The deciding difference is operational: OpenClaw can run on infrastructure you control, Claude Agent SDK cannot. If that constraint is real for you, it settles the choice before anything else is considered.
The Claude Code loop as a library, for agents that are not about code.
Same harness as Claude Code, but you own the entrypoint and the tool surface.
Self-hosted gateway putting an agent in Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, Discord and iMessage at once.
One Gateway process fans out to every channel plugin. Needs Node 22.22.3+ (26 recommended); the installer provisions it.
| Claude Agent SDK | OpenClaw | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Proprietary | Open source |
| Pricing | usage based | open source |
| Self-hostable | No | Yes |
| Languages | TypeScript, Python | Any language |
| Install | npm install @anthropic-ai/claude-agent-sdk | curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash |
| Keys required | ANTHROPIC_API_KEY | None |
The deciding difference is operational: OpenClaw can run on infrastructure you control, Claude Agent SDK cannot. If that constraint is real for you, it settles the choice before anything else is considered. Claude Agent SDK: The Claude Code loop as a library, for agents that are not about code. OpenClaw: Self-hosted gateway putting an agent in Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, Discord and iMessage at once.
Claude Agent SDK is a hosted service only. OpenClaw can run on your own infrastructure.
Claude Agent SDK is proprietary (usage based). OpenClaw is open source (open source).
Every page here answers to Accept: text/markdown and returns the same content at roughly a tenth the tokens. No separate site, no toggle — same URL.
curl -s -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://newagent.build/compare/claude-agent-sdk-vs-openclaw