# API costs
Latest news and articles about API costs
Total: 2 articles found
The Digital 'Lobster' Craze: OpenClaw’s Promise of Passive Income Collides with Bills, Bugs and Security Risks
OpenClaw, an agent platform dubbed the “dragon‑lobster,” has sparked frenzied interest in China but the economics and risks greatly limit who can profit from running instances. Startups and technically proficient individuals can monetize deployments, but ordinary users face non‑trivial time, electricity, token fees and security exposures that often outweigh modest earnings. The situation points to a coming consolidation toward managed, vetted services and clearer regulatory guardrails.
How China’s Marketplaces Turned an Open‑Source AI Agent into a Mini Industry
OpenClaw’s burst of popularity on GitHub spawned a fast‑moving consumer market in China, where platforms like Xianyu and Xiaohongshu have become hubs for paid installation services, courses and bespoke integrations. The trend exposes how information asymmetry and FOMO convert freely available open‑source tools into paid commodities, often obscuring ongoing costs such as API fees and maintenance.