GitHub called OpenClaw the fastest-growing project in its history.
The repository was only created on November 24, 2025. On October 7, 2026, GitHub reported 391,558 stars for it.
How many people actually use OpenClaw is a different story. There is no established public total for installations or active users.
In this article, I'll show you the key OpenClaw statistics for 2026. You'll get numbers and facts on GitHub, OpenRouter, the community, and security.
Here's the short version:
- On October 7, 2026, GitHub reported 391,558 stars, 82,293 forks, and 1,720 repository subscribers.
- On the same date, OpenRouter showed 5.68 trillion total tokens and 469 models used for requests routed through its platform.
- There is no established public total for installations or active people. The Foundation’s “new claws” figure has no defined counting unit.
- ClawHub security figures come from dated datasets and benchmarks.
1. What OpenClaw is
OpenClaw is open-source assistant software that can run on your own infrastructure and connect different AI models to messaging services. Its documentation lists Discord, Google Chat, iMessage, Mattermost, Signal, Slack, Telegram, WebChat, WhatsApp, and other surfaces. Available integrations depend on the version, configuration, and installed extensions.
The project timeline:
2. GitHub stars, forks, and development
On October 7, 2026, the GitHub REST API reported 391,558 stars, 82,293 forks, and 1,720 subscribers to repository notifications for openclaw/openclaw. The repository was created on November 24, 2025, and is MIT-licensed.
On May 4, 2026, GitHub reported more than 350,000 stars on its blog. In another post on August 27, it described OpenClaw as the fastest-growing project in the platform’s history and reported about 388,000 stars, 81,000 forks, and more than 80,000 commits on August 26.
gradually.aiOn October 7, 2026, the official releases page marked v2026.9.8 as the latest stable release. It was published on October 3. The release page listed 58 commits, 43 pull requests, and 21 contributors for that release.
Its predecessor, v2026.9.7, was published on September 30. Its release page lists 518 direct commits, 2,818 pull requests, and 334 contributors.
3. Website visits and user counts
As of October 7, 2026, there is no publicly traceable total for installations or monthly active users.
On July 8, 2026, the OpenClaw Foundation said that 4.5 million “new claws” were appearing each week, a unit it did not define.
4. Model usage and local operation
On October 7, 2026, OpenRouter’s app statistics showed 5.68 trillion total tokens for OpenClaw, without a stated period and only for requests routed through OpenRouter. The daily global rank was 9. OpenRouter listed 469 models used.
OpenRouter labels this list “Top models used by OpenClaw this month”. The list below reproduces the rounded values shown on October 28, 2026. The ranking and figures can change:
gradually.aiOpenClaw’s documentation also describes local and hosted models. Local operation can avoid an external model API bill, but it still needs suitable hardware and ongoing maintenance.
5. Mac demand and Apple revenue
On February 15, 2026, Tom’s Hardware reported delivery times from six days to six weeks for some Mac configurations with large amounts of unified memory. It cited lead times of up to six weeks for an M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 512 GB. The report discussed OpenClaw and other local AI applications as possible drivers of demand.
On March 13, the South China Morning Post reported that one Beijing retailer was asking for a 500 yuan markup, about US$73, on a base Mac mini. The article also reported a wait of at least a month at the Apple Store.
Apple’s official statements give revenue for the entire Mac business for three fiscal quarters:
gradually.ai6. Community and enterprise development
In its announcement on July 8, 2026, the Foundation reported on ClawCon events held over the previous five months. It counted 34 events in 16 countries. It also reported nearly 30,000 registrations and day-to-day work with more than 30 organizations.
On September 29, 2026, the project announced OpenClaw Enterprise as an open-source, vendor-neutral platform still in development before version 1.0. The announcement described internal pilots at Red Hat and OpenAI.
In an announcement on September 25, 2026, Microsoft said Copilot Autopilot would expand to private preview at the end of the month. An OpenClaw post that day described OpenClaw as its foundation and quoted Microsoft as saying the preview was rolling out to first customers.
7. ClawHub and agent skills
The ClawHub Security Signals dataset for security analysis covered 67,453 latest public skill versions in a snapshot dated May 31, 2026. OpenClaw published the accompanying announcement on June 1.
On October 2, 2026, OpenClaw said in a report that Tencent’s AI-Infra-Guard had joined ClawScan’s security review for skills and plugins uploaded to ClawHub.
