OpenClaw Statistics 2026: Key Numbers, Data & Facts

OpenClaw is the fastest-growing open-source project in history. 220,000 GitHub stars in 84 days. More than React collected in over 10 years.

I have been using OpenClaw since the early days, when it was still called Clawdbot. I went through the name changes, witnessed the security vulnerabilities, and watched the insane hype unfold. From 60,000 stars in 72 hours to 1,000 people lining up outside Tencent's headquarters in Shenzhen to get help installing OpenClaw.

That said: Not everything about OpenClaw is great. 36% of the marketplace extensions contain prompt injections. Over 135,000 instances are sitting unprotected on the internet. And the founder left the project to work at OpenAI.

In this article, you will find all the latest numbers, data and facts about OpenClaw. From GitHub stars and user numbers to security issues and enterprise adoption in China.

1. What is OpenClaw?

OpenClaw is an open-source platform for orchestrating AI agents. You can use it to access large language models like Claude, GPT or Gemini through messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram or Slack. No separate app. No subscription. Just your existing messenger.

The idea is simple: You install OpenClaw on a server (or locally on your machine), connect it to one or more AI models, and control it through your preferred messaging platform. The tool handles the orchestration. You just send a message.

The license is MIT. Completely free, open source, no restrictions on commercial use. You can fork OpenClaw, modify it, build it into your product and sell it. No license fees, no permission needed.

The project launched in November 2025 under the name Clawdbot. Since then, it has had a meteoric rise:

In less than 5 months, it went from a side project by an Austrian developer to the most starred software project on GitHub. Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of open source. And it shows just how massive the demand for a universal, open-source AI agent really is.

2. GitHub Stars and Growth

OpenClaw's growth curve on GitHub is unprecedented. No other software project in the platform's history has collected so many stars so quickly. The following chart shows the development since launch (unit: thousands of stars):

Source: GitHub, own research

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The key GitHub metrics at a glance:

• 247,000+ GitHub stars (March 2026)
• 41,800 forks
• 14,000 commits
• 124,000+ lines of code
• 1,000+ contributors committing code weekly

For comparison: React took over 10 years to reach 230,000 stars. OpenClaw did it in 60 days. On March 3, 2026, OpenClaw overtook React at exactly 250,829 stars to become the most starred software project on GitHub.

How is that possible? Several factors come together:

• Timing: AI agents are the hottest topic in tech right now
• Accessibility: MIT license, installation with a single command
• Platform reach: WhatsApp alone has over 2 billion users
• Viral effect: Everyone who installs OpenClaw tells their team about it
• Model-agnostic: You are not locked into a single AI provider

On top of that, the project hits a nerve. Many developers want to use AI but do not want to pay for a separate subscription for each model. OpenClaw solves exactly that problem. One tool, all models, any messenger. That is a strong promise. And so far, OpenClaw delivers on it.

3. User Numbers and Traffic

OpenClaw does not just attract developers. The website now sees 27 million monthly visitors. The platform has 2 million monthly active users. And the growth is not slowing down.

925% more visitors from February to March 2026. That is not a typo. Nearly a tenfold increase in a single month. For comparison: ChatGPT achieved 40 to 50% growth in its best months. OpenClaw is growing almost 20 times faster.

45 minutes average session duration. That is unusually high for an open-source tool. For comparison: the average session duration on GitHub is about 10 minutes. Users are spending real time with OpenClaw, not just taking a quick look at the docs.

And the 92% retention rate shows that once someone sets up OpenClaw, they stick with it. That is an extremely high number for a tool that requires configuration and technical know-how.

The high desktop share (70 to 80%) is no surprise. OpenClaw is a developer tool that is primarily configured and managed on a computer. The 20 to 30% mobile share likely comes from users who access OpenClaw via WhatsApp or Telegram on their phones. That share will probably grow as more non-developers discover the tool.

4. Geographic Distribution

OpenClaw is used worldwide. The USA leads with 16.29% of traffic, closely followed by India and China. The fact that the top 3 countries are nearly tied is unusual. With most tech tools, the USA dominates far more clearly.

