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API usage and costs

docs/reference/api-usage-costs.md

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API usage & costs

This doc lists features that can invoke API keys and where their costs show up. It focuses on OpenClaw features that can generate provider usage or paid API calls.

Where costs show up (chat + CLI)

Per-session cost snapshot

  • /status shows the current session model, context usage, and last response tokens.
  • If the model uses API-key auth, /status also shows estimated cost for the last reply.
  • If live session metadata is sparse, /status can recover token/cache counters and the active runtime model label from the latest transcript usage entry. Existing nonzero live values still take precedence, and prompt-sized transcript totals can win when stored totals are missing or smaller.

Per-message cost footer

  • /usage full appends a usage footer to every reply, including estimated cost (API-key only).
  • /usage tokens shows tokens only; subscription-style OAuth/token and CLI flows hide dollar cost.
  • Gemini CLI note: when the CLI returns JSON output, OpenClaw reads usage from stats, normalizes stats.cached into cacheRead, and derives input tokens from stats.input_tokens - stats.cached when needed.

Anthropic note: Anthropic staff told us OpenClaw-style Claude CLI usage is allowed again, so OpenClaw treats Claude CLI reuse and claude -p usage as sanctioned for this integration unless Anthropic publishes a new policy. Anthropic still does not expose a per-message dollar estimate that OpenClaw can show in /usage full.

CLI usage windows (provider quotas)

  • openclaw status --usage and openclaw channels list show provider usage windows (quota snapshots, not per-message costs).
  • Human output is normalized to X% left across providers.
  • Current usage-window providers: Anthropic, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, OpenAI Codex, MiniMax, Xiaomi, and z.ai.
  • MiniMax note: its raw usage_percent / usagePercent fields mean remaining quota, so OpenClaw inverts them before display. Count-based fields still win when present. If the provider returns model_remains, OpenClaw prefers the chat-model entry, derives the window label from timestamps when needed, and includes the model name in the plan label.
  • Usage auth for those quota windows comes from provider-specific hooks when available; otherwise OpenClaw falls back to matching OAuth/API-key credentials from auth profiles, env, or config.

See Token use & costs for details and examples.

How keys are discovered

OpenClaw can pick up credentials from:

  • Auth profiles (per-agent, stored in auth-profiles.json).
  • Environment variables (e.g. OPENAI_API_KEY, BRAVE_API_KEY, FIRECRAWL_API_KEY).
  • Config (models.providers.*.apiKey, plugins.entries.*.config.webSearch.apiKey, plugins.entries.firecrawl.config.webFetch.apiKey, memorySearch.*, talk.providers.*.apiKey).
  • Skills (skills.entries.<name>.apiKey) which may export keys to the skill process env.

Features that can spend keys

1) Core model responses (chat + tools)

Every reply or tool call uses the current model provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc). This is the primary source of usage and cost.

This also includes subscription-style hosted providers that still bill outside OpenClaw's local UI, such as OpenAI Codex, Alibaba Cloud Model Studio Coding Plan, MiniMax Coding Plan, Z.AI / GLM Coding Plan, and Anthropic's OpenClaw Claude-login path with Extra Usage enabled.

See Models for pricing config and Token use & costs for display.

2) Media understanding (audio/image/video)

Inbound media can be summarized/transcribed before the reply runs. This uses model/provider APIs.

  • Audio: OpenAI / Groq / Deepgram / DeepInfra / Google / Mistral.
  • Image: OpenAI / OpenRouter / Anthropic / DeepInfra / Google / MiniMax / Moonshot / Qwen / Z.AI.
  • Video: Google / Qwen / Moonshot.

See Media understanding.

3) Image and video generation

Shared generation capabilities can also spend provider keys:

  • Image generation: OpenAI / Google / DeepInfra / fal / MiniMax
  • Video generation: DeepInfra / Qwen

Image generation can infer an auth-backed provider default when agents.defaults.imageGenerationModel is unset. Video generation currently requires an explicit agents.defaults.videoGenerationModel such as qwen/wan2.6-t2v.

See Image generation, Qwen Cloud, and Models.

