Field notes from Openclaw

We ran the same 8 production tasks across Claude, GPT-5 and Gemini. Tool-use accuracy, latency, cost per 1M tokens, instruction-following. Real numbers from real client deployments.

When n8n is enough. When Make.com wins. When you must write custom code. A practical decision framework after 47 production deployments — with the hidden costs nobody mentions.

Triple Whale charges $300/mo forever and still can't reconcile COD remittances. A custom financial autopilot costs ~€11k once. Here's the 18-month break-even math for a Mexican dropshipper.

B2B distributors are paying $2k–$5k/month for a stack of 5–7 SaaS that still leaks orders. Here is the AI automation playbook that replaces it with one platform — and what it costs.