How much RAM does it squat on while idle?So often does it poke the CPU awake? Does it let your machine actually sleep, or does it lurk like a needy background app never learned boundaries?
ZeroClaw is being pitched as the lighter, more “daemon-like” alternative to OpenClaw. But “better” depends on what you care about. Fast iteration? Plugin ecosystem? Raw efficiency? Or the whole “this should behave like a quiet background service” philosophy.
ZeroClaw vs OpenClaw
If your priority is always-on efficiency, low idle RAM, and a daemon-style background service, ZeroClaw looks hard to ignore.
A Medium comparison reports OpenClaw at ~394 MB RSS idle and up to 1.52 GB active, while ZeroClaw sits around ~7–8 MB RSS on the same machine. That’s not “nice little optimization.” That’s a different species of footprint. Source: Medium comparison【https://medium.com/@dblankovsky/zeroclaw-vs-openclaw-why-your-ai-assistant-should-be-a-daemon-not-an-operating-system-6674f87f7f06】.
But here’s the thing. If your day-to-day depends on OpenClaw’s existing workflow, integrations, or just the gravity of its community, OpenClaw can still be the right call for you.
Why this even matters: daemon vs “mini OS”
One of the best framings I’ve seen goes like this: your AI assistant should behave like a daemon, not like a second operating system. That’s basically the thesis in Damon B.’s Medium write-up, and… honestly, it lands.
If an assistant is meant to be always-on, it should be invisible. Quiet. Cheap.
Low idle RSS. Minimal CPU wakeups. Doesn’t block deep sleep states.But’t sit there with constant “energy impact” on a laptop for no good reason.
The Medium post calls heavy always-on runtimes an “architectural crime” when they keep the CPU hot while doing nothing. Dramatic phrase, sure. But if you’ve ever tried running an agent 24/7 on a laptop, you already know the pain is not hypothetical.
The memory numbers people keep quoting
Alright, specifics. This is where people stop hand-waving and start pointing at graphs.
From the Medium comparison【https://medium.com/@dblankovsky/zeroclaw-vs-openclaw-why-your-ai-assistant-should-be-a-daemon-not-an-operating-system-6674f87f7f06】:
- OpenClaw around 394 MB idle, up to 1.52 GB active
- ZeroClaw around 7–8 MB
And if those numbers line up with what you see on your own machine, it changes your whole relationship with the tool.
8 MB idle feels like “leave it running, who cares.”
400 MB to 1.5 GB feels like you start negotiating with yourself. Do i really want this hanging out in the background all day?
The sneaky part: wakeups and deep sleep
RAM is only half the story. The Medium post also leans on wakeups/sec, meaning how often the CPU gets yanked out of deeper idle states. And that’s where battery life quietly gets murdered.
Garbage collection cycles. Event loops. Background polling. Little “nothing tasks” that somehow keep happening forever. You don’t always notice it in a quick benchmark, but you sure notice it when your laptop won’t stay asleep.
Verify it yourself
Don’t trust benchmarks from strangers. Not even if they sound confident. Measure it on your box.
Linux: PowerTOP workflow
On Linux, PowerTOP is a solid way to see wakeups and power behavior. Red Hat’s docs walk through install and usage basics【https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/power_management_guide/powertop】.
Try a simple three-state test. Baseline → idle → active.
- Baseline. Close stuff, wait 10 minutes
- Idle. Start the assistant, touch nothing, wait 10 minutes
- Active. Run a typical command flow, wait 10 minutes
Commands:
sudo powertop --calibrate
sudo powertopWant a report you can share or stash away?
sudo powertop --html=powertop.html --time=120What i personally flag when I’m eyeballing results:
- wakeups/sec jumps a ton while the agent claims it’s “idle”
- CPU refuses to drop into deeper idle states
- power draw stays elevated for no obvious reason
If you’ve ever had that “why is my laptop warm when I’m literally not doing anything” moment, this is usually where the answer shows up.
macOS: Activity Monitor + powermetrics
On macOS, start basic.
