Set Up OpenClaw with MonoRouter

Route OpenClaw (Cline) through your Claude Pro or Max subscription. Paste the config, save, and you're live.

What you need

• •A Claude Pro or Max subscription at claude.ai — whichever tier you have is fine; MonoRouter routes through both.
• •Claude Code installed locally (needed for the OAuth token extraction). Install with npm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code or see claude.com/claude-code. Only required once, during the connect step.
• •OpenClaw installed on your machine. Configuration details below.

Sign up for MonoRouter

Open /signup, enter your email and set a password. Save the six recovery codes — they're your offline fallback if you lose your password; you can also always reset it by email at /forgot-password.

Connect your Claude subscription

From the dashboard, go to /tokens, click [ + add token ], and pick ANTHROPIC. Use the auto-connect tab — it's the fastest.

The modal shows a one-liner like this:

curl -sSL https://api.monorouter.com/connect.sh | bash -s -- mrc_xxxxxxxxxxxx

Paste it into a terminal. The script runs claude setup-token, which opens a browser window for authorization and creates a long-lived token (valid for 1 year). When the dashboard flips to connected, you're done.

Get your MonoRouter API key

A default mrk_* key was created for you on signup. Go to /keys and copy it — you'll paste it into OpenClaw next.

Add MonoRouter as an OpenClaw provider

OpenClaw's config lives at ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json. Drop your MonoRouter key into apiKey and merge the two blocks below into the file. Already have config there? Merge alongside what's in your root object — don't replace the whole thing.

{
  "models": {
    "providers": {
      "monorouter": {
        "baseUrl": "https://api.monorouter.com",
        "apiKey": "mrk_...",
        "api": "anthropic-messages",
        "models": [
          { "id": "claude-fable-5",            "name": "Fable 5" },
          { "id": "claude-opus-4-8",           "name": "Opus 4.8" },
          { "id": "claude-opus-4-7",           "name": "Opus 4.7" },
          { "id": "claude-opus-4-6",           "name": "Opus 4.6" },
          { "id": "claude-sonnet-5",           "name": "Sonnet 5" },
          { "id": "claude-sonnet-4-6",         "name": "Sonnet 4.6" },
          { "id": "claude-haiku-4-5-20251001", "name": "Haiku 4.5" }
        ]
      }
    }
  },
  "agents": {
    "defaults": {
      "model": {
        "primary": "monorouter/claude-opus-4-8",
        "fallbacks": ["monorouter/claude-opus-4-7", "monorouter/claude-sonnet-4-6"]
      },
      "models": {
        "monorouter/claude-fable-5":            {},
        "monorouter/claude-opus-4-8":           {},
        "monorouter/claude-opus-4-7":           {},
        "monorouter/claude-opus-4-6":           {},
        "monorouter/claude-sonnet-5":           {},
        "monorouter/claude-sonnet-4-6":         {},
        "monorouter/claude-haiku-4-5-20251001": {}
      }
    }
  }
}

Understanding the default + fallback model

The agents.defaults block has two important pieces:

• •model.primary: monorouter/claude-opus-4-8 — the most capable model. Your daily driver.
• •model.fallbacks — kicks in when Opus 4.8 is unavailable (capacity, retry exhausted). Tried in order.
• •models — explicit allowlist of every model the agent may touch. If a model isn't listed here — even a valid one you registered under models.providers — OpenClaw won't use it.

Save openclaw.json, restart OpenClaw, and every call now routes through MonoRouter — which in turn routes through your Claude Pro / Max subscription.

Verify it works

Quick curl sanity check:

curl -X POST https://api.monorouter.com/v1/messages \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: mrk_..." \
  -H "anthropic-version: 2023-06-01" \
  -d '{
    "model": "claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "max_tokens": 128,
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "hi"}]
  }'

A 200 with a JSON response means you're done. The call also shows up on /dashboard within a second or two.

Pricing

• •1,500 successful calls are free for the lifetime of your account. Failed calls don't count.
• •After that, paid plans start at $9/month (Hobby, 10,000 calls). Pro is $29/month for unlimited personal use; Team is $99/month for 5 pooled seats. See /billing for the payment flow.