SkillTrustBench covered a fixed sample of 556 cases. Tencent and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, developed the benchmark. OpenClaw reported 86.9% agreement with benchmark labels. It also reported correct classification of 98.6% of malicious cases.
8. Vulnerabilities and security reviews
On February 2, 2026, the GitHub Advisory Database published its advisory for CVE-2026-25253. It affects OpenClaw versions through 2026.1.28. GitHub lists 2026.1.29 as patched. A crafted link could make an authenticated browser send its Gateway token to an attacker-controlled WebSocket endpoint.
On September 11, 2026, OpenClaw published a moderate GitHub advisory about an iOS app issue. Versions before 2026.8.11 could write complete agent deep links, including keys, to publicly readable device logs. The project lists 2026.8.11 as the first fixed version.
Exploitation required someone to obtain those logs, the key to remain valid, and a forged deep link to be invoked on the device.
OpenClaw tracks the issue under GHSA-5j57-84cx-r295. A separate CVE record from VulnCheck assigns the same issue CVE-2026-95815 and was published on September 22, 2026.
A separate record from CVE Numbering Authority VulDB reports a possible denial-of-service issue under CVE-2026-94094 in the “Canvas Host Route” component. Published on September 20, 2026, the record lists versions 2026.9.0 through 2026.9.5 as affected and does not name a patched version. I found no matching vendor notice in the public OpenClaw advisory index by the cutoff.
The Snyk study published on February 5, 2026, examined skills from ClawHub and skills.sh. Snyk found at least one security issue in 36.82% of the sample and at least one critical issue in 13.4%.
Snyk confirmed malicious payloads in 76 skills, and 8 of them were reportedly still publicly available on ClawHub at publication.
According to an OpenClaw audit recap from September 21, 2026, Trail of Bits reported 27 private advisory reports. It also submitted three hardening pull requests.
Twenty-four reports received severity ratings. Two were rated high. Sixteen received a medium rating, and six were rated low. None was critical. The recap counts 23 confirmed vulnerabilities. Another finding had been fixed before submission.
Three additional observations concerned defense in depth and received no severity rating because OpenClaw said they did not cross a documented trust boundary. The project says all actionable issues were fixed and the three hardening pull requests merged. The fixes shipped in 2026.8.1 and 2026.7.33 LTS.
How many vulnerabilities OpenClaw has depends on what is counted. The three sources below count different things and cannot be added or compared one to one.
gradually.ai9. OpenClaw in China
Channel NewsAsia reported that about 1,000 people queued outside Tencent’s Shenzhen headquarters on March 6, 2026, to have engineers install OpenClaw.
10. Founder, history, and the Foundation
The GitHub repository was created on November 24, 2025. On January 29, 2026, Peter Steinberger announced the name OpenClaw after the earlier names Clawd and Moltbot. On July 8, the project introduced the independent OpenClaw Foundation. It describes itself as a US nonprofit stewarding the MIT-licensed project.
According to the Foundation, Peter Steinberger works at OpenAI and remained OpenClaw’s technical steward. OpenAI is one of several donors. The Foundation says its donors do not own or control the project.
11. Messaging platforms
The official documentation describes OpenClaw as a gateway for several messaging surfaces. Examples include Discord, Google Chat, iMessage, Mattermost, Signal, Slack, Telegram, WebChat, and WhatsApp. Capabilities such as media, groups, and end-to-end encryption differ by platform and setup.
12. Selected alternatives
The GitHub API counters for these three repositories were retrieved on October 28, 2026. The chart shows stars and forks, meaning the copies of a project made on GitHub, side by side.
gradually.ai13. OpenClaw alternatives
OpenClaw leads its niche, but it is not the only option. Each alternative puts the focus somewhere else:
- ZeroClaw, PicoClaw, and NanoClaw for a self-hosted agent (as a Rust binary, as a Go gateway for small devices, or as a Linux container on the Anthropic Agent SDK)
- Hermes Agent for extensive, customizable workflows
- Open Interpreter for coding tasks with open models
- Khoj for knowledge work with a searchable knowledge base
- QwenPaw for skill- and channel-oriented agents (check its telemetry default first)
Which option fits your first task, and where each one hits its limits, is covered in my comparison of OpenClaw alternatives.
