the part that swings the most.
Typical Monthly Cost Scenarios
| Usage level | Monthly AI calls | Typical total cost |
|---|---|---|
| Personal projects | Under 5,000 | $6 to $13 |
| Small business workflows | 5,000 to 10,000 | $25 to $50 |
| Scaling teams | 10,000 to 50,000 | $50 to $100 |
| Heavy automation | 50,000+ | $100 to $200+ |
At the personal end, a basic KVM 1 VPS plus a handful of dollars in budget-model tokens covers simple automations like email triage or daily summaries.
At the heavy end, multi-agent workflows and constant browser automation push both server size and token spend up together, and model choice ends up mattering more than server specs at every tier in between.
Hidden Costs People Forget to Budget For
A few recurring costs tend to catch people off guard because they do not show up until weeks or months into running OpenClaw.
- Backups. Free weekly backups are included by default. Daily backups, as covered above, add $6 a month.
- Storage growth. OpenClaw writes conversation transcripts and memory files continuously. An active deployment can accumulate 20 to 50 GB over six months, adding a small but real monthly storage cost as it grows.
- Monitoring tools. Free tiers from services like Grafana Cloud or Uptime Robot cover most personal setups. Paid monitoring only becomes necessary once you are running at real scale.
- Idle automations. A workflow you built once and forgot about keeps calling the API on schedule. Forgotten or unused automations commonly account for a meaningful chunk of ongoing AI spend, simply because nobody remembered to turn them off.
None of these show up on the pricing page. All of them show up on the bill eventually.
How to Keep OpenClaw Costs Predictable
A few habits make the difference between OpenClaw costing $10 a month and $100 a month for roughly the same workload.
- Route routine tasks like classification or short summaries to a cheap model such as Gemini 3 Flash, and save premium models for the reasoning that actually needs them
- Check token usage weekly rather than monthly, so a spike gets caught before it becomes a full billing cycle
- Adjust the heartbeat interval or assign it a lighter model if your agents do not need a check-in every 30 minutes
- Add one new workflow at a time and watch its cost for a week before adding the next one
The Bottom Line on Hostinger OpenClaw Pricing
The OpenClaw VPS and Managed OpenClaw plans themselves are priced fairly and covered by a genuine 30-day guarantee.
The real cost, and the real risk, sits in the AI credits added to your cart by default, priced with no bulk discount and excluded from any refund the moment you buy them.
Start small on credits, watch your token usage weekly, and treat the plan price as the floor of what OpenClaw will cost you, not the ceiling.
