ScallopBot / Cost

What ScallopBot costs to run

ScallopBot is MIT-licensed and self-hosted, so the software itself is $0. What you actually pay is model spend plus a box to run it on. Below, that is set beside OpenClaw Cloud’s managed hosting and Nous Portal’s credit plans — three different shapes of product, priced honestly rather than flattered.

ScallopBot’s model spend is an estimate, not a measurement. The $0.06–0.10/day figure is derived from the per-operation table in the repo README — 100 messages/day with Groq on the fast tier, summing to $0.047–0.10/day. No measured spend from a long-running deployment exists yet. Your bill will move with your message volume, your provider mix, and your model choices. Read the full cost breakdown in the README before you budget against it. Competitor prices are vendor list prices as published, linked per column, and can change without notice.
Side by side
ScallopBot
Self-hosted · MIT
$0
licence
Licence
$0
MIT, forever
Model spend
~$2–3 / moest.
estimated $0.06–0.10/day at 100 messages/day
Hosting
$5–8 / mo
2 vCPU / 4 GB VPS — or $0 on a Raspberry Pi you already own
Seats
unlimited
it is your server
Data
stays on your box
SQLite on disk
~$7–11 / mo on a VPS
≈$2–3/mo if it runs on hardware you already own. Model spend is an estimate, not measured.
OpenClaw Cloud
Managed hosting
$49
per month
Monthly
$49 / mo
list price
Yearly
$39 / mo
billed annually
Self-hosted OpenClaw
$0
the open-source project is free — you pay your own model and hosting costs, same as ScallopBot
Model spend
see vendor
check the plan’s included usage
Data
vendor-hosted
$39–49 / mo
Plus whatever model usage the plan does not include. We have not verified any refund or trial terms — read the vendor page.
getopenclaw.ai/pricing
Nous Portal
Model credits · Hermes Agent
$20+
per month
Free tier
$0
available before any subscription
Plus
$20 / mo
$22 of model credits
Super
$100 / mo
$110 of model credits
Ultra
$200 / mo
$220 of model credits
What it buys
credits, not hosting
these are model-credit subscriptions — not a comparable managed-assistant plan
$0 → $200 / mo
Listed for reference only. A credit subscription is not the same product as self-hosting or managed hosting; do not read the rows across as like-for-like.
portal.nousresearch.com

Third-party OpenClaw hosts

OpenClaw is open source, so anyone can sell you a box with it already running. ClawCloud is one such host. This is infrastructure, not a licence — you still pay your own model spend on top, exactly as you would self-hosting ScallopBot.

Linux$29 / mo
Windows$49 / mo
Top tier$109 / mo
clawcloud.sh/pricing
The honest total

On a $5–8/month VPS, expect roughly $7–11/month all-in — hosting plus an estimated $2–3 of model spend at 100 messages/day. On a Raspberry Pi or a machine you already own, that drops to the model spend alone, an estimated $2–3/month. Both numbers carry the estimate caveat above: the hosting half is a real list price, the model half is arithmetic from the README table.

The comparison is not apples to apples and is not presented as one. OpenClaw Cloud sells managed hosting for a project that is also free to self-host. Nous Portal sells model credits. ScallopBot sells nothing — it is a repository you clone. What the table shows is the shape of each bill, not a verdict.

→ Per-operation cost table in the README · How the memory system compares to OpenClaw · Source on GitHub