I tried OpenClaw for my dev setup.

It looked powerful, but in real life it was painful. I wanted something simple:

• One repo with iOS app and backend together.

• AI that understands the whole project.

• Low monthly cost.

• Some automation: run tests, change files, open Xcode.

On paper, OpenClaw looked perfect.

On my Mac, it was not.

What went wrong with OpenClaw

First, context and tokens felt crazy.

Long chats often hit things like “100% context used”. It exhausted my Claude dollars so quickly. No idea what it does internally.

It felt heavy and expensive.

I did not want to think about tokens all the time.

Second, I switched to open models and I tried DeepSeek local to save money.

Idea was simple: cheap model, good reasoning.

But tools did not play nice with DeepSeek local.

Without tools, OpenClaw becomes just a chat assistant.

So I had a choice:

either use expensive models, or lose real automation.

Both are bad if you care about cost.

Third, the desktop client felt super buggy and unreliable. Local connections just work pretty unreliably.

Sometimes it only printed code instead of actually running commands.

Connecting it to local models and my setup was not clear.

Permissions, configs, agents… it was a lot.

I spent more time fixing the tool than building my app.

I also tried to limit cost with cloud tricks.

Budgets, kill switches, billing rules.

All of that works in theory.

But I don’t want my main dev workflow to depend on cloud billing hacks.

At some point I just said: “Okay, this is too much.”

Going back to Cursor

Then I went back to Cursor.

And it was… nice.

Cursor lives inside the editor.

I open my repo.

iOS and backend in the same folder? No problem.

The AI sees the files and helps me write code.

No weird desktop automation needed.

Cost is also simple.

Pick a plan.

Use cheaper models like DeepSeek where possible.

Use expensive models only when it’s really worth it.

The big thing:

Cursor lets me focus on building stuff, not on babysitting the tool.

My opinion

OpenClaw feels like an interesting lab project.

It has big ideas.

But right now, for me, it is too complex, too fragile, and not cheap enough.

Cursor is more boring.

But it works.

For real iOS + backend work in one repo, Cursor is the tool I actually use.

If you want something that “just works” with code in one directory,

and you care about cost and your time,

I would start with Cursor, not OpenClaw.