Open Activity Monitor, go to the Energy tab, and look for persistent Energy Impact when the assistant is idle.
If you want the deeper stuff, try:
sudo powermetrics --samplers smc -i 1000 -n 10You’re basically hunting for one question: why is this thing preventing sleep?
Energy and CO₂ (a thought experiment, but still useful)
The Medium article goes further and tries to model impact at scale. It clearly labels this as a thought experiment, not lab-grade measurement, which I appreciate.But uses OpenClaw’s reported scale of ~230,000 candidate installations using stars + forks as a rough proxy. Then it estimates:
- about ~0.57 W per machine to maintain an extra ~1.5 GB DRAM using an industry-standard DRAM power estimate
- across 230k hosts, about ~130 kW continuous, roughly 1.14 GWh/year
- estimated ~500 tonnes CO₂/year in a memory-only scenario
Then it proposes a more “realistic” scenario where preventing deep idle costs about ~5 W per machine, which blows the totals up:
- ~1.15 MW continuous, around ~10.1 GWh/year
- ~4,480 tonnes CO₂/year
- compared to about 1,000 petrol cars annually as their analogy
Again, model-based. Not measured in a lab. But the direction makes sense. For always-on agents, efficiency is a feature, not some nerd flex for bragging rights.
“Rust speed” and the ZeroClaw angle
Part of why ZeroClaw is getting attention is the story that it’s Rust-based, aiming for a smaller, tighter runtime.
Composio’s roundup of OpenClaw alternatives explicitly calls out ZeroClaw as an option “if you want Rust speed,” contrasted with other alternatives positioned around things like cloud security【https://composio.dev/blog/openclaw-alternatives】.
And yeah, the community chatter is real too. People are posting comparisons on YouTube, like “ZeroClaw: This MIGHT BE THE BEST Alternative to OPENCLAW YET!” and talking about how ZeroClaw vs OpenClaw feels in practice, plus the whole “roll your own for control” mindset【https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2kT7L7R96k】. Treat it as experiential, not authoritative. Still, it’s a useful signal of what builders actually care about when they’re living with these tools.
Common mistakes in the ZeroClaw vs OpenClaw debate
I keep seeing the same traps. Different people, same potholes.
- People assume “lighter” automatically means “more capable.” Not necessarily. A tiny daemon can still miss your must-have integrations.
- Folks benchmark only active runs and ignore idle behavior. For assistants, idle is basically the whole game.
- Wakeups don’t get measured. RAM is loud and obvious, wakeups are the silent killer.
- Default configs get compared like they’re “fair.” If one tool is loaded with plugins and the other is bare, you’re not comparing tools. You’re comparing setups.
A practical case study: always-on on small hardware
The Medium post claims ZeroClaw “runs perfectly on a Raspberry Pi Zero, an old router, or a cheap ARM board,” and frames OpenClaw as more “MacBook-class” in practice【https://medium.com/@dblankovsky/zeroclaw-vs-openclaw-why-your-ai-assistant-should-be-a-daemon-not-an-operating-system-6674f87f7f06】.
This is the kind of difference that actually matters if you want agents everywhere. A home server doesn’t guzzle watts.But cheap ARM board sitting near sensors.So laptop that still sleeps like a normal laptop.
If the goal is “local assistant that’s always available,” a daemon-like footprint starts to feel like the entry fee.
What to read next (internal link)
If you’re running OpenClaw today and weighing deployment tradeoffs, this related post may help:
Internal: OpenClaw hosting in Nepal (biased but…)
So… is ZeroClaw better than OpenClaw?
The best takeaway from the ZeroClaw vs OpenClaw discussion is pretty simple. Local agents are growing up. The hype phase is fading, and now we’re judging tools on the boring stuff decides whether you keep using them.
Idle RSS. Wakeups. Battery drain. Whether it behaves like a good daemon.
If you’re even a little curious, run the three-state test on your own machine. Baseline, idle, active. Compare. And if you do one thing, watch wakeups/sec. That’s usually where the truth starts leaking out.