You Can’t Use Your Claude Subscription for OpenClaw. Now What?

Big news dropped over the weekend… Anthropic is no longer supporting users like myself using their Claude subscription to power their OpenClaw.

I didn’t think it would be immediate so getting greeted by the message above was quite shocking this morning. So what do we do now? Let’s get back up and running in 5 minutes or less (without having to buy credits!)

Claude -> ChatGPT Transition

Right now, the simplest path forward is switching to ChatGPT.

I would recommend setting up ChatGPT as OpenClaw just came up with a new update (2026.4.5) that should make things a lot better in terms of integration and use. This is the most economical way that I’ve found to get something comparable to Claude’s subscription. Many users on X have pivoted to other models but I’m not ready to do that yet.

Step #1. SSH Into Your Machine

Since Anthropic basically removed the ability for you to chat with your agent through traditional channels, you’ll have to SSH in and run some commands to switch models.

After SSH’ing in, you’ll need to run the command:

openclaw configure

From there, you’ll need to just walk through the configuration and select the model as OpenAI Codex (here’s how it should look once all configured):

If you run into an error while pasting in your URL (after login), don’t be alarmed, still move forward with pasting your redirect URL into the interface.

This will still work despite the error and allow you to get setup.

Step #2: Clear The Cobwebs

Once you get everything switched over, there still may be some cobwebs you need to clear out. For example, I had three cron jobs that were running using Claude and had to prompt it a few times to get everything switched over with a testing period:

Luckily, just asking it to fix it a few times luckily worked and had to do a simple gateway restart on my Terminal.

openclaw gateway restart

Step #3: Evaluate / Train Your Agent

One thing to keep in mind: your agent no longer has the memory you built up with Claude.

You’re starting fresh.

It might take a bit of time to retrain workflows and get things behaving the way you want again.

That said, despite some of the noise on X, ChatGPT has been solid for me, especially for:

• copywriting
• structured workflows
• repeatable tasks