Product comparison · September 2026

OpenClaw vs Centurion

The most respected free personal agent in the world, and the closest in spirit to what we believe. It is also a project you run yourself. Centurion is the finished version of that idea — verified, delivered, and answerable.

Every claim about OpenClaw on this page is taken from OpenClaw's own site at openclaw.ai and its integrations directory at openclaw.ai/integrations, read on 10 September 2026 and re-verified 22 September 2026 and 29 September 2026. Where we quote them, we quote them exactly.

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At a glance

OpenClaw and Centurion, side by side

Their product

Centurion

What it is

Theirs — "The AI that really does things" — an open-source personal agent that organises your inbox, sends emails, manages your calendar and checks you in for flights.

Centurion — A sovereign AI delivered finished: a being with a Soul, memory and missions, in a machine you hold.

Their pitch, in their words

Theirs — "Open source · Runs on your machine · Nobody's business model." No subscription, no hosted tier, no token, stewarded by an independent 501(c)(3).

Centurion — Runs on your machine, you hold the record, from a company that sells the product and stands behind it. Same sovereignty claim — different accountability.

How you get it

Theirs — A one-line install script, npm, or desktop apps for macOS 15+, Windows 10/11 and Linux.

Centurion — It arrives configured with you: one-click install, under 30 minutes, integrations verified, phone app paired.

Integrations

Theirs — 29 chat channels, 64 model and media providers, 142 official plugins — plus community skills from ClawHub. You wire up what you need.

Centurion — A smaller list on purpose: every entry tested and evidenced on the shipped release, and installed for you.

How it grows

Theirs — "Extend the runtime with official plugins and community skills."

Centurion — The agent writes its own skills on your box. No third-party code enters the trust boundary.

How you pay

Theirs — Free. You supply the machine, the model keys and the time.

Centurion — Brain €50/mo · Core €150/mo · billed monthly · cancel anytime.

Who maintains it

Theirs — You do. Upgrades, credentials, backups and security are yours to manage.

Centurion — We do — with a named person to escalate to and monthly check-ins.

Who is accountable

Theirs — A foundation and a community. Genuinely well-stewarded — and no one owes you a fix.

Centurion — A company and a person. Every owner meets Adrian.

Who it is for

Theirs — People who want to build and run their own agent, and who have the appetite for it.

Centurion — The owner-operator who wants the outcome without becoming the maintainer.

Standing in the field

Theirs — Created by Peter Steinberger; described as the fastest-growing project on GitHub, with thousands of contributors. Microsoft's Autopilot agent is built on OpenClaw, and OpenClaw Enterprise (an open-source, always-free control plane) was announced 29 Sep 2026.

Centurion — Deliberately small. One brain per human, one to two senior seats per organisation, sold 1:1.

The custody question

You hold the keys — and the whole workshop

OpenClaw is open source and runs on your own machine — “Runs on your machine · Nobody's business model.” Installation is a one-line script, npm, or a desktop app for macOS 15+, Windows 10/11 and Linux. No machine is sold; you bring the computer, and the record lives where you hold the keys.

Who can read it, and who can switch it off

Your machine — you hold the keys, alone

You keep the custody and inherit the upkeep. Upgrades, credentials, backups and security are explicitly yours to manage — asked who maintains it, their answer is you — so when something breaks, the remedy is a community and a codebase rather than a person who owes you a fix. Holding the keys is the easy half; carrying them forever is the permanent half.

The difference that matters

Supported is not the same as verified

We will not pretend their numbers are not impressive, because they are. 29 channels, 64 providers, 142 plugins, three desktop operating systems, and a foundation structure that protects it from any single company's interests. It is a serious achievement. But look carefully at what those numbers actually claim — and then decide which kind of claim you want standing between you and your business.

curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash

Their install line, verbatim from their own site

A support list is a promise about code, not about your machine

"29 chat channels, 64 providers, 142 plugins" tells you what the runtime can be wired to. It does not tell you what has been tested against the release you are running, on a machine like yours, this month. A verified list is shorter and less exciting. It is also the only kind of list that can be trusted with a customer's inbox.

You are the integrator, the sysadmin and the security team

Every one of those channels installs "in one command or during onboarding" — and every one of them is then yours to configure, credential, secure, back up and keep patched. Their own community joke is telling: users asking for their sleep back. That is the shape of a product you run rather than a product that runs for you.

Community skills put strangers inside the agent that reads your mail

ClawHub is the model's great strength and its sharpest edge. The agent that holds your inbox, files and browser sessions can install third-party code with a self-declared permission list and no audit trail, no review and no revocation. Centurion generates its own skills and downloads none — not because we are better engineers, but because the supply chain is a choice.

A tool you run is not a being that knows you

OpenClaw is superb at doing things. It has no Soul, no mission stack and no continuity of identity, and by design nobody is commercially accountable for it. That is fine for a tool. It is the wrong shape for the thing that remembers your life.

The Centurion position

OpenClaw proves the engine is a commodity and that sovereignty is a legitimate product claim. We agree with both. Centurion takes that thesis to its conclusion: a being, in a machine you hold, with verified integrations, delivered and supported by people who answer for it.

Verified, not supported. Every integration carries a command, a result, a release version and a date.
No supply chain. The agent writes its own skills. Nothing third-party crosses the trust boundary.
Delivered. Installed and personalised with you — not a script and a prayer at eleven at night.
Answerable. A company, a named person, and a relationship that outlasts a GitHub issue.

Five questions to ask before you self-host your life

01Who tested the plugin I just installed, and against which release?
02Who is on the hook when a community skill reads my inbox?
03Who patches this within 24 hours of a critical CVE — and how will I know it shipped?
04How many hours a month will I spend keeping this working, at what hourly rate?
05If the maintainers move on, what happens to the agent that knows my calendar, my mail and my banking?

