Best Local & Open-Source LLMs for OpenClaw (2026)

Community-voted rankings for running OpenClaw with local and open-source models

All Models 💰 Cheapest Models

Our Picks

Best Overall Local

Mixtral 8x7B Instruct

Best Small Model

Mistral 7B Instruct v0.2

Best for Coding

Qwen2.5 Coder 7B

Provider	Model	Input $/M	Output $/M	Score
MI Mistral AI	Mixtral 8x7B Instruct	$0.140	$0.420	40+4
MI Mistral AI	Mistral 7B Instruct v0.2	$0.140	$0.200	10+1
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5 Coder 7B	$0.200	$0.200	000
M Meta-llama	Code Llama 7B Instruct	$0.200	$0.200	000
MI Mistral AI	Snorkel Mistral PairRM DPO	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen3 8B	$0.050	$0.200	000
FW Fireworks	Marin 8B Instruct	$0.000	$0.000	000
LQ Liquid	LiquidAI/LFM2-8B-A1B	$0.010	$0.020	000
LQ Liquid	LiquidAI/LFM2-2.6B	$0.010	$0.020	000
G Google	CodeGemma 2B	$0.100	$0.100	000
G Google	CodeGemma 7B	$0.200	$0.200	000
NO Nousresearch	Chronos Hermes 13B v2	$0.200	$0.200	000
BY Bytedance	UI-TARS 7B	$0.100	$0.200	000
-	GLM 4.1V 9B Thinking	$0.000	$0.000	000
AP Alfredpros	CodeLLaMa 7B Instruct Solidity	$0.800	$1.200	000
CO Cohere	Command R7B (12-2024)	$0.037	$0.150	000
E Essential AI	Rnj 1 Instruct	$0.150	$0.150	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2 VL 7B Instruct	$0.200	$0.200	000
MI Mistral AI	Mixtral 8x7B Instruct (HF)	$0.500	$0.500	000
A Allenai	Molmo 2 4B	$0.200	$0.200	000
D Deepcogito	Cogito v1 Preview Llama 3B	$0.100	$0.100	000
EL Eleutherai	Pythia 12B	$0.200	$0.200	000
M Meta-llama	Code Llama 13B	$0.200	$0.200	000
M Meta-llama	Code Llama 13B Instruct	$0.200	$0.200	000
M Meta-llama	Code Llama 13B Python	$0.200	$0.200	000
M Meta-llama	Code Llama 7B	$0.200	$0.200	000
MI Mistral AI	Mistral 7B OpenOrca	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2 7B Instruct	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2 VL 2B Instruct	$0.100	$0.100	000
QW Qwen	Qwen3 4B	$0.200	$0.200	000
NO Nousresearch	OpenHermes 2.5 Mistral 7B	$0.170	$0.170	000
A Allenai	Molmo 2 8B	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	CodeQwen 1.5 7B	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5 1.5B Instruct	$0.100	$0.100	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5 7B	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5 Coder 0.5B	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5 Coder 0.5B Instruct	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5 Coder 1.5B	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5 Coder 3B Instruct	$0.100	$0.100	000
QW Qwen	Qwen3 0.6B	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen3 4B Instruct 2507	$0.200	$0.200	000
D Deepcogito	Cogito v1 Preview Llama 8B	$0.200	$0.200	000
DS Deepseek	DeepSeek Coder 1.3B Base	$0.100	$0.100	000
DS Deepseek	DeepSeek Coder 7B Base	$0.200	$0.200	000
NO Nousresearch	Toppy M 7B	$0.200	$0.200	000
NO Nousresearch	Zephyr 7B Beta	$0.200	$0.200	000
AR Arcee AI	Trinity Mini	$0.045	$0.150	000
A Allenai	Olmo 3 7B Instruct	$0.100	$0.200	000
A Allenai	Olmo 3 7B Think	$0.120	$0.200	000
DS Deepseek	DeepSeek Coder 7B Base v1.5	$0.200	$0.200	000
DS Deepseek	DeepSeek Coder 7B Instruct v1.5	$0.200	$0.200	000
DS Deepseek	R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B	$0.200	$0.200	000
G Google	Gemma 2B	$0.100	$0.100	000
G Google	Gemma 7B	$0.200	$0.200	000
M Meta-llama	Llama 2 13B	$0.200	$0.200	000
M Meta-llama	Llama 2 13B Chat	$0.200	$0.200	000
NO Nousresearch	Hermes 2 Pro Mistral 7B	$0.200	$0.200	000
OG Opengvlab	InternVL3 8B	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5 Coder 1.5B Instruct	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5 Coder 3B	$0.100	$0.100	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5 VL 3B Instruct	$0.100	$0.100	000