Semantic memory search uses embedding APIs when configured for remote providers:

  • memorySearch.provider = "openai" → OpenAI embeddings
  • memorySearch.provider = "gemini" → Gemini embeddings
  • memorySearch.provider = "voyage" → Voyage embeddings
  • memorySearch.provider = "mistral" → Mistral embeddings
  • memorySearch.provider = "deepinfra" → DeepInfra embeddings
  • memorySearch.provider = "lmstudio" → LM Studio embeddings (local/self-hosted)
  • memorySearch.provider = "ollama" → Ollama embeddings (local/self-hosted; typically no hosted API billing)
  • Optional fallback to a remote provider if local embeddings fail

You can keep it local with memorySearch.provider = "local" (no API usage).

See Memory.

5) Web search tool

web_search may incur usage charges depending on your provider:

  • Brave Search API: BRAVE_API_KEY or plugins.entries.brave.config.webSearch.apiKey
  • Exa: EXA_API_KEY or plugins.entries.exa.config.webSearch.apiKey
  • Firecrawl: FIRECRAWL_API_KEY or plugins.entries.firecrawl.config.webSearch.apiKey
  • Gemini (Google Search): GEMINI_API_KEY or plugins.entries.google.config.webSearch.apiKey
  • Grok (xAI): XAI_API_KEY or plugins.entries.xai.config.webSearch.apiKey
  • Kimi (Moonshot): KIMI_API_KEY, MOONSHOT_API_KEY, or plugins.entries.moonshot.config.webSearch.apiKey
  • MiniMax Search: MINIMAX_CODE_PLAN_KEY, MINIMAX_CODING_API_KEY, MINIMAX_API_KEY, or plugins.entries.minimax.config.webSearch.apiKey
  • Ollama Web Search: key-free for a reachable signed-in local Ollama host; direct https://ollama.com search uses OLLAMA_API_KEY, and auth-protected hosts can reuse normal Ollama provider bearer auth
  • Perplexity Search API: PERPLEXITY_API_KEY, OPENROUTER_API_KEY, or plugins.entries.perplexity.config.webSearch.apiKey
  • Tavily: TAVILY_API_KEY or plugins.entries.tavily.config.webSearch.apiKey
  • DuckDuckGo: key-free fallback (no API billing, but unofficial and HTML-based)
  • SearXNG: SEARXNG_BASE_URL or plugins.entries.searxng.config.webSearch.baseUrl (key-free/self-hosted; no hosted API billing)

Legacy tools.web.search.* provider paths still load through the temporary compatibility shim, but they are no longer the recommended config surface.

Brave Search free credit: Each Brave plan includes $5/month in renewing free credit. The Search plan costs $5 per 1,000 requests, so the credit covers 1,000 requests/month at no charge. Set your usage limit in the Brave dashboard to avoid unexpected charges.

See Web tools.

5) Web fetch tool (Firecrawl)

web_fetch can call Firecrawl when an API key is present:

  • FIRECRAWL_API_KEY or plugins.entries.firecrawl.config.webFetch.apiKey

If Firecrawl isn’t configured, the tool falls back to direct fetch plus the bundled web-readability plugin (no paid API). Disable plugins.entries.web-readability.enabled to skip local Readability extraction.

See Web tools.

6) Provider usage snapshots (status/health)

Some status commands call provider usage endpoints to display quota windows or auth health. These are typically low-volume calls but still hit provider APIs:

  • openclaw status --usage
  • openclaw models status --json

See Models CLI.

7) Compaction safeguard summarization

The compaction safeguard can summarize session history using the current model, which invokes provider APIs when it runs.

See Session management + compaction.

8) Model scan / probe

openclaw models scan can probe OpenRouter models and uses OPENROUTER_API_KEY when probing is enabled.

See Models CLI.

9) Talk (speech)

Talk mode can invoke ElevenLabs when configured:

  • ELEVENLABS_API_KEY or talk.providers.elevenlabs.apiKey

See Talk mode.

10) Skills (third-party APIs)

Skills can store apiKey in skills.entries.<name>.apiKey. If a skill uses that key for external APIs, it can incur costs according to the skill’s provider.

See Skills.