Ollama Cloud Now Covers OpenClaw — How to Switch in 5 Minutes

What Just Happened

On April 4, 2026, Anthropic announced that third-party harnesses like OpenClaw no longer draw from your Claude subscription. Usage through these tools now goes through “extra usage” billing. Only Anthropic's own products (Claude Code and Cowork) remain covered.

The same day, Ollama responded. Their announcement: “Starting tomorrow at 11am PT, Ollama subscriptions usage will refresh to cover increased usage of third-party tools like OpenClaw.” They are positioning Ollama Cloud as the drop-in replacement for subscription-covered agent usage.

What Ollama Cloud Offers

Ollama Cloud is a hosted inference service. Your subscription covers usage of third-party tools like OpenClaw. No extra billing surprises. No per-token charges on top of your plan.

Models available include Qwen3 (30B-A3B MoE and smaller), DeepSeek V3, Gemma 4, Llama 4, Mistral, and more. These are the same models you can run locally, but hosted on Ollama's infrastructure. Coverage starts April 5 at 11am PT.

Key detail

Ollama explicitly called out OpenClaw compatibility. All tools will work with Ollama's cloud “just like before.” This is not a workaround. It is official support.

How to Switch in 5 Minutes

Five steps. No rewrites. Your agent logic stays the same.

1. Install or update Ollama

curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh
# Or update: ollama --version (make sure v0.6+)

2. Pull a model

# Pick one:
ollama pull qwen3:30b-a3b    # Best balance of speed + quality
ollama pull deepseek-v3       # Strong reasoning
ollama pull gemma4:27b        # 256K context
ollama pull llama4            # Meta's latest

3. Configure OpenClaw to use Ollama Cloud

openclaw config set --provider ollama \
  --model qwen3:30b-a3b \
  --host https://cloud.ollama.com

For local instead of cloud, use --host http://localhost:11434

4. Verify the connection

openclaw agent --agent my-agent --message "ping"
# Should respond without errors

5. Done. Run your agents.

openclaw agent --agent my-agent \
  --message "Run today's content pipeline"

Your SOUL.md files do not change. Your tool configs do not change. Only the provider endpoint changes.

Cost Comparison

Here is how the three options compare right now.

Option	Cost	OpenClaw Covered?	Notes
Anthropic Extra Usage	$3-15/M tokens	Pay-as-you-go	On top of subscription
Ollama Cloud	Subscription	Yes	Starts April 5
Ollama Local	Free	Yes (your hardware)	Requires 16GB+ RAM

Ollama local is free but requires decent hardware. Ollama Cloud handles the compute for you. Both work with OpenClaw out of the box.

CrewClaw Agents Work with Any Provider

Every agent in our gallery of 228+ agents is provider-agnostic. Claude, GPT-4o, DeepSeek, Ollama. Swap providers with one config change. The agent logic stays the same.

Today's news proves why this matters. Provider policies change without warning. If your agent only works on one backend, you are stuck. Build portable from day one.

Create an agent that works on any provider. Pick Ollama as your backend. Deploy in minutes.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does Ollama Cloud coverage for OpenClaw start?

Tomorrow, April 5, 2026 at 11am PT. Ollama announced that subscription usage will refresh to cover increased usage of third-party tools like OpenClaw.

Which models are available on Ollama Cloud?

Qwen3 (30B-A3B and smaller variants), DeepSeek V3, Gemma 4, Llama 4, Mistral, and more. All models that run locally via Ollama are also available through Ollama Cloud.

Do I need to change my SOUL.md files?

No. Your agent logic stays the same. You only change the provider endpoint in your OpenClaw config. The SOUL.md, tools, and integrations are provider-independent.

Can I still use Claude with OpenClaw?

Yes, but it now goes through Anthropic's extra usage billing instead of your subscription. If you want subscription-covered usage, Ollama Cloud is the fastest alternative.

Is Ollama Cloud free?

No. Ollama Cloud has its own subscription plans. However, Ollama local is completely free. You can run models on your own hardware with zero ongoing cost.

Related Guides

Why Multi-Provider Agents Are the Future

Anthropic changed the rules. Here is why provider-agnostic agents are the only safe path.

Run OpenClaw Agents with DeepSeek V3

The cheapest capable API for agentic tool use at $0.27/M tokens.

Run OpenClaw Agents with Qwen3 Locally

30B-A3B MoE runs at 3B speed. Zero API cost, Apache 2.0 license.

Run OpenClaw with Ollama (Local Setup)

Free local AI agents with no API keys. Full Ollama setup guide.

Ollama Cloud Now Covers OpenClaw. How to Switch in 5 Minutes.