Particularly striking: the explosive growth in China (+1,436%) and Canada (+1,259%). Both countries catapulted into the top 5 within a single month.

Source: SimilarWeb, own research

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China in third place is remarkable. Despite the Great Firewall and homegrown AI ecosystems like Baidu and DeepSeek, OpenClaw has built a massive user base there. +1,436% growth in a single month. More on that in Section 9.

Germany sits in fourth place with 4.10%. At 27 million monthly visitors, that translates to roughly 1.1 million visits from Germany. With +992% growth, the German community will likely keep expanding quickly. German-language documentation is still thin, though. Most guides (including my installation guide) are in German, but the official documentation is exclusively in English.

5. Community and Ecosystem

The OpenClaw community is not just growing in user numbers. The developer community behind it is equally impressive.

Over 1,000 contributors deliver code on a weekly basis. That is an enormous number. 41,800 forks show that developers are actively customizing the project and building their own variants. 14,000 commits in less than 5 months means development is happening around the clock. Literally, since contributors are spread across every time zone.

For a project that only launched in November 2025, these numbers are unprecedented. For comparison: Kubernetes has about 4,000 contributors after 10 years. OpenClaw has 1,000+ in less than half a year.

The community primarily organizes through GitHub Issues, Discord and a weekly open-source meeting. There are now regional meetups in over 30 cities worldwide. In Berlin, Munich and Vienna, monthly OpenClaw meetups take place. A sign that the German-speaking community is growing.

And then there is the ClawHub Marketplace.

5.1. ClawHub Marketplace

ClawHub is the official marketplace for OpenClaw extensions (called "skills"). The numbers are impressive, but also concerning:

• 5,700 to 13,729 skills (depending on the source and point in time)
• 36% of skills contain prompt injections (according to security researchers)
• No mandatory security review before publication

The ecosystem is growing faster than the security measures can keep up. That is typical for open-source projects in a hypergrowth phase. But for a tool that has access to AI models and messaging platforms, it is a serious problem.

The fact that the skill count fluctuates between 5,700 and 13,729 depending on the source highlights another issue: there is no official, reliable count. Some skills are listed twice. Others are forks of existing skills with minimal changes. The actual number of unique, working skills is probably much lower.

6. Supported Platforms and AI Models

One of OpenClaw's biggest advantages: it works with virtually every major language model and every messaging platform. That fundamentally sets it apart from solutions like ChatGPT (OpenAI models only) or Claude (Anthropic models only). You choose which model you want to use. And you can switch at any time.

Here is the full overview:

6.1. AI Models

6.2. Messaging Platforms

The range of integrations is one of the main reasons for its success. You do not need to switch between platforms. You just use the messenger you already have. WhatsApp alone has over 2 billion users worldwide. That lowers the barrier to entry enormously.

Compared to Claude Code (which is purely command-line based), OpenClaw is far more accessible for non-developers. You do not need a terminal. You just send a message. Your grandmother could theoretically use Claude via WhatsApp without knowing what a terminal is. That is the strength of the messenger approach.

My personal recommendation for getting started: Claude Sonnet 4.6 as the backend model, connected via Telegram. The setup takes about 15 minutes. After that, you have an AI agent in your pocket.

You can find a detailed setup guide in my OpenClaw installation guide.

7. Hosting Costs and System Requirements

"Free" is the word that appears in every OpenClaw article. And it is true. Partially.

The software itself costs nothing. But you need a server and API access to at least one AI model. Monthly costs depend heavily on how intensively you use the tool and which model you choose.

With Ollama and local models, you can eliminate API costs entirely. But then you need more RAM (at least 8 GB, ideally 16 GB) and a reasonably modern CPU.

For most users, the monthly budget falls between $20 and $60. That is significantly cheaper than a ChatGPT Team subscription ($25 per user per month) or a Claude Pro subscription ($20 per month). And you have full control over your data. Nothing is sent to third parties except the API calls to the model you selected.

The problem: costs scale with usage. If you use OpenClaw intensively for an entire team, API costs can quickly climb above $100 per month. Especially if you are using powerful models like Claude Opus or GPT-5. Factor that in before rolling out OpenClaw company-wide.

