OpenClaw always reports rate limit, many times it's not that it's "stuck", but that it's doing failure switching. OpenClaw's official open-source repository is https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw。 The official model failover documentation clearly states: as soon as signals such as 429, Too many concurrent requests, ThrottlingException, quota limit exceeded, etc., OpenClaw will put the current profile into cooldown and then switch to the next available profile. In other words, the error you see may just be that the model provider is throttling.
If the same provider has multiple profiles at the same time, try to fix one profile first and don't let it rotate automatically. The model failover description is here: https://docs.openclaw.ai/concepts/model-failover.
Determine which current limit is first
- If it is 429, throttled, quota exceeded, the provider quota is prioritized.
- If it's a timeout, the context is too large, or the long conversation is repeatedly retried to see if the context is too heavy.
- If you have multiple profiles on the same account, pin one profile first and don't let it rotate automatically.
What can be done
The safest approach is not to try again, but to reduce concurrency first, change to a more relaxed quota, or pin the easily exploded profile separately. If you're running a lot of tasks during peak hours, OpenClaw's cooldown mechanism is actually helping you stop losses, not help.
Therefore, the core of OpenClaw's rate limit problem is not "how to eliminate errors", but first figure out who is limiting the current.
