This combination would be great for lots of new users and even experience OpenClaw users. I think with 10 USD credit should be enough to experience OpenClaw with deepseek for weeks for soft to intermediate usage. For anything serious the truth is that you will definitely need to pay for something better.
Yesterday I shared my cheap use case with OpenClaw and Deepseek API use, I thought why not share a backup method I'm planning on use and let OpenClaw generate me a short and direct backup document for me to keep on my files.
I'll post the picture of the generated document in first comment bellow.
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I’m using a cheap VPS from Hetzner, which costs me about $5/month. To power OpenClaw, I’m currently trying out DeepSeek with just a $5 credit.
So far, I’m really enjoying the experience. I’ve had OpenClaw set up some fun cron job reminders that I receive via my linked Telegram bot. I also updated OpenClaw to the latest version it seems much faster now when starting and stopping the gateway.
For a more advanced setup, I asked OpenClaw to install a Grafana dashboard and configure it to track my DeepSeek API usage and other LLM costs.
**I previously used OpenRouter, but I made the mistake of leaving it on auto mode, which burned through my API credits quickly because it kept selecting high-end models, and yes this is completely my fault for not researching open router first.** That’s why I switched to using DeepSeek directly through their own API/payment setup.
For security, I had OpenClaw harden the VPS and generate a full security inventory (in PDF format) of everything installed, including what might be risky.
Last but not least, I also installed Netdata to monitor the VPS with clean, real time graphs.
BONUS FUN: I even had OpenClaw install a “Jarvis” style voice (more like a fancy butler) that reads out short cron job updates or system info.
All of this is costing me about $1 so far for a few hours of heavy DeepSeek usage. I don’t think I can get it much cheaper than this right now and honestly, I think it’s a great balance.
Feel free to rate my setup, suggest improvements, or recommend even cheaper models than DeepSeek that still perform this well 👏