openclaw/docs/reference/api-usage-costs.md

summary, read_when, title

summary	read_when	title
Audit what can spend money, which keys are used, and how to view usage	You want to understand which features may call paid APIs You need to audit keys, costs, and usage visibility You’re explaining /status or /usage cost reporting	API Usage and Costs

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.

Per-message cost footer

• /usage full appends a usage footer to every reply, including estimated cost (API-key only).
• /usage tokens shows tokens only; OAuth flows hide dollar cost.

CLI usage windows (provider quotas)

• openclaw status --usage and openclaw channels list show provider usage windows (quota snapshots, not per-message costs).

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, tools.web.search.*, tools.web.fetch.firecrawl.*, memorySearch.*, talk.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.

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 (now auto-enabled when keys exist).
• Image: OpenAI / Anthropic / Google.
• Video: Google.

See Media understanding.

3) Memory embeddings + semantic search

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 = "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.

4) Web search tool

web_search uses API keys and may incur usage charges depending on your provider:

• Brave Search API: BRAVE_API_KEY or tools.web.search.apiKey
• Gemini (Google Search): GEMINI_API_KEY or tools.web.search.gemini.apiKey
• Grok (xAI): XAI_API_KEY or tools.web.search.grok.apiKey
• Kimi (Moonshot): KIMI_API_KEY, MOONSHOT_API_KEY, or tools.web.search.kimi.apiKey
• Perplexity Search API: PERPLEXITY_API_KEY, OPENROUTER_API_KEY, or tools.web.search.perplexity.apiKey

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 tools.web.fetch.firecrawl.apiKey

If Firecrawl isn’t configured, the tool falls back to direct fetch + readability (no paid API).

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.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.