Your OpenClaw setup has a $5 decision and a $50 decision. most people get them backwards.

The $5 decision: what hardware to run OpenCLaw on.

The $50 decision: what model to run OpenCLAW with.

I've watched this play out in this sub over and over. Someone spends two weeks researching VPS providers, comparing Pi 4 vs Pi 5, debating whether a refurbished ThinkPad beats a $35 ARM board. they optimize the hell out of the $5 decision.

Then they install OpenCLaw, leave Opus as the default, and spend $80 in four days.

Here's the math that almost nobody does upfront:

Your VPS costs $5/month. that's $60/year.

One week of Opus on moderate personal assistant use can cost more than that.

The hardware decision affects your bill by maybe $3-8/month. The model decision affects your bill by $3-200/month depending on what you pick and how you use it. one of these decisions matters roughly 30x more than the other. Most people spend 90% of their research time on the wrong one.

The actual decision tree, in the order it should happen:

Step 1: pick your model first. Gemini Flash if you want near-zero cost and can tolerate occasional quality dips. Sonnet if you want reliability without Opus pricing. ChatGPT OAuth if you already pay for ChatGPT and want to bundle the cost. Opus only if you have a specific task that genuinely needs it and you're watching your dashboard daily.

Step 2: now pick your hardware. if you chose an API model (anything above): a $5 VPS with 1-2GB RAM runs openclaw fine. the bottleneck is never the hardware, it's the API call. A Pi 3 works. a 6-year-old laptop works. a $4/month Hetzner box works. the hardware is just keeping a Node process alive.

If you chose local models: now hardware actually matters. you need RAM to fit the model and a GPU helps significantly. this is the only scenario where the Mac Mini argument makes sense, and even then only for models that actually handle tool calling reliably (which rules out most things under 70B).

The trap: the Mac Mini gets sold as a local model machine that saves you API costs. in practice most people buying it end up using API models anyway because local models at consumer sizes struggle with openclaw's tool calls. so they end up with $700 hardware doing the job of a $5 VPS.

Not because they're dumb. because the content they watched optimized for looking impressive, not for being accurate about what most people actually end up running.

The boring answer: $5 VPS. Gemini Flash or ChatGPT OAuth. one agent. three skills you actually use. total cost: under $10/month including the VPS.

Figure out what you actually need after a month of running that. Upgrade the model before you ever upgrade the hardware.