Does OpenClaw work completely offline with local LLMs?

Yes. OpenClaw can work completely offline with local LLMs, provided you configure it to use a locally hosted model instead of a cloud API.

The typical setup looks like this:

OpenClaw
    │
    ▼
Local model server (Ollama / LM Studio / vLLM / llama.cpp, etc.)
    │
    ▼
Local LLM (Qwen, Llama, Gemma, Mistral, etc.)

With this configuration:

• All LLM inference happens on your own machine.
• No prompts or responses are sent to OpenAI, Anthropic, or other cloud providers.
• You don't need API keys for inference.
• It continues working even if your internet connection is disconnected (assuming your tasks themselves don't require the internet). (OpenClaw Docs)

However, "completely offline" depends on what you're asking OpenClaw to do:

So the agent itself can be fully offline, but any task that inherently depends on online services will not function until connectivity is restored. (OpenClaw News)

Supported local backends

OpenClaw supports several local inference servers, including:

• LM Studio (recommended for beginners)
• Ollama
• vLLM
• SGLang
• MLX (Apple Silicon)
• Any OpenAI-compatible local server

All of these expose a local HTTP endpoint that OpenClaw connects to. 

Things to keep in mind

Running locally has trade-offs:

Advantages

• Complete privacy
• No per-token costs
• Works without internet
• Full control over your models

Trade-offs

• Performance depends on your hardware.
• Smaller local models may not match the reasoning ability of top cloud models like GPT or Claude.
• Large models require substantial RAM/VRAM for good speed. Community reports suggest that a GPU with ample VRAM (for example, 24 GB) provides a much better experience than CPU-only setups. (Reddit)

If you're planning to build a 100% local AI assistant with OpenClaw, a common stack is:

• OpenClaw
• Ollama
• A local model such as Qwen, Llama, Gemma, or Mistral
• Local tools (filesystem, terminal, code execution)

This setup can operate entirely on your machine without relying on cloud AI services.