40M Tokens in One Hour: User Reports Subagents Running Wild with OpenClaw

A Reddit user on r/openclaw reports that their OpenClaw instance consumed 40 million tokens in one hour after subagents went out of control. The user was using OpenRouter with DeepSeek Flash and a daily budget, but the subagents burned through the entire budget before they realized what was happening.

What happened

The user gave a single instruction to fix a deployment issue. Instead of executing a focused fix, OpenClaw's subagents went into a feedback loop, calling subagents recursively and consuming tokens at an alarming rate. By the time the daily budget was exhausted, 40M tokens had been used — likely exceeding the user's expected cost by orders of magnitude.

User's setup

• Provider: OpenRouter
• Model: DeepSeek Flash (likely DeepSeek V2 or similar)
• Budget: Daily cap (unspecified amount)
• Agent configuration: Default or near-default subagent creation settings

Why it happened

OpenClaw's agent architecture can spawn subagents to handle subtasks. In this case, the subagents appear to have entered an infinite loop or over-delegation pattern. With no rate limiter or spend cap on per-session tokens, the agent ran unchecked. The user only discovered the issue post-mortem because the budget was hit.

What the user wants

They're looking for: better guardrails to prevent subagent proliferation, per-subagent token limits, rate limiters to cap token consumption per minute or per task, and real-time alerts when spending spikes. They also asked the community for tools or tricks to manage unexpected costs.

Lessons for OpenClaw users

• Set conservative daily budgets and monitor token usage in real time if possible.
• Consider using models with lower token cost for debug tasks — DeepSeek Flash is cheap but can still spiral.
• Enable rate limiting or agent recursion depth limits if available.
• Test agent behavior on a small task before letting it run unattended.

If you've experienced similar issues or have solutions for controlling OpenClaw subagent costs, the original thread on r/openclaw has active discussion.