Last updated: September 2026
OpenClaw is for hackers. Developers and tinkerers who want to build, customize, and run the whole stack themselves.
Vellum is for the rest of us. No code, terminal, or config. Open the app, say what you want, and it gets done.
OpenClaw supports many channels. You connect and configure each one yourself, with its self-hosted Gateway as the main hub.
Vellum works everywhere out of the box. Mac, iOS, Android, Microsoft, voice, email, Slack, and more, with the same assistant and memory across all of them.
OpenClaw puts the control over privacy and security in your hands. You manage credentials, hosting, and how your setup is exposed.
Vellum gives you secure defaults with more choice. Run locally, use Vellum Cloud without sharing data with the model, or use open models.
Migrate everything that matters to Vellum with our import tool!
iOS app with Home Screen widgets, native Mac app, web app, voice, email, Slack, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, and Discord, now an official channel with a setup wizard. Sent messages can be edited in place in Slack and Telegram. Every surface shares the same memory and identity.
Twenty-four messaging channels you wire up individually, including Matrix, Signal, iMessage, and Nostr. iOS and Android pair as nodes to your self-hosted Gateway for camera, screen, and voice workflows. The primary surface remains the Gateway and its Control UI.
Build me a habit tracker gets you a working, interactive app in the conversation. Read this page uses the browser extension to read your open tabs and act on the page you are looking at. Call the dentist and reschedule places an actual phone call with its own voice.
Excellent if the work you want is code on your own machine. Real-world actions outside the terminal depend on the channels, plugins, and tools you wire up yourself.
Run on-device as a native Mac app, on Vellum's managed cloud, or self-host on your own VPS.
The Gateway runs on a machine you own and operate. Version 2.0 added cloud sessions and team.openclaw.ai for shared team coordination, but the core product still assumes you run and maintain the Gateway yourself.
Native agent skills plus 1-click integrations with 50+ services through managed OAuth, including native Calendly and Eventbrite. Your assistant acts in real services without you touching tokens or API keys.
Twenty-four messaging channels supported, but you bring your own API keys per provider and manage rotation yourself. The ClawHub plugin marketplace extends what the Gateway can do.
Vellum builds a structured memory of your projects, people, and preferences automatically, across every surface. It sharpens with every conversation and correction, and there is nothing to configure: no files to curate, no engine to pick, no embedding provider to wire up.
Version 2.0 ships real memory: USER.md for stable preferences, MEMORY.md for durable facts, daily notes, and a background dreaming sweep that promotes short-term recall into long-term memory. Hybrid semantic plus keyword search, with your choice of engine: SQLite built in, Honcho or LanceDB as plugins. It can import memory from Codex, Claude Code, and Hermes.
Builds its own skills, learns your tone, and adapts based on what you reward and correct. Install new skills from a growing library, or just ask and it figures out a way.
Behavior is configured by hand via prompts and config files. No automatic learning or adaptation loop.
Open source under MIT license. Full codebase available on GitHub.
Open source under MIT license. Full codebase available on GitHub.
Free Base plan with free credits to start. Paid plans from $30/mo (Mighty), $100 (Super), and $200 (Ultra) with pay-as-you-go credits, configurable compute and storage, and your assistant's own email and subdomain on higher tiers.
Free codebase under MIT license, but you pay for infrastructure, model API usage, and ongoing maintenance to run it.
Run locally on Mac, in Vellum Cloud, or self-host. Vellum never has access to your data on any deployment path.
Self-hosted by default, but privacy depends entirely on how you configure your machine and exposed services.
Built-in scheduling for daily briefings, weekly reports, and hourly checks that just run on a cadence.
No built-in scheduler. Rely on cron, launchd, or external triggers to run anything on a cadence.
Credentials live in an isolated vault and never enter the model layer, so prompt injection can't exfiltrate your keys. Every sensitive action asks permission with a risk badge before it runs, and guardian approvals land in one inbox.
Credentials and API keys live in host config you own and manage, and the model assumes a trusted operator running the Gateway. Version 2.0 shipped a security overhaul including a patched RCE (CVE-2026-25253) and secret egress host binding.
No terminal, no API keys, no daemon. Voice-first onboarding is the default: your first experience is speaking, not configuring. Free, no credit card, up in minutes.
npm install -g openclaw, then openclaw onboard. The 2026.9.1 quick-start lane detects existing Claude Code or Codex logins and API keys, and their docs now claim 5 minutes to first chat. Realistic for a developer who already lives in a terminal with API keys on hand.
Vellum Cloud: 3 GB RAM and 4 GB storage by default. Mac app runs on standard Mac hardware.
