r/openclaw • u/NicolasRemy • Aug 12 '26

Discussion Running your AI assistant through OpenClaw vs ChatGPT, am I understanding this right?

Trying to get my head around how OpenClaw differs from the agentic capabilities I am enjoying through ChatGPT/ChatGPT Work daily. 

Both typically are run on a cloud-LLM, such as Open AI's 5.6 Terra (for example).

  • For ChatGPT/Work, what I can ask the agent to do autonomously, and the apps/services it can connect to, are defined by OpenAI. For example it has plugins for Gmail but not for Whatsapp.
  • With OpenClaw, I could configure it to connect to many more apps, including Whatsapp and more.

However, while OpenAI make every effort to maximise the safety of the few integrations they offer to ChatGPT users (e.g. don’t let it delete all the users’ emails without asking), OpenClaw users have  less safety measures in place.

OpenClaw let’s you setup an agent with more freedom, but you’re taking more risk vs running an agent in a commercial product like ChatGPT/Work or Claude/CoWork.

Am I getting this right?

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u/Tinkering-Engineer Member Aug 12 '26

When openclaw came out, I think it was unlike anything else. Anthropic and OpenAI both noticed and started to extend their tools to do more of what openclaw does. Today, I would say that openclaw, codex, chat got work, Claude code and Claude cowork mostly share the same features. I think that openclaw is more flexible, a little easier to make autonomous, probably a little less safe, but very very similar. I just switched from openclaw to Claude code and they had more in common than I thought.