The Free Model Stack That Actually Runs OpenClaw (And No, It’s Not Kimi K2.5)
Yes, GLM 4.5 Air wins. No, Nvidia’s Kimi doesn’t.
OpenClaw doesn’t need the smartest model alive.
It needs a model that shows up every call.
Fast responses. Clean JSON. Stable tool usage. Cheap retries.
OpenRouter quietly gives you all of this for free.
And no… it’s not Kimi K2.5 from Nvidia because it’s way too limited on the free usage they give you. It looks impressive until you actually try to route real agent traffic through it.
Below is the full power ranking of every free OpenRouter model that currently works with OpenClaw, ranked by real-world usefulness, not hype.
The OpenClaw Free Model Power Rankings
Most powerful → least powerful
Tier 1: Use This First
1. GLM 4.5 Air ⭐ Josh Davis TOP PICK
Best at: Reasoning, long chains, tool discipline, code completion
Why it wins: Best balance of intelligence, speed, and free limits
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/z-ai/glm-4.5-air
2. Nous Hermes 3 405B Instruct
Best at: Deep reasoning, synthesis, long-form tasks
Tradeoff: Slower, heavier
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/nousresearch/hermes-3-405b
3. Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B
Best at: Code generation, schema-heavy agents
Tradeoff: Overkill for simple tasks
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/qwen/qwen3-coder-480b-a35b
4. OpenAI gpt-oss-120b
Best at: General intelligence, fallback reasoning
Tradeoff: Less predictable formatting
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/openai/gpt-oss-120b
5. Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
Best at: Balanced general tasks
Tradeoff: Not best-in-class at anything
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/meta-llama/llama-3.3-70b-instruct
Tier 2: Excellent Workers
6. Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct
Best at: Structured reasoning
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/qwen/qwen3-next-80b-a3b
7. Mistral Small 3.1 24B
Best at: Fast loops, summaries (big fan of Mistral models)
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/mistralai/mistral-small-3.1
8. DeepSeek R1 0528
Best at: Logical chains, math
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/deepseek/deepseek-r1-0528
9. Gemma 3 27B
Best at: Clean instruction following
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/google/gemma-3-27b
10. OpenAI gpt-oss-20b
Best at: Lightweight fallback
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/openai/gpt-oss-20b
Tier 3: Solid Routing Models
11. Gemma 3 12B
Best at: Short tasks
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/google/gemma-3-12b
12. Z.AI GLM 4.5 Air (Secondary Routing)
Same model, excellent for split workloads
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/z-ai/glm-4.5-air
13. Qwen3 4B
Best at: Cheap classification
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/qwen/qwen3-4b
14. Gemma 3 4B
Best at: Tagging, extraction
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/google/gemma-3-4b
15. Gemma 3n 4B
Best at: Ultra-fast calls
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/google/gemma-3n-4b
Tier 4: Niche or Experimental
16. Venice Uncensored
Best at: Unfiltered outputs
Risk: Prompt injection prone
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/venice/uncensored
17. DeepSeek R1T Chimera
Best at: Hybrid reasoning
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/tng/deepseek-r1t
18. DeepSeek R1T2 Chimera
Best at: Experimental chaining
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/tng/deepseek-r1t2
19. Gemma 3n 2B
Best at: Ultra-light classification
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/google/gemma-3n-2b
20. Llama 3.2 3B Instruct
Best at: Fast replies
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/meta-llama/llama-3.2-3b-instruct
Tier 5: Only If You Know Why
21. Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B
Best at: Nvidia ecosystem testing
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/nvidia/nemotron-3-nano-30b
22. Nemotron Nano 12B 2 VL
Best at: Vision-lite tasks
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/nvidia/nemotron-nano-12b-2-vl
23. Nemotron Nano 9B V2
Best at: Edge inference
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/nvidia/nemotron-nano-9b-v2
24. Solar Pro 3
Best at: Language generation
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/upstage/solar-pro-3
25. Step 3.5 Flash
Best at: Speed
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/stepfun/step-3.5-flash
Tier 6: Skip Unless Curious
26. Arcee Trinity Large Preview (This one is still pretty powerful though)
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/arcee/trinity-large-preview
27. Arcee Trinity Mini
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/arcee/trinity-mini
28. LiquidAI LFM2.5-1.2B Thinking
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/liquid/lfm2.5-1.2b-thinking
29. LiquidAI LFM2.5-1.2B Instruct
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/liquid/lfm2.5-1.2b-instruct
30. R1T Chimera (legacy)
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/tng/r1t-chimera
Final stance
I would run GLM 4.5 Air as the primary brain, StepFun, Mistral Small or Gemma 12B for fast loops, and one heavy model as a fallback (or even a local model via Ollama like Mistral 8B)
I would not touch Kimi on free tier with NVIDIA.
Reminder: free models do rate-limit unpredictably. You must design retries.
This is how you get OpenClaw running at $0 without lying to yourself.




I’m on Kimi k2.5 and yep it pretty specific 🤖