Hosted APIs: OpenAI, Claude and Zapier
Everything on this page sends data off your machine, which is the trade-off you are making in exchange for capability you cannot run locally. Treat these as complements to a local model rather than replacements: route the bulk of traffic to something self-hosted and reserve the hosted APIs for the requests that genuinely need a frontier model. The cost sections below matter more than the setup steps.
OpenAI GPT-4o & o1 Integration
/** Seamlessly bridge OpenAI's frontier models with your local infrastructure. Access GPT-4o and o1 reasoning models through a secure OpenAI-compatible proxy. */
A Bridge to Frontier Intelligence
OpenClaw provides a native, low-latency bridge to the entire OpenAI ecosystem. While we champion local-first AI, integrating GPT-4o allows your automated workflows to leverage state-of-the-art vision capabilities, structured JSON outputs, and the new o1-series reasoning models. Our integration acts as an 'Enterprise Proxy', adding auditing, cost-tracking, and failover logic to your raw OpenAI API calls.
📊 Frontier Model Spectrum via OpenClaw
gpt-4o
128K
$2.5 / $10
Versatile king for vision & automation ⭐
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gpt-4o-mini
128K
$0.15 / $0.6
Ultra-fast pipeline processing
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o1-preview
128K
$15 / $60
Complex scientific & logical reasoning
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Native Support: OpenAI Realtime API
Connect OpenClaw to OpenAI's WebSocket endpoints for ultra-low latency voice-to-voice and multimodal interactions. Perfect for building AI agents that need to respond in sub-500ms intervals without HTTP overhead.
⚙️ config.yaml Configuration
# 💡 Pro Tip: Use 'openai-compatible' provider to bridge local vLLM servers like LM Studio.
OpenAI API Incident Log
Insufficient Quota (429)
Check your billing dashboard. Ensure you have 'Usage-based' billing enabled for o1 access.
Model Not Found
Verify your API key has Tier 1+ access. Newer models like 'o1' require pre-paid account status.
Context Length Exceeded
Enable 'Trim Context' in OpenClaw settings to automatically summarize history before it hits 128K limits.
Advanced Claude API Integration
/** Route complex reasoning tasks to Claude 3.5 Sonnet when local models reach their limit. Maintain a "Hybrid-First" workflow. */
The 'Hybrid-First' Philosophy
OpenClaw is designed to be model-agnostic. While running 100% locally on Ollama is ideal for privacy and cost, certain tasks—like massive code refactors, complex logical puzzles, or 200K+ token document analysis—require the frontier intelligence of Claude 3.5. Our integration focuses on 'Smart Routing': using local models for intent classification and simple automation, while transparently escalating complex payloads to the Anthropic cloud.
🤔 When to Use Claude vs. Ollama
📊 Frontier Model Selection
claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022
200K
$3 in / $15 out
The Gold Standard for coding and reasoning ⭐
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claude-3-5-haiku-20241022
200K
$0.80 / $4
Ultra-fast, cheaper than GPT-4o-mini
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claude-3-opus-20240229
200K
$15 / $75
Highest capability, maximum nuance
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Pro Feature: Prompt Caching
For repetitive tasks (like asking questions about the same large PDF), OpenClaw automatically enables Anthropic's Prompt Caching. This reduces your API costs by up to 90% and cuts latency by 50% for sequential queries on the same context.
⚙️ config.yaml Configuration
// 💡 Pro Tip: Set 'max_tokens' to 8192 for Sonnet to enable the extended output window.
API Error Codes & Fixes
429: Rate Limit Exceeded
You reached your tier limit. Consider pre-funding your account to Tier 2+ or implementing a local delay.
401: Invalid API Key
Check your config.yaml for trailing spaces or incorrect sk-ant- prefix.
Overloaded Error (529)
Anthropic's servers are busy. High-reliability workflows should configure a fallback to a local Llama-3-70B model.
Zapier
/** The bridge between your self-hosted AI and 5,000+ commercial SaaS platforms. */