The deciding difference is operational: OpenClaw can run on infrastructure you control, Claude Code cannot. If that constraint is real for you, it settles the choice before anything else is considered.
Anthropic's coding agent — terminal, IDE and SDK, with hooks, skills and MCP built in.
Configure via .claude/settings.json; drop reusable procedures in .claude/skills/.
Self-hosted gateway putting an agent in Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, Discord and iMessage at once.
One Gateway process fans out to every channel plugin. Needs Node 22.22.3+ (26 recommended); the installer provisions it.
| Claude Code | OpenClaw | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Proprietary | Open source |
| Pricing | paid | open source |
| Self-hostable | No | Yes |
| Languages | Any language | Any language |
| Install | npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code | curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash |
| Keys required | ANTHROPIC_API_KEY | None |
The deciding difference is operational: OpenClaw can run on infrastructure you control, Claude Code cannot. If that constraint is real for you, it settles the choice before anything else is considered. Claude Code: Anthropic's coding agent — terminal, IDE and SDK, with hooks, skills and MCP built in. OpenClaw: Self-hosted gateway putting an agent in Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, Discord and iMessage at once.
Claude Code is a hosted service only. OpenClaw can run on your own infrastructure.
Claude Code is proprietary (paid). OpenClaw is open source (open source).
Every page here answers to Accept: text/markdown and returns the same content at roughly a tenth the tokens. No separate site, no toggle — same URL.
curl -s -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://newagent.build/compare/claude-code-vs-openclaw