Venice AI

Venice AI provides privacy-focused inference: open models run with no logging, plus anonymized proxy access to Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok. All endpoints are OpenAI-compatible (/v1).

Privacy modes

Getting started

openclaw plugins install @openclaw/venice-provider

openclaw onboard --auth-choice venice-api-key

export VENICE_API_KEY="vapi_xxxxxxxxxxxx"

openclaw onboard --non-interactive --accept-risk --skip-health \  --auth-choice venice-api-key \  --venice-api-key "vapi_xxxxxxxxxxxx"

openclaw agent --model venice/zai-org-glm-4.7 --message "Hello, are you working?"

Model selection

• Default: venice/zai-org-glm-4.7 (private reasoning).
• Strongest anonymized option: venice/claude-opus-5.

openclaw models set venice/zai-org-glm-4.7openclaw models list --all --provider venice

You can also run openclaw configure and pick Model/auth provider > Venice AI.

Built-in catalog (16 visible models)

Grok-backed Venice models (grok-4-3 and similar) get the same tool-schema compat patch as the native xAI provider, since they share the same upstream tool-call format.

Model discovery

The bundled catalog above is a manifest-backed seed list. At runtime OpenClaw refreshes it from the Venice /models API and falls back to the seed list if the API is unreachable. The /models endpoint is public (no auth needed for listing), but inference requires a valid API key.

Venice may continue accepting retired model IDs as provider-owned aliases. The OpenClaw catalog advertises only the canonical model IDs returned by /models.

DeepSeek V4 replay behavior

If Venice exposes DeepSeek V4 models such as deepseek-v4-pro or deepseek-v4-flash, OpenClaw fills the required reasoning_content replay field on assistant messages when Venice omits it, and strips thinking/ reasoning/reasoning_effort from the request payload (Venice rejects DeepSeek's native thinking control on these models). This replay fix is separate from the native DeepSeek provider's own thinking controls.

Streaming and tool support

Pricing

Venice uses a credit-based system. Anonymized models cost roughly the same as direct API pricing plus a small Venice fee. See venice.ai/pricing for current rates.

OpenClaw reads live prices from Venice's public GET /api/v1/models response during model discovery. The same plugin parser supplies the hosted catalog publisher. Known and newly discovered models use the API's complete schedule in USD per million tokens; the manifest prices are an offline seed. Missing or invalid live prices retain the complete seed schedule for known models. Unknown models without valid pricing keep zero estimates; that does not mean the model is free. Explicit API zero rates are valid.

When the API supplies extended pricing, its rates apply to the entire request only when total prompt input exceeds context_token_threshold. Prompt input includes uncached input, cache reads, and cache writes; output tokens do not select the tier. A request exactly at the threshold still uses base rates. Base and extended rates always come from one schedule. An invalid extended schedule is not combined with seed or other-source prices.

Explicit models.providers.venice.models[].cost entries override catalog estimates, including zero. Omitted cost or {} inherits the catalog schedule. Partial flat overrides inherit missing base rates and remove inherited tiers; explicit tieredPricing wins, and tieredPricing: [] selects flat pricing. Agent-local root models.json prices retain highest priority.

New onboarding in models.mode: "merge" leaves generated catalog rows out of the configuration so they cannot become price pins. Re-onboarding preserves existing model entries, aliases, and model selection. In models.mode: "replace", onboarding retains explicit seed rows because that mode disables discovery. Existing serialized costs are never automatically removed or migrated, even if they match an old seed. With merge mode enabled, back up your configuration and remove only unwanted cost fields to resume catalog pricing; keep intentional overrides.

Discovery reuses its existing fetched rows and cache. Usage display makes no price requests, and a running Gateway does not immediately adopt every upstream price change. Hosted catalog updates activate at the existing restart boundary; see Hosted model catalog. Make sizing-only edits in your source configuration without copying generated model rows back into it: replacing an entire model array from a runtime snapshot can persist inherited costs as explicit overrides. Historical recorded costs are preserved; current pricing fills only missing costs or unknown-price zero placeholders. See Token use and costs.

Usage examples

# Default private modelopenclaw agent --model venice/zai-org-glm-4.7 --message "Quick health check" # Claude Opus via Venice (anonymized)openclaw agent --model venice/claude-opus-5 --message "Summarize this task" # Uncensored modelopenclaw agent --model venice/venice-uncensored-1-2 --message "Draft options" # Vision model with imageopenclaw agent --model venice/qwen3-vl-235b-a22b --message "Review attached image" # Coding modelopenclaw agent --model venice/qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct-turbo --message "Refactor this function"

Troubleshooting

openclaw models list --provider venice

Advanced configuration

{  env: { vars: { VENICE_API_KEY: "vapi_..." } },  agents: { defaults: { model: { primary: "venice/zai-org-glm-4.7" } } },  models: {    mode: "merge",    providers: {      venice: {        baseUrl: "https://api.venice.ai/api/v1",        apiKey: "${VENICE_API_KEY}",        api: "openai-completions",        models: [          {            id: "zai-org-glm-4.7",            name: "GLM 4.7",            reasoning: true,            input: ["text"],            contextWindow: 198000,            maxTokens: 16384,          },        ],      },    },  },}

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