8. Security and Vulnerabilities

This is the part nobody likes to hear. But it matters. And it often gets overlooked in the excitement around the GitHub stars.

OpenClaw has serious security problems. Not because the developers are doing poor work. But because the project has grown so fast that the security infrastructure simply cannot keep up. 124,000 lines of code, 1,000+ contributors, thousands of skills in the marketplace. Building all of that in under 5 months while also keeping it secure is practically impossible.

Security researchers from Cisco, Microsoft and Kaspersky have independently flagged these problems. The OpenClaw Foundation is working on a security review process for the ClawHub Marketplace. But as of March 2026, there is still no mandatory review.

The critical vulnerability CVE-2026-25253 was particularly alarming. An attacker could execute arbitrary code on the server through a manipulated message. A single click was enough. The vulnerability was patched within 48 hours. But how many of the 135,000+ exposed instances were compromised in the meantime remains unclear.

135,000 unprotected instances. Think about that. It means roughly one in every fifteen OpenClaw installations is hanging on the internet without basic access controls. Many users install the tool, set it up and forget to configure the firewall.

My advice: do not use OpenClaw with sensitive data. Always keep it up to date. And do not install any skills whose source code you have not reviewed.

If security is your top priority, take a look at the most secure OpenClaw alternatives. OpenFang and IronClaw are specifically built for security-critical environments and have a much smaller attack surface.

9. Enterprise Adoption

Despite the security concerns, companies are adopting OpenClaw aggressively. 65% of all users come from the enterprise sector. A quarter of those from finance.

That is surprising at first glance. The finance industry has strict compliance requirements. But the time savings seem to outweigh the concerns. 5 to 10 hours per week on routine tasks. That is 1 to 2 full working days. Per employee. Per week.

9.1. The China Wave

Particularly remarkable: the adoption in China. Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance, Baidu and Xiaomi are all using OpenClaw. These are not small startups. These are the five largest technology companies in China.

One photo went viral in early March 2026: over 1,000 people outside Tencent's headquarters in Shenzhen, waiting for help installing OpenClaw. In a line. For an open-source tool. That shows two things: how massive the demand is. And that the installation is apparently still too complicated for many users.

The growth in China (+1,436% MoM) explains a large portion of the global traffic. China alone accounts for 12.08% of all OpenClaw visits. And that is despite the fact that many of the supported AI models (like Claude or GPT) are not directly available in China.

Chinese companies primarily use OpenClaw with local models via Ollama or with DeepSeek. That makes sense: DeepSeek-R1 is free, powerful and freely available in China. Combined with OpenClaw, you get a completely local, privacy-compliant AI agent. No data transfer abroad, no third-party subscription.

For Western observers, this is notable. While Europe is still debating AI regulation, major Chinese corporations have already integrated OpenClaw into their internal workflows. The speed of adoption in Asia shows just how large the global demand for open AI agent frameworks really is.

10. Founder and History

Behind OpenClaw is Peter Steinberger from Austria. An experienced iOS developer who previously founded and led PSPDFKit. PSPDFKit was one of the most successful PDF frameworks in the Apple ecosystem.

Steinberger started OpenClaw as a side project. Evenings and weekends, alongside his main job. Five months later, it is the most starred software project on GitHub. That is the kind of story that only happens in the open-source world.

The chronology in detail:

• November 2025: Launched as "Clawdbot" (open source, MIT license)
• December 2025: Anthropic files a trademark complaint (due to the similarity to "Claude"). Renamed to "Moltbot"
• January 2026: Explosion on GitHub. 190,000 stars in 2 weeks
• February 2026: OpenClaw Foundation established. Another rename to "OpenClaw"
• March 2026: Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI

The founder moving to OpenAI while his open-source project is breaking every record? That sparked mixed reactions in the community.

That said: the OpenClaw Foundation ensures that the project lives on independently. The MIT license guarantees that nobody (including OpenAI) can restrict its use. And with over 1,000 active contributors, the project has long outgrown its dependence on a single person.

