How to Migrate Your OpenClaw to Another Server (Beginner Guide)

Move your OpenClaw agent off a $100/mo Amazon EC2 M7i Flex Large to a $2/mo Zeabur VPS — let the agent build its own migration zip and ship it via SSH.

Why switch off EC2

The M7i Flex Large (8 GB RAM) is overkill for a personal OpenClaw assistant and has been driving unexpected bills. The creator flags "horror stories" of users being charged up to "$100 per month" after the AWS free tier credits expired, despite the plan being marketed as free. 2–4 GB is enough for a single agent.

New home: Zeabur at 10 cents

The creator moved to Zeabur, picking a 10¢ tier with 2 GB of memory and full root access. Total cost: "$2 per month." Onboarding needs three things only — server IP, the username ubuntu, and your SSH password.

The migration prompt that does the work

Skip the manual scp/rsync dance. Ask the agent to do it. The exact prompt used:

> "Hey Jeff, I want to migrate you to another server. What's the best way to do this? Can you compress your working directory, the OpenClaw directory?"

The agent's name was Jeff. It took about 2 minutes to produce a zip containing the full working directory, config, state files, and a markdown migration guide. The creator then pasted credentials directly into chat (he admits this is "not a good practice" — use an env file) and the upload finished in about a minute.

Verify before and after

Use a tree-format command to dump the full file structure on the old server, screenshot it, run the migration, then run the same command on the new server and diff visually. After upload, reinstall the openclaw binary if the shell returns command not found, restart the gateway, and confirm the new server's IP address is responding. Use Termius instead of raw terminal — the file-tree view makes the zip easier to open and move.

Known limits

This zip-and-scp flow is for simple setups. If you have cron jobs or many sub-agents, you have to do parts manually or files will be missing.