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.

Feb 05, 2026

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.

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