I run ClawHosters, managed OpenClaw hosting. Wrote up a cost breakdown because the "AI APIs are expensive" fear keeps people from trying personal assistants.

TL;DR: €19/month hosting + Google Gemini free tier (20-50 requests/day) = fully functional AI assistant on Telegram/WhatsApp/Discord.

The math that surprised me: - VentureBeat calculated you'd need 74,000 pages/day to hit $180 in API costs - DeepSeek costs $0.27/million tokens (95% cheaper than GPT-4) - ChatGPT Plus is actually €24.50/month in Germany after VAT

DIY on a €6 VPS sounds cheaper until you factor in 15+ hours of setup and ongoing maintenance. I watched someone lose all their conversation history on day 3 because backups weren't configured.

Full breakdown with API comparisons: https://clawhosters.com/blog/posts/own-ai-assistant-costs-cl...