Mar 25, 2026

The Best Alternative to OpenClaw (ClawdBot): Carly

OpenClaw (formerly ClawdBot, briefly Moltbot) is the viral open-source AI agent with 247,000 GitHub stars. Carly is an AI assistant that handles scheduling, email, CRM, project management, and 200+ other integrations out of the box. They cover similar ground — but the security, setup, reliability, and cost couldn’t be more different.

512 Vulnerabilities and Plaintext Credentials

OpenClaw has been flagged as a security risk by Cisco, Kaspersky, CrowdStrike, and Microsoft.

A security audit uncovered 512 vulnerabilities, 8 of them critical. The most dangerous, CVE-2026-25253, carries a CVSS score of 8.8 and allows a one-click remote code execution attack — visiting a single malicious webpage can fully compromise your machine. Researchers at SecurityScorecard found over 135,000 OpenClaw instances exposed to the public internet, with 12,800+ confirmed exploitable.

OpenClaw stores API keys, login credentials, and authentication tokens in plaintext in a ~/.clawdbot directory. Even deleted keys persist in backup files. Infostealers have been observed harvesting entire OpenClaw configurations from compromised systems.

The plugin marketplace isn’t safe either. Researchers found 341 malicious skills on ClawHub — 335 from a single campaign delivering info-stealing malware to macOS and Windows users. A fake ClawdBot VS Code extension containing malware was discovered in January 2026.

Heather Adkins, a founding member of Google’s Security Team, issued a blunt public advisory: “Don’t run Clawdbot.”

Kaspersky’s guidance: avoid running it with primary work or personal accounts, or on devices with sensitive data.

With Carly, your credentials are encrypted on managed infrastructure. You never touch API keys. No self-hosted gateway to misconfigure, no open ports, no plugin marketplace where malware can hide.

Setup: 2 Minutes vs. 2 Days

Getting OpenClaw running requires installing Node.js, running npm install, configuring API keys for whichever LLM you want to use, setting up messaging platform authentication (Telegram bot tokens, WhatsApp Business API, Discord webhooks), configuring a gateway server, managing Docker containers, and troubleshooting environment-specific permission issues.

The most common complaint across Reddit, Medium, and developer forums: “Not newbie friendly setup.” Users report spending hours or days wrestling with token authentication errors, silent message failures, and config keys that break with every rebrand. The Telegram “silent reply” bug alone — where the agent receives messages but never responds due to a chat ID formatting mismatch — has frustrated countless users.

And every time the project rebrands (ClawdBot → Moltbot → OpenClaw), configuration keys change, documentation goes stale, and existing setups silently break.

Carly setup takes two minutes. Connect your calendar, forward an email or send a text, and you’re scheduling. No terminal. No API keys. No Docker. No debugging.

OpenClaw Does Everything — Unreliably

OpenClaw and Carly both handle email, calendars, CRM updates, and project management. The feature sets overlap on paper. The difference is how they were built.

Carly started as a calendar scheduling company a year ago. Reading messy email threads, understanding scheduling context, negotiating times, sending calendar invites — that was refined for months before anything else. Carly only rolled out its 200+ integrations across 40+ categories — Salesforce, HubSpot, Linear, Slack — once the team was confident in the quality of every tool call. A year of getting AI tool use right before scaling breadth.

OpenClaw took the opposite path: build a general-purpose agent framework, then let the community figure out the integrations. Users report the agent looping through unnecessary reasoning chains, invoking tools repeatedly, or reinterpreting instructions mid-task. One user reported: “It broke my family calendar and joined my podcast.”

OpenClaw also sends email replies that were never requested — misinterpreting prompts and taking action on real communications with real people. As one review put it: “It works best where mistakes are cheap and reversible. It struggles in the exact situations people want it most: ambiguous, real-world tasks with messy data and real consequences.”

OpenClaw API Bills: $300–$3,600/Month

OpenClaw is MIT-licensed. The software is free. Running it is not.

You pay for LLM API access, and OpenClaw burns through tokens. Users on Reddit report $300–$750/month in API costs. One blogger tracked 1.8 million tokens in a month — $3,600. Another burned $200 in a single day from an automation loop stuck in an infinite cycle.

OpenClaw Cloud (managed hosting) is $59/month before API costs. Self-hosting means managing a server ($6–$50/month), your own uptime, security patches, and backups.

Carly starts free — you get free credits to try everything with no commitment. After that, $35/month flat. No API costs. No server bills. No per-user pricing.

FAQ

Is OpenClaw safe to use?

Multiple security firms — Cisco, Kaspersky, CrowdStrike, Microsoft — have flagged OpenClaw as a security risk. A security audit found 512 vulnerabilities, 8 critical, including CVE-2026-25253 which allows one-click remote code execution. OpenClaw stores credentials in plaintext, and researchers found 341 malicious plugins on ClawHub. Heather Adkins from Google’s Security Team publicly advised against running it.

Is OpenClaw actually free?

The software is free (MIT license). But you pay for LLM API access, and users report $300–$750/month in API costs during normal use. Self-hosting adds $6–$50/month for a server. OpenClaw Cloud (managed hosting) is $59/month before API costs. Carly starts free with credits and is $35/month flat after that — no API bills, no server costs.

How long does it take to set up OpenClaw?

Most users report hours to days. Setup requires Node.js, npm, LLM API keys, messaging platform authentication, a gateway server, and Docker. The most common complaint on forums is “not newbie friendly.” Carly takes two minutes — connect your calendar and start scheduling.

What’s the difference between OpenClaw and Carly?

Both handle scheduling, email, CRM, and project management. OpenClaw is a self-hosted open-source framework where you configure everything yourself. Carly is a managed AI assistant with 200+ built-in integrations that works over email and SMS. The main differences are security (Carly encrypts credentials; OpenClaw stores them in plaintext), setup time (2 minutes vs. hours), and cost predictability ($35/month flat vs. variable API bills).

Why did ClawdBot change its name?

ClawdBot renamed to Moltbot in January 2026 after Anthropic raised trademark concerns, then to OpenClaw three days later. During the transition, attackers seized the original social accounts and used them to push crypto scams — fake $CLAWD tokens hit a $16 million market cap on Solana before crashing 90%.

Does Carly have the same integrations as OpenClaw?

Carly has 200+ managed integrations across 40+ categories — CRM, project management, email, analytics, messaging, and more. OpenClaw has ~50 integrations, mostly community-built. The difference is that Carly’s integrations are built and maintained by the same team, while OpenClaw relies on anonymous community contributors with varying quality.

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