The trademark issues are also an interesting story. Anthropic (the company behind Claude) complained about the name "Clawdbot" because of its phonetic similarity to "Claude." The rename to "Moltbot" lasted only a few weeks. Then came "OpenClaw" with the foundation structure, putting the project on a more stable legal footing.

3 names in 4 months. Normally, that would be a branding disaster. But the community went along with every name change without the user numbers taking a hit. That shows how strong the attachment is to the product, not the brand.

Steinberger's move to OpenAI also raises the question of how much influence OpenAI will have on OpenClaw's development going forward. The Foundation stresses that there is no connection. But when the creator of an open-source project works at one of the biggest AI companies, some skepticism is warranted.

11. Comparison with Alternatives

OpenClaw is not the only open-source framework for AI agents. There is a growing landscape of alternatives with different focuses. Some prioritize security. Others focus on speed. Others still aim for a minimal codebase.

The comparison by GitHub stars shows how far ahead OpenClaw is. But also that the market for AI agent frameworks is exploding overall:

Source: GitHub, as of March 2026

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OpenClaw dominates in GitHub stars. But stars alone say nothing about quality or security. OpenFang, for example, is specifically built for security-critical environments and regularly passes penetration tests. Hermes uses mTLS by default (mutual TLS authentication). And Nanobot gets by with 3,000 lines of Rust code instead of OpenClaw's 124,000 lines.

For regulated industries (healthcare, finance), IronClaw with its FIPS certification is the better choice. For teams that want to get started fast, ZeroClaw is ready in under 2 seconds. And if you need maximum performance with minimal resource consumption, Nanobot is the way to go.

The market for AI agent frameworks is still very young. In 12 months, the landscape will probably look completely different. New frameworks will appear, existing ones will merge or disappear. But as of today, OpenClaw leads in popularity, while the alternatives have the edge in specific areas (security, performance, simplicity).

You can find a detailed comparison in my article on the best OpenClaw alternatives.

12. Interesting Facts and Records

To wrap up, here are the numbers that set OpenClaw apart from every other open-source project. Some of them are hard to believe. But they are all documented.

• Fastest growth of all time: 60,000 GitHub stars in 72 hours. No other project has achieved this.
• Overtook React: On March 3, 2026 at 250,829 stars. React had taken over 10 years to get there.
• 220,000 stars in 84 days: From zero to a quarter million in less than 3 months.
• 3 name changes: Clawdbot, Moltbot, OpenClaw. All due to trademark issues.
• 1,000 people outside Tencent: Chinese tech employees lined up for OpenClaw installation help.
• 95% AI accuracy: GLUE benchmark score. 92% HumanEval, 96.2% GSM8K.
• 45-minute session duration: Users spend nearly an hour per session.

12.1. Benchmark Results

OpenClaw measures the quality of its AI orchestration using standardized benchmarks. The results refer to the default configuration with Claude Sonnet as the backend model:

These numbers are impressive, but should be taken with a grain of salt. The benchmark results depend heavily on the backend model being used. With a local Ollama model, you will see significantly lower scores than with Claude Opus or GPT-5. The benchmarks are not measuring OpenClaw itself, but rather the quality of the orchestration combined with the best available model.

The bottom line: OpenClaw is an impressive project with an unprecedented growth story. 247,000 stars. 27 million monthly visitors. Adoption by the largest tech companies in the world.

But it is not a perfect tool. The security problems are real. The ClawHub Marketplace urgently needs better quality controls. And the question of how the project will evolve after its founder's departure remains open.

My take: OpenClaw is here to stay. The community is too large, the usage too broad, the ecosystem too vibrant for the project to simply disappear.

But the next 6 months will be decisive. If the Foundation gets the security issues under control and the ClawHub Marketplace introduces a mandatory security review, OpenClaw has the potential to become the standard framework for AI agents. If not, the security-focused alternatives like OpenFang and Hermes will take over.

I will update this article regularly as new numbers become available. Development at OpenClaw moves so fast that today's statistics could be outdated within a month. All data in this article is current as of March 2026.

If you want to get started yourself, check out my installation guide. If you want to compare alternatives first, I have put together the 10 best OpenClaw alternatives. And for a general overview of AI chatbots and the best AI tools, take a look at my other articles.