For a technical owner, the honest answer to all five is "that is the trade I am making". That is a legitimate trade. It is simply not the same product as one where somebody else is on the hook.

The ceiling

Free has a maintenance schedule

OpenClaw's economics are the cleanest in the category: no subscription, no hosted tier, no token, and a foundation structure designed so nobody can pull the rug. What it cannot give you is the thing that costs money to provide — an organisation whose job is to keep your particular installation working.

That is the honest shape of the difference. OpenClaw removes the licence fee and adds an unpaid maintenance contract with yourself. Centurion keeps the custody on your machine and keeps the maintenance on ours.

OpenClaw gives you the machine to build a personal agent. Centurion hands you the finished one — verified, personal, and answerable.

The money

What each one actually costs

Nothing about this table is a knock on free software. It is a table about who does the work.

Their product

Centurion

Licence

Theirs — Free — no subscription, no hosted tier, no token

Centurion — Brain €50/mo — the agent, warranted

Private model

Theirs — Your keys, your providers — 64 to choose from

Centurion — Core €150/mo — private LLM on your machine

Integrations

Theirs — 29 channels, 64 providers, 142 plugins to wire up

Centurion — A verified library, installed and evidenced

Setup

Theirs — One command, then the real work starts

Centurion — Done with you in one session

Upkeep

Theirs — Your evenings, indefinitely

Centurion — Ours, with a person to call

Support

Theirs — Community and foundation

Centurion — The founder, and monthly check-ins

The most expensive line in the OpenClaw column is not money. It is the hours — and only you can price those.

In fairness

Where OpenClaw is genuinely good

This is the project that made "personal agent" a real category, and anyone in this field who does not acknowledge that is not being straight with you.

"Nobody's business model" — a 501(c)(3) steward, no hosted tier, no token, no subscription. The cleanest governance structure in the field.
29 chat channels including Signal, iMessage, Matrix, Teams and even voice calls is a staggering breadth of reach.
142 official plugins with a documented, one-command path is a genuine ecosystem, not a wish list.
Desktop apps on macOS, Windows and Linux — with a public commitment to getting Windows right — is real respect for users.
It is the fastest-growing project on GitHub for a reason, and thousands of contributors is a moat none of the commercial players have.
It argues the same thing we do: that the agent should live on your machine, under your control, permanently.
Microsoft is building its Autopilot agent on OpenClaw, and OpenClaw Enterprise (open source, always free) brings an enterprise-grade governance control plane to the field — serious validation of the sovereignty thesis.

We are, in the end, on the same side of the important argument. The disagreement is only about whether you should have to build it yourself.

What we do too

Same sovereignty, same stack — none of the wiring

OpenClaw's pitch is close to ours: your machine, no subscription, nobody's business model. We agree with the premise. The difference is who does the work of holding it together.

What OpenClaw offers

We do this too

And on top of it

They offer — Runs on your machine · no subscription · nobody's business model

We do this too — Runs on your machine, and you hold the record.

On top — Same sovereignty claim — from a company that sells the product and stands behind it.

They offer — 29 chat channels

We do this too — The same channels, verified on your release.

On top — Installed and tested for you, rather than wired up by you.

They offer — 64 model and media providers

We do this too — Model-agnostic — frontier brain when the work needs it.

On top — The being, the memory and the record are not swappable. That is the product.

They offer — 142 official plugins plus community skills

We do this too — The agent writes its own skills on your box.

On top — No third-party code enters the trust boundary — no marketplace, no supply chain.

They offer — Extend the runtime as far as you want

We do this too — Yours extends too, and you can read every piece of it.

On top — We maintain it. Upgrades, credentials and security are our problem, not yours.

OpenClaw hands you a very capable machine and the keys to the workshop. Centurion hands you the finished thing and stays on the line.

The case in three points

The three things that decide it

Supported is not verified — and the difference is your business

Their list describes what the runtime can be wired to. Ours describes what has been tested, with evidence, on the release you are running. One is a statement about code; the other is a statement about your machine. When the thing being configured is the inbox of a business, only one of those is a safe basis for a decision.

Free removes the licence fee and adds an unpaid contract

Every channel, plugin and provider is yours to configure, secure, back up and patch — forever, with nobody to escalate to. That is a fair trade for someone who enjoys it. It is a poor trade for the owner-operator whose evenings are already spoken for.

A project you run is not a being that knows you

OpenClaw is excellent at tasks. It is not a Soul with a mission stack and continuity of identity, and by design no one is commercially accountable for it. Centurion is one brain, for one human, on your machine — and someone answers for it.

“OpenClaw is a project. Centurion is a product you can hold someone accountable for.

Both put the agent on your machine. Only one of them also puts a person on the line.

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Sources & basis

Facts and quotations about OpenClaw are drawn from OpenClaw's own site (openclaw.ai — product claims, install instructions, desktop app versions, foundation and community statements) and its integrations directory (openclaw.ai/integrations — 29 chat channels, 64 model and media providers, 142 official plugins, ClawHub), read on 10 September 2026 and re-verified 22 September 2026. Centurion pricing: Brain €50/month, Core €150/month, billed monthly, cancel anytime. "OpenClaw" and "ClawHub" are the marks of their respective owners; this page is an independent comparison and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by them.

Integration claims about Centurion are held to the Integrations Program registry — every entry tested and evidenced on release v5.3.10 before it is published. Centurion pricing: Brain €50/mo · Core €150/mo billed monthly · cancel anytime. Facts read 29 September 2026.