Running OpenClaw at Home: Azure vs VM vs Raspberry Pi vs Cheap VPS (Real Costs in AUD)
· 7 min read
When I started experimenting with OpenClaw for a personal setup, I did what most cloud engineers do: I immediately reached for Azure.
- Azure Container Apps
- Premium NFS storage
- Private networking
- Tailscale
Clean. Modern. Secure.
But then I did something we do not always do enough of: I actually ran the numbers.
This post walks through a real-world cost comparison (in AUD) between:
- Azure Container Apps
- A small Azure VM
- An older desktop running 24×7
- A Raspberry Pi 4 with NVMe storage
- A cheap unmanaged VPS (1 vCPU / 2 GB)
The results were interesting.