Running an AI assistant is no longer a question of if but which model. With Clawdbot supporting over a dozen providers—from Anthropic and OpenAI to open-source options via haimaker.ai—choosing the right model depends on your specific needs around cost, capability, and data privacy.
Here's how to think about model selection across each dimension.
The Three Dimensions of Model Selection
Your ideal model sits at the intersection of three competing priorities. Understanding the tradeoffs is the first step to making the right choice.
Price: The Cost of Intelligence
Token pricing varies by orders of magnitude. At the high end, Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5 runs $15 per million input tokens and $75 per million output tokens. At the budget end, xAI's Grok 4.1 mini charges just $0.20/$0.50 per million—a 75x difference.
For most personal assistant use cases, a mid-tier model strikes the best balance. Claude Sonnet 4 at $3/$15 per million tokens offers near-flagship capability at a fraction of the Opus price.
Capability: What the Model Can Actually Do
Raw benchmarks don't tell the whole story. For Clawdbot usage, you care about:
- Tool calling accuracy — Can the model reliably invoke shell commands, browser actions, and API calls?
- Context retention — How well does it track multi-turn conversations and long documents?
- Coding ability — For automation tasks, code generation quality matters
- Speed — Time-to-first-token affects how responsive your assistant feels
Privacy: Where Your Data Goes
Cloud APIs mean your prompts traverse external servers. For sensitive workflows—personal finance, health data, proprietary code—this matters. Your options range from fully-managed cloud APIs to self-hosted open-source models running entirely on your hardware.
Model Recommendations by Use Case
Different workflows demand different models. Here's a practical breakdown.
Daily Personal Assistant
Recommended: Claude Sonnet 4 ($3/$15 per million tokens)
For calendar management, email triage, web research, and general queries, Sonnet 4 hits the sweet spot. It's fast enough for real-time interaction, capable enough for complex multi-step tasks, and priced reasonably for daily use.
Budget alternative: GPT-4o-mini (~$0.15/$0.60 per million tokens)
OpenAI's mini model punches above its weight for simple queries. Response quality drops noticeably on complex reasoning, but for basic assistant tasks, the 20x cost savings may be worth it.
Coding and Automation
Recommended: Claude Opus 4.5 ($15/$75 per million tokens)
When you need the model to write, debug, and execute code reliably, Opus 4.5 is worth the premium. Its tool-calling accuracy and ability to handle complex multi-file edits make it the go-to for serious automation.
Alternative: Claude Sonnet 4 with extended thinking
Enable extended thinking mode for complex tasks while keeping Sonnet's lower base cost. You pay more per reasoning token, but only when you need the extra horsepower.
Research and Analysis
Recommended: Gemini 3 Pro (~$1.25/$10 per million tokens)
Google's Gemini 3 excels at processing large documents and synthesizing information across sources. The 1M+ token context window makes it ideal for research-heavy workflows where you're ingesting entire codebases or document collections.
Privacy-First Workflows
Recommended: Llama 3.3 70B or Qwen 2.5 72B via haimaker.ai
For workflows involving sensitive data, open-source models offer a compelling alternative. Run them through haimaker.ai's inference routing, which optimizes for cost and latency across GPU providers while keeping your prompts off the major cloud providers' training pipelines.
Self-hosting option: For maximum control, run models locally via Ollama or vLLM. You'll need significant hardware (ideally 2x A100 or equivalent) and accept higher latency—but your data never leaves your infrastructure.
Hybrid approach: Use local or open-source models for sensitive tasks, cloud APIs for everything else. Clawdbot's model override system makes this seamless—set a default cloud model, then switch to haimaker.ai-routed open-source models for specific sessions.
Provider Comparison
Here's how the major providers stack up across our three dimensions:
Anthropic (Claude)
- Pricing: Premium tier ($3-$75 per million output tokens)
- Capability: Best-in-class for tool calling, coding, and instruction following
- Privacy: Cloud-only, but clear data usage policies (no training on API data by default)
Claude models have become the de facto standard for AI coding agents. The combination of reliable tool use and strong reasoning makes them ideal for Clawdbot's automation-heavy workflows.
OpenAI (GPT)
- Pricing: Mid-tier ($0.60-$15 per million output tokens)
- Capability: Strong general performance, excellent speed
- Privacy: Cloud-only, enterprise data agreements available
GPT-4o remains a solid all-rounder. The mini variant is particularly cost-effective for high-volume, lower-complexity use cases.
Google (Gemini)
- Pricing: Competitive ($1.25-$10 per million output tokens)
- Capability: Excellent for long-context tasks, strong multimodal
- Privacy: Cloud-only, Google Workspace integration available
Gemini 3 Pro's massive context window and improved reasoning make it uniquely suited for document analysis and codebase exploration.
Open Source via haimaker.ai
- Pricing: 5% below market rate ($0.10-$5 per million tokens)
- Capability: Rapidly improving, now competitive for many tasks
- Privacy: Route to privacy-focused providers; avoid major cloud training pipelines
haimaker.ai routes inference across GPU providers to optimize for cost, latency, and compliance requirements. Access Llama, Mistral, Qwen, and other open models through a unified API—with intelligent routing that finds the best price-performance for each request.
The API is fully OpenAI-compatible, so any tool that works with OpenAI works with haimaker.ai:
curl https://api.haimaker.ai/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $HAIMAKER_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "llama-3.3-70b",
"messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}]
}'
Just swap your base URL to https://api.haimaker.ai/v1 and you're running on optimized infrastructure.
Configuration for Clawdbot
Setting your model in Clawdbot takes one line:
{
agents: { defaults: { model: { primary: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-20250514" } } }
}
For model-specific overrides per session, use the /model command or configure different models for different agent roles.
Power tip: Use a cheaper model as default, then switch to Opus for complex tasks:
# In chat
/model opus # Switches current session to Claude Opus
The Bottom Line
There's no universally "best" model—only the best model for your specific constraints:
- Optimize for cost: GPT-4o-mini or open-source models via haimaker.ai
- Optimize for capability: Claude Opus 4.5 or Gemini 3 Pro
- Optimize for privacy: Open-source models via haimaker.ai or self-hosted
For most Clawdbot users, Claude Sonnet 4 represents the optimal balance: capable enough for complex assistant tasks, fast enough for daily use, and priced reasonably enough that you won't wince at the monthly bill.
Start there, then adjust based on what you actually need.