We will need a computer to run OpenClaw. Here are our options with the pros and cons.
Your computer (DON’T!!) – And the advice is that you REALLY should not do this. Giving OpenClaw unrestricted access to your entire computer can quickly turn into a nightmare. So don’t do it. You’ll need a machine where you can better control what OpenClaw has access to and what it doesn’t. While on your regular computer, OpenClaw will be the most capable; the advice is to build up. Treat OpenClaw like an employee. Give it its own hardware. Give it its own accounts. Provide additional access through sharing, forwarding, etc., as you build trust and get to know its capabilities. So we are not doing this. (I am not even sure it would make sense. I am mostly a Chromebook user who organized his life so he can pick up any Chromebook and just use it. I do have a few lying around at the in-laws’, the office, etc. I have no idea how OpenClaw could even run on a Chromebook. It can use its Linux container, of course, but I digress…)
Mac Mini – This is the favorite. And as such, there seems to be a shortage, though it hasn’t reached Hungary just yet, I don’t think. I could have a base model delivered tomorrow, even a bit under list price. But ever since my family’s iCloud accounts got jumbled up (over a decade or so ago), I have been hating Macs hard. (They even mixed all my parents’ photos with mine in Google through some autosync. And my mother photographs like a stereotypical Japanese tourist.) Even though I use an iPad and an M2 Mac Mini (with a lot of storage to locally sync everything I have in various clouds) on my home office desk, I have been doing everything I can to avoid becoming any more of a Mac person than I already am.
But the advantage of using an Apple Silicon Mac is undeniable. You could keep it at home. Home is the best place to access the Internet from. OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger said, (and yes, I listened to that 3+ hour interview, and you should too) If you access any website from inside a data center, you are going to get more CAPTCHAs and more blocks than if you access it from a residential network. You even get more such things from your University network. I am sure you noticed too. The Internet is getting locked down, and the inevitable reaction to the proliferation of AI agents will be further lockdowns. And while most agents who can use your desktop click through a CAPTCHAs like a human, my (playwright) browser simulator on Linux today got trapped by CAPTCHAs and asked me to log in somewhere and do one part of the job myself as it waited. That’s not ideal when you expect your agents to work while you sleep (or not looking).
At the same time, most new tools are now invariably developed for Macs. Whenever a new AI app comes out, new features are rolled out to older apps; they are invariably first available on Macs. (It is just like how new apps always come to iPhones first, and later, maybe there will be an Android version.) It is also very easy to think through what an AI agent could do on a computer. It is the same thing you can do yourself. You want your agent to be using the various AI tools. You can have your agents use the various apps. Let’s say the agent is living on a Linux server; its computer use will be more limited, and the apps it has access to will be more limited as well. Its browser use will be more curtailed. On a Mac, of course, you have access to the terminal. You have Unix (BSD) running in there. So you have the advantages of both a Unix machine and a Mac. Running OpenClaw on Mac is the clear winner here.
Other Apple Silicon? There’s, of course, the question, if a Mac, which Mac. Most people buy the M4 base model. One of the reasons I could not get myself to do this was that it is quite outdated. There’s an M5 coming soon for sure. Does it matter? No. But I hate paying full price for outdated hardware. So I guess I could go with an older model, buy a used one. But Macs hold their resale value well, and the M4 upgrade included 16GB of RAM by default, whereas that was at a premium on earlier generations. Looking at older model prices, sometimes they made no sense. They were not even discounts spec-per-spec. I tried deal hunting. Nothing made sense. Of course, you could be like my young Russian colleague (who could easily live on the smell of an oily rag) and find a well-used M1 MacBook Air with a broken screen, but honestly…?
