OpenClaw on Render

Render is the declarative one of the docs’ platform pages: a blueprint file in the repository declares the service, the disk and the environment variables, and a deploy button builds the Docker image from it. Here is the blueprint line by line, the plan table and its one hard rule about disks, what the dashboard gives you afterwards, and the detail about forks that decides whether the service updates itself.

The blueprint

• A web service on the Docker runtime, starter plan, running the Gateway with the allow-unconfigured flag, with the startup endpoint as its health check so traffic is admitted once startup completes.
• Variables: the Gateway port, the state directory and the workspace directory under the disk, and the Gateway token with a generated value, which Render creates as a cryptographically secure secret.
• A one-gigabyte disk mounted at the data path, the persistent storage that survives redeploys.

Without that disk, OpenClaw state resets on every deploy.

Plans and the disk rule

The free plan spins down after fifteen idle minutes and cannot attach a disk; starter never spins down and carries a disk of one gigabyte or more; standard and above are for production with several channels. The blueprint defaults to starter. To use the free tier you change the plan and delete the disk block in your fork, because Render rejects a blueprint that attaches a persistent disk to a free instance, and without the disk state resets on every deploy.

After deployment

• The Control UI is at the service’s domain root; connect with the generated token from the environment page, or a password if you switched auth. Logs show build, deploy and runtime output, and a shell opens with the disk mounted.
• Variable edits trigger an automatic redeploy; a custom domain is a settings entry plus a CNAME, with TLS provisioned automatically.
• Scaling is vertical by changing the plan; horizontal scaling needs sticky sessions or external state, because OpenClaw keeps runtime state on the local disk.

OpenClaw on Railway is the template version of the same deployment, and OpenClaw on Fly.io the configuration-file version.

The fork rule

Render redeploys automatically when the connected branch gets a new commit. If you deployed straight from the project’s repository you cannot push to it, so updates mean a manual blueprint sync from the dashboard or pointing the service at your own fork. Backups run from the dashboard shell with the backup command, and OpenClaw backup and restore explains the restore staging that follows.

On Diali

On Diali the blueprint is ours: instance, disk, token and domain are part of the plan, and the release train replaces the fork question. Hosted OpenClaw on Diali is the assistant and What OpenClaw costs puts a starter plan beside it.

• One file declares the service, the disk and the token.
• Free means no disk, and no disk means state resets.
• Auto-deploy follows your fork, not the upstream repository.