Users report API bills of $50–$150/month from misconfigured defaults. This guide shows you exactly how to get that down to $8–$20/month — or $0 with local models — without losing any capability.
Default Setup
$50–$150/mo
After This Guide
$8–$20/mo
With Ollama
$0/mo
Share your before/after API costs in the community — help others know what's possible.
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The heartbeat is OpenClaw's "check-in" — it wakes up the agent on a schedule to run your HEARTBEAT.md instructions. The default interval is 1,800 seconds (30 minutes). That means your agent is making LLM calls 48 times per day, every day, even when you're not using it.
SAVINGS TIP
Change the heartbeat interval in openclaw.json:
{
"heartbeatInterval": 7200,
"heartbeatEnabled": true
}
// 7200 = 2 hours (was 1800 = 30 minutes)
// This alone cuts ~40% of your token usageIf you don't use HEARTBEAT.md at all, disable it entirely:
{
"heartbeatEnabled": false
}WHY THIS MATTERS
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Post your monthly API bill before and after applying this guide — we celebrate wins in the community.
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PDF guide, config templates, and checklist
Up Next
Guide 03: Run OpenClaw for Free with Ollama
The complete local model setup guide.