There’s also the option of spec-ing up. Macs are great at running LLMs locally. Unfortunately, the models you’d want to use in an OpenClaw setup need a LOT of hardware. Realistically, you can maybe run some routine tasks with the small models (the 20b-35b range), and that is it. Anything usable, like MiniMax M2.5, you will need at least 192GB of RAM, but you are paying with fire under 256GB, and the Mac Studios that come with this much are pricey. Maybe one can make some lower-level tasks work with ~120b models (like Qwen 3.5 122b a10b or Mistral 4 Small 123b), but you’d need at least 96GB of RAM for them. So the bottom line is that (new or used), we are looking at a higher-end Mac Studio before you can run anything worthwhile locally. If you max out the Mac Mini’s RAM (and now we are talking $2000 minimum, probably closer to $2500 to make sense), you are still only at 64GB. MacBooks, Mac Studios, we are talking substantially more. With 64GB, you can run Qwen 3 Next 80b at best. That’s probably not good enough for most things most of the time, and QWEN 3.5 is out already, but not with a model in this size range. Most models are over 100b, which is too big for 64GB, and are under 35b, which require 32GB max, but they won’t be good for much in the world of OpenClaw. Maybe if the M5 Pro Mac Mini will have 96GB of RAM. The M4 Pro MacBooks had a max of 48GB, while the Mac Mini went up to 64GB. Now, the M5 Pro MacBook has a max of 64GB. Maybe the M5 Pro Mac Mini will have more. But I doubt the price will be below $2000. At minimum, I am gonna wait for the M5 Mac Minis.
Whatever hardware – Alex Finn recommends that you run your OpenClaw locally on whatever hardware you have lying around unused. Your last machine is fine. Unfortunately, my last four laptops were all Chromebooks. I have a 2018-ish Surface base model, which I got when COVID lockdowns drove us to use new tools that weren’t immediately available on Chromebooks. But that thing is useless at this point. I also have a 2015 MacBook that can’t even run a current version of Chrome (or anything else, for that matter). But your luck may vary. A Mac that still gets updates or a functional Windows device (in one ever existed – I certainly don’t think so), may be your ticket.
Virtual Private Server – On YouTube, everybody (and their dog, too) pushes Hostinger (and Alex Finn swears none of them use it). I guess it is not a bad solution if you are comfortable running your own server and highly proficient in Linux. While looking for a solution, I searched for cheap VPS options (because I am often too cheap to pay a few bucks a month for Hostinger) and found an Always Free tier at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for impressively powerful Oracle Ampere servers. You can run Ubuntu on these and get 4 CPUs, 24GB of RAM, and 200GB of storage for absolutely free. With Ollama, you can even run models at an impressive speed without a GPU. My testing suggests that I should just use a locally run GPT-OSS-20b as the OpenClaw heartbeat. There are a few catches. You need to have a credit card to create an account. (Debit cards, temp cards, etc., need not apply.) It is a serious pain in the ass to set up (though a better AI Chat will walk you through it). Only one account allowed per person (and if they catch you cheating thye may delete your machine.) The always-free plan has very few available servers at each location. (And you cannot change locations once you have your account.) I literally had to have Claude Code write a script, try to get one every 10-15 minutes, and it still took over a week. (Yes, that script ran nonstop.) Once you get it, you REALLY have to use it, otherwise they take it away from you. (This is not gonna be a problem if you are running OpenClaw on it, but better be quick to set it up.) You can upgrade your account to pay-as-you-go. Running this server will still be free, and I hope there are no surprise charges. But it is easier to get a slot. (This blog runs on such a server. And my OpenClaw will run on the one “my wife set up”.) My advice is maximum patience if you go this route. If you are in the US, set up in Chicago. Most machines. Multiple sites at one location (us-chicago-1, us-chicago-2, and us-chicago-3). And if you want to do this in the EU, go with Frankfurt. Same story. And if you are outside the US or the EU, set one up near you. Those are usually less oversubscribed. If there are several near you, do some research on which location is bigger with multiple sites.)
In Sum, I have my Oracle Virtual Private Server, and I am a loyal 25-year Linux user who is very comfortable with Linux systems. (Windows Millennium Edition I thank you for pushing me away from Microsoft forever.) Now, with the help of Claude Code, I can even administer my own web server. (Let’s hope my incompetence here will not show as some attacker takes this website down.) I will give this approach a month or two. In the meantime, we may get M5 Mac Minis, and my mother should be getting a new laptop, freeing up an M1 MacBook Air in the family. This is my plan. Take all these considerations and make the wisest choice for yourself.
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