QW Qwen	Qwen3 1.7B	$0.200	$0.200	000
MI Mistral AI	Ministral 3 8B 2512	$0.150	$0.150	000
MI Mistral AI	Ministral 3 3B 2512	$0.100	$0.100	000
NV Nvidia	Nemotron Nano 12B 2 VL	$0.000	$0.000	000
NV Nvidia	Nemotron Nano 9B V2	$0.000	$0.000	000
MI Mistral AI	Mistral 7B v0.2	$0.200	$0.200	000
M Meta-llama	Llama 2 7B Chat	$0.200	$0.200	000
M Meta-llama	Llama 3.2 1B	$0.100	$0.100	000
M Meta-llama	Llama 3.2 3B	$0.100	$0.100	000
M Meta-llama	Llama 3 8B	$0.050	$0.080	000
MI Mistral AI	Mistral 7B	$0.200	$0.200	000
NO Nousresearch	Nous Hermes 2 Mixtral 8x7B DPO	$0.500	$0.500	000
NO Nousresearch	Nous Hermes Llama 2 13B	$0.170	$0.170	000
NO Nousresearch	Nous Hermes Llama 2 7B	$0.200	$0.200	000
NO Nousresearch	OpenHermes 2 Mistral 7B	$0.200	$0.200	000
NV Nvidia	Nemotron Nano 12B V2	$0.200	$0.200	000
Z Z-ai	GLM 4.5V	$0.600	$1.800	000
A Allenai	OLMo 7B Instruct	$0.200	$0.200	000
A Austism	Austism/chronos-hermes-13b	$0.300	$0.300	000
DS Deepseek	DeepSeek R1 0528 Qwen3 8B	$0.200	$0.200	000
M Meta-llama	Llama 2 7B	$0.200	$0.200	000
CG Cognitive Computations	Dolphin 2.6 Mixtral 8x7B	$0.500	$0.500	000
G Google	Gemma 7B Instruct	$0.070	$0.070	000
M Meta-llama	Llama 3 8B Instruct (HF)	$0.200	$0.200	000
MI Mistral AI	Mixtral 8x7B	$0.240	$0.240	000
NO Nousresearch	OpenChat 3.5 0106	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen3.5 9B	$0.050	$0.150	000
U Upstage	SOLAR 10.7B Instruct v1	$0.300	$0.300	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5 Coder 7B Instruct	$0.030	$0.090	000
EL Eleutherai	Llemma 7b	$0.800	$1.200	000
G Google	Gemma 3 4B	$0.040	$0.080	000
G Google	Gemma 3 12B	$0.040	$0.130	000
MS Microsoft	Phi 4 Multimodal Instruct	$0.000	$0.000	000
TD Thedrummer	UnslopNemo 12B	$0.400	$0.400	000
MI Mistral AI	Ministral 8B	$0.100	$0.100	000
MI Mistral AI	Ministral 3B	$0.040	$0.040	000
G Google	Gemma 2B	$0.100	$0.100	000
IB Ibm	ALLaM 7B Instruct Preview	$0.000	$0.000	000
L Lmsys	lmsys/vicuna-13b-v1.5	$0.300	$0.300	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct	$0.040	$0.100	000
NO Nousresearch	OpenChat 7B	$0.060	$0.060	000
TD Thedrummer	Rocinante 12B	$0.170	$0.430	000
M Meta-llama	Llama 3.2 3B Instruct	$0.030	$0.050	000
M Meta-llama	Llama 3.2 1B Instruct	$0.020	$0.020	000
M Meta-llama	Llama 3.2 11B Vision Instruct	$0.049	$0.049	000
QW Qwen	Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct	$0.080	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen1.5 0.5B	$0.100	$0.100	000
QW Qwen	Qwen1.5 0.5B Chat	$0.100	$0.100	000
NS Neversleep	Lumimaid v0.2 8B	$0.000	$0.000	000
MI Mistral AI	Pixtral 12B	$0.150	$0.150	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5-VL 7B Instruct	$0.200	$0.200	000
MS Microsoft	Phi-3.5 Mini 128K Instruct	$0.000	$0.000	000
S1 Sao10k	Llama 3 8B Lunaris	$0.040	$0.050	000
MI Mistral AI	Mistral Nemo	$0.020	$0.040	000
NO Nousresearch	Hermes 2 Pro - Llama-3 8B	$0.140	$0.140	000
G Google	Gemma 2 9B	$0.030	$0.080	000
MI Mistral AI	Mistral 7B Instruct	$0.059	$0.059	000
MI Mistral AI	Mistral 7B Instruct v0.3	$0.140	$0.200	000
MS Microsoft	Phi-3 Mini 128K Instruct	$0.000	$0.000	000
MI Mistral AI	Mistral Tiny	$0.140	$0.420	000
M Meta-llama	Llama 3 8B Instruct	$0.030	$0.040	000
U9 Undi95	ReMM SLERP 13B	$0.300	$0.300	000
GR Gryphe	MythoMax 13B	$0.060	$0.060	000
G Google	Gemma 3 1B	$0.100	$0.100	000
O Open Orca	Open-Orca/Mistral-7B-OpenOrca	$0.200	$0.200	000
QW Qwen	Qwen2.5 0.5B Instruct	$0.200	$0.200	000
NO Nousresearch	Nous Capybara 7B v1.9	$0.200	$0.200	000
G Google	Gemma 3n 4B	$0.020	$0.040	01-1
M Meta-llama	Llama 3.1 8B Instruct	$0.020	$0.050	01-1

