How to Deploy OpenClaw on a VPS — DigitalOcean, Hetzner & More

VPS is the production-grade way to run OpenClaw. No worrying about your laptop sleeping, no home network reliability issues. Just pick a server, set it up once, and your agent runs forever. Here's the full breakdown.

Choosing a VPS Provider

Hetzner (my top pick): CX21 is €3.99/month for 2 vCPU + 4GB RAM + 40GB SSD. Incredible value. German company, servers in Frankfurt and Nuremberg (also Ashburn, US). Almost zero downtime in my experience.

DigitalOcean: $12/month for 1 vCPU + 2GB RAM. More expensive than Hetzner but excellent docs, great dashboard, and NYC/SF/LON/AMS locations. Best for teams who want hand-holding.

Vultr: $10/month for 1 vCPU + 2GB RAM. Good performance, many locations, solid API. Middle ground between Hetzner pricing and DigitalOcean UX.

Linode (Akamai): $12/month for 1 vCPU + 2GB RAM. Reliable, been around forever, good for US compliance requirements.

Initial Server Setup

SSH into your new server as root:

ssh root@YOUR_SERVER_IP

Create a non-root user (never run OpenClaw as root):

adduser openclaw
usermod -aG sudo openclaw
su - openclaw

Install Dependencies

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_20.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs git curl
npm install -g openclaw

Initialize and Configure

openclaw init
openclaw config set llm.provider anthropic
openclaw config set llm.apiKey YOUR_KEY

Set Up Systemd

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/openclaw.service

[Unit]
Description=OpenClaw Gateway
After=network.target

[Service]
User=openclaw
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/openclaw gateway start
Restart=always
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl enable openclaw && sudo systemctl start openclaw

Firewall Setup

sudo ufw allow ssh
sudo ufw allow 3000  # Only if receiving webhooks
sudo ufw enable

Cost Breakdown

• Hetzner CX21: ~€4/month ($4.30 USD)
• API calls (Claude Haiku/Sonnet): ~$5-20/month depending on usage
• Total: $10-25/month for a professional always-on agent

The OpenClaw Playbook has a full VPS deployment checklist including SSH hardening, fail2ban setup, automated backups to S3, and monitoring with Uptime Robot — everything you need for a production deployment you can forget about.