I was just reading the new OpenClaw README and it clearly says: “OpenClaw supports subscription auth via OAuth for providers that offer it (notably OpenAI Codex, ChatGPT OAuth).” If you can power OpenClaw with 5.4, I think we’re back in business.
Back in business from what? On Saturday at noon Pacific, Anthropic stopped Claude subscriptions from working inside third-party harnesses. OpenClaw was the named example, and the rule “applies to all third-party harnesses and will be rolled out to more shortly.” Subscribers who want to keep using them now pay for extra usage through “a pay-as-you-go option billed separately from your subscription.” Anthropic’s Boris Cherny said the “subscriptions weren’t built for the usage patterns of these third-party tools.”
So for three days the open question was who, if anyone, would pick up the people Anthropic had just set down.
OpenAI, it seems, and with the door held open on purpose. The Codex README recommends signing in with your ChatGPT account “to use Codex as part of your Plus, Pro, Business, Edu, or Enterprise plan.” For OpenAI the subscription is the front door. And 5.4 is no consolation prize. OpenAI shipped GPT-5.4 on March 5 and billed it as “our most capable and efficient frontier model for professional work.” OpenClaw’s own docs describe the arrangement the same way the README does — it supports OAuth, which they call “subscription auth”, for providers that offer it.
Just wondering whether OpenAI has plotted the code to make OpenClaw a lot less of a token hog, and figures it’s only a couple of weeks away from launching. May as well win the loyalty of some new users left in the lurch and count it as marketing spend. That’s a guess. I’m about to test and verify it works.
Tested. I can confirm ChatGPT subscription works in OpenClaw. Gemini 3.1 seems to as well.
So now it seems like only Claude doesn’t do subscription OpenClaw, while everyone else does. Crazy.