Vote for open-source models that work well (or don't) with OpenClaw.

Pricing from OpenRouter.

Running OpenClaw with a Local Model

OpenClaw supports local models via OpenAI-compatible APIs. The easiest way to run a model locally is with Ollama or llama.cpp, both of which expose a local API endpoint that OpenClaw can connect to.

VRAM Requirements

7B models need ~6GB VRAM (4-bit quantized). 13B models need ~10GB. 70B models need ~40GB or multi-GPU. If you're on CPU-only, smaller quantized models (Q4) are usable but slow.

Recommended: Ollama

Install Ollama, run ollama pull llama3.3, then point OpenClaw to http://localhost:11434/v1.

Alternative: llama.cpp server

For more control over quantization and performance, llama.cpp's server mode gives you a full OpenAI-compatible API with fine-grained settings.

Compare all local LLM runners →

About This Leaderboard

This leaderboard shows community votes specifically for open-source and locally-runnable models used with OpenClaw. Models are filtered to include those from open-source providers: Meta (Llama), Mistral, Qwen (Alibaba), Google (Gemma), DeepSeek, Microsoft (Phi), and similar open-weight families.

Running local models with OpenClaw gives you full privacy, zero API costs, and offline capability — at the cost of needing hardware and accepting some quality trade-offs versus frontier API models.

Best Local & Open-Source LLMs for OpenClaw (2026)

Our Picks

Running OpenClaw with a Local Model

About This Leaderboard

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