Why is my AI agent so expensive to run?

The usual cause is that your agent calls a premium model (Claude Opus 4.7 at $15/$75 per 1M tokens, GPT-5.5 at $5/$30) for every request — including trivial ones like simple Q&A, code formatting, or translation. For those tasks, Gemini Flash ($0.30/M output), DeepSeek V4 Flash ($0.14/$0.28), or Claude Haiku ($5/M) would deliver the same quality at 15-250x lower cost. In a typical agent workload, about 80% of calls don't need the premium model. ClawRouters analyzes each call in 10ms and routes it to the cheapest capable model — typical users save 70-90% on their monthly bill.

How do I reduce OpenClaw AI API costs?

OpenClaw is OpenAI-compatible, so you can change its base_url to a smart routing proxy like ClawRouters. The proxy analyzes each call (coding vs formatting vs reasoning) and sends it to the cheapest model that can handle it. No code changes — just one config line in your openclaw.json. Typical OpenClaw users cut their token bill 70-90% without any loss in output quality. Pricing starts at $29/mo (Starter plan, 10M tokens included) or $99/mo (Pro, 20M tokens/month with up to 500K that can run on Opus).

ClawRouters vs OpenRouter — which is better for cost savings?

OpenRouter and LiteLLM give you multi-model access under one API key — but you still manually pick which model to call. That's why most developers default to the premium model and bleed money. ClawRouters is different: we automatically pick the cheapest capable model per task, in 10ms. OpenRouter solved access; ClawRouters solves cost. ClawRouters also adds features OpenRouter doesn't: per-end-user token tracking (for SaaS agent builders sharing keys with customers), auto top-up, BYOK fallback opt-in, and OpenClaw-native integration.

What's the cheapest model for coding agents in 2026?

For code formatting and simple edits: Claude Haiku 4.5 ($1/$5 per 1M) or DeepSeek V4 Flash ($0.14/$0.28). For medium-complexity coding: Claude Sonnet 4.6 ($3/$15), GPT-5.4 ($2.5/$15), Kimi K2.6 ($0.60/$4), or DeepSeek V4 Pro ($1.74/$3.48). Only escalate to Claude Opus 4.7 ($15/$75) or GPT-5.5 ($5/$30) for genuinely complex reasoning or architectural design. A smart router like ClawRouters makes this decision per-call automatically based on the task — you don't need to configure it by hand.

How does task-aware routing save money vs. just using one model?

Most AI agent workloads break down roughly as: 60% simple Q&A/translation/formatting, 25% medium coding/analysis, 15% complex reasoning. If you send all of them to Claude Opus ($75/M output), you pay full price for every call. If you task-route instead: 60% → Gemini Flash at $0.30/M (250x cheaper), 25% → Claude Haiku at $5/M (15x cheaper), 15% → Opus (no change). Blended savings ≈ 80-90% vs. Opus-everything, with no quality degradation. This is the math behind the 70-90% typical savings.

Is ClawRouters safe with my data?

Yes. ClawRouters is a routing proxy — we classify the task type (in 10ms, on our servers) to pick a model, then forward your request directly to the model provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) over encrypted connections. We don't train on your data. We log minimal metadata (token counts, model used, timing) for usage dashboards, not prompt content beyond a 500-char snippet for classifier improvement which you can opt out of. BYOK keys are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM.

How do I track per-customer API costs when I share my ClawRouters key across my SaaS users?

Pass a stable per-customer ID in the OpenAI SDK's 'user' parameter with every request. ClawRouters writes this to each usage log and surfaces aggregated per-end-user breakdowns in your dashboard — requests, cost, tokens, models used, first/last seen. This is built-in and included with every plan. It's essential for SaaS agent builders (e.g. an OpenClaw-based product) who share keys across customers and need to attribute cost back to each one.

About ClawRouters

ClawRouters is an independent task-aware routing gateway for deployed AI agents. You change one base_url; for every call that comes through, we classify what the agent is actually asking for and forward it to the cheapest model capable of that specific task.

The problem we exist to solve

A deployed agent makes calls all day, and most of them are not hard. Classification, extraction, formatting and short answers do not need a frontier model, but an agent configured with one model sends everything there. The expensive minority sets the price for the whole bill.

Deciding per call is the entire product. Everything else here exists to support that decision.

How a model gets chosen

Task classification. Each call is classified from its messages, tool definitions and conversation shape. Calls that cannot be classified fall back to a conservative default rather than a guess.
Capability filter. Calls needing vision, long context, thinking mode or structured output are restricted to models that genuinely support them, so a cheaper model is never substituted into a job it will fail.
Cost ordering. Among the models that clear the bar, the cheapest wins.
Health and failover. Providers that error or degrade enter a cooldown, so one upstream outage does not cascade through your agent.

The live model list and prices are on the models page, and you can estimate a bill with the LLM cost calculator.

What the gateway covers

Beyond chat completions, ClawRouters routes and bills embeddings, managed speech-to-text and text-to-speech, and web search issued from inside an agent — so an agent does not need a separate integration and a separate bill for each of them. Endpoints are documented in the setup guide.

What ClawRouters is not

Not a model marketplace. A marketplace hands you many models and leaves the per-call choice to you. Our position is that the per-call choice is the part worth automating — the difference is set out on ClawRouters vs OpenRouter.
Not a model provider. We do not train or host models. Calls are forwarded to upstream providers.
Not affiliated with the tools we support. All product names and trademarks named on this site belong to their respective owners.

How we make money

ClawRouters charges for usage of the gateway. We do not sell your data, and no model provider pays us to be preferred — routing order follows capability and published price, both visible on the models page.

On savings claims

Where this site cites a 70–90% reduction, that describes mixed agent workloads routed per call instead of sending everything to one premium model. Your actual saving depends on your workload mix — an agent doing mostly hard reasoning saves less than one doing mostly classification and extraction. The dashboard reports your own per-call routing and spend rather than an estimate.

Development and support

ClawRouters has been in continuous development since February 2026. Notable routing, model, API and billing changes are recorded on the changelog.

Support and business enquiries: [email protected]. See the contact page for what to include.