What's the best AI model for OpenClaw? : OpenClaw Discussion Forums

There's a question we all ask when setting up @OpenClaw: which model should I actually use?

What are your suggestions? Any preferences?

The "best" model definitely depends on your workflows and priorities. High success rate, fast completions, or cost efficient? For coding tasks, there's this thread [1] suggesting @Claude by Anthropic, @Gemini, and @OpenAI's GPT models, while open-weight models like @MiniMax are bridging the gap with every release. [2]

Curious what the community recommends for @OpenClaw?

Note: The poll is inspired by the current leaderboard on pinchbench.com by @KiloClaw

[1]: What's the best AI model for coding?

[2]: MiniMax M2.7 vs. Claude Opus 4.6

I've been running Opus 4.6 for most work - coding, research, content drafting. The context window handles big projects well and I like how it reasons through multi-step tasks.

For quick one-off stuff I'll sometimes use Sonnet 4.5 to save cost, but when something matters I go back to Opus. The quality gap shows up fast on anything that requires judgment.

This is super useful, especially seeing success rates across models in one place. One thing I’ve noticed while working with OpenClaw is that people don’t just struggle with “which model performs best” , they struggle with “what setup should I actually run without burning through budget”. Curious if you’ve thought about combining benchmark data with real-world cost estimation? Would make the decision much clearer for most users.

What's the best AI model for OpenClaw?

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