Needs 1+ GiB RAM to start, 2+ GiB to update versions. Resource-constrained hardware like Raspberry Pi can struggle.
Every sensitive action asks first with a risk badge, guardian approvals land in one inbox, and you can export or delete your data at any time. The trust model is written down in the docs.
Approval cards delivered to your chat channels, with sandboxing and policy you configure yourself. Accountability defaults to the operator: the person running the Gateway is the security boundary.
See how every personal AI assistant stacks up across the categories that matter.
See how Vellum compares to other AI assistants easily.
Choose Vellum if you want a personal AI assistant that works out of the box across native Mac app, iOS, web app, voice, email, Slack, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, and Discord, with persistent memory and managed credentials. OpenClaw is an open-source, self-hosted Gateway you configure per channel and per API key, now with built-in memory and guided setup since 2.0. For most people, Vellum is the faster path to a working assistant and the lower operational lift over time.
OpenClaw is a strong choice if you want to self-host everything. It is MIT licensed, runs on your own hardware, and connects twenty-four messaging channels including niche ones like Matrix, Signal, Nostr, and BlueBubbles for iMessage. Version 2.0 added real reasons to pick it: built-in markdown memory, shared multiplayer sessions, hosted team coordination at team.openclaw.ai, and a guided quick-start. If you already maintain a host and work in a terminal, it covers that setup well. Vellum gives you the same data-ownership guarantee without the per-channel configuration, and it works for people who never open a terminal at all.
The OpenClaw codebase is free and MIT licensed, but running it is not free. You pay for the host, model API usage, and the operational time to keep the daemon, channels, and credentials healthy. Vellum offers a free Base plan, then paid plans from $30/mo with pay-as-you-go credits, configurable compute and storage, and your assistant's own email and subdomain on higher tiers. For most people the all-in cost of OpenClaw plus model fees lands close to a Vellum paid plan, without the maintenance work.
OpenClaw setup is npm install -g openclaw, then openclaw onboard, and their docs now claim 5 minutes with the 2026.9.1 quick-start lane, which detects existing Claude Code or Codex logins and API keys. That speed is real for a developer who already lives in a terminal with API keys on hand. Vellum is sign up and start talking: no terminal, no API keys, no daemon. Voice is the default first experience, and your first sentence gets real output.
OpenClaw 2.0 ships a built-in memory system that is on by default: USER.md for stable preferences, MEMORY.md for durable facts, daily notes, and a background dreaming sweep that promotes short-term recall into long-term memory. Search is hybrid semantic plus keyword, you choose the engine (SQLite built in, Honcho or LanceDB as plugins), and it can import memory from Codex, Claude Code, and Hermes. Vellum builds a structured, persistent memory of your work, people, and patterns automatically, shared across every surface, with nothing to configure or curate.
Vellum focuses on real read-write actions across the apps people use every day: email, calendar, Slack, GitHub, Notion, X, and more, all through managed OAuth with no API keys to handle. OpenClaw focuses on messaging channels (twenty-four of them), with each channel configured manually and credentials managed by you.
OpenClaw is a Node Gateway daemon you run on a desktop, server, or VPS, with an optional macOS menu bar app. iOS and Android can pair as nodes to a running gateway, but the primary experience is the daemon and its CLI. Vellum ships as a native Mac app, an iOS app, and a web app, with voice, email, Telegram, and Slack surfaces, all syncing the same memory.
OpenClaw keeps credentials and API keys in host config you own and manage, and its security docs describe a trusted-operator model where the person running the Gateway is the security boundary. Version 2.0 shipped a security overhaul including a patched RCE (CVE-2026-25253) and secret egress host binding. Vellum keeps credentials in an isolated vault that the model layer never sees, so prompt injection cannot exfiltrate your keys, and every sensitive action asks permission with a risk badge before it runs.
Yes. Vellum runs as a native Mac app on your own machine, with iOS, web app, voice, email, Slack, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, and Discord surfaces in sync. If you want continuous 24/7 background work without keeping your laptop open, Vellum Cloud handles it on paid plans from $30/mo with pay-as-you-go credits, configurable compute and storage, and your assistant's own email and subdomain on higher tiers. Both modes give you the same assistant, memory, and identity.
Yes, you can run both, since they target different layers. Some developers experiment with OpenClaw for niche messaging channels while keeping Vellum as their day-to-day personal AI assistant. Most people consolidate on one once they see how Vellum's persistent memory and managed integrations replace the manual setup work.
Vellum is built for every human, with native Mac app, iOS, web app, voice, email, Telegram, and Slack surfaces. No terminal, no API keys, and no daemon to babysit. OpenClaw is a self-hosted Node Gateway daemon that assumes Node, a terminal, host administration, and per-provider key management.
