TL;DR: OpenClaw's 512 vulnerabilities and ClawHavoc supply chain attack sparked 15+ alternatives in February 2026. IronClaw (WASM sandboxing, host-boundary credentials) and ZeroClaw (Rust, ChaCha20 encryption, 23 channels) lead the production-ready tier. If you're running OpenClaw in production, this is your migration roadmap.

OpenClaw Secure Alternatives: Complete Survey

Summary

15+ alternatives emerged in February 2026 in response to OpenClaw's security issues (512 vulnerabilities, 6 CVEs, ClawHavoc supply chain attack, 135K exposed instances).

Tier 1: Production-Ready, Architecturally Secure

Nanobot (HKUDS/nanobot) -- 22,819 stars

Language: Python (4,000 LOC)
Who: Hong Kong University Data Science (Re-bin: 365 commits)
License: MIT
Philosophy: "Readable in one sitting." 99% smaller than OpenClaw
Security: External sandboxing (relies on deployment environment)
Channels: Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Feishu, Email, Slack, DingTalk, QQ, Mochat
Providers: Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Groq, etc.
Memory: Recently redesigned, MCP integration
Weakness: No built-in sandboxing; simplicity means fewer guardrails

ZeroClaw (zeroclaw-labs/zeroclaw) -- 16,498 stars

Language: Rust (~150K LOC, 8.8MB binary)
Who: Harvard/MIT/Sundai.Club (chumyin: 414 commits, theonlyhennygod: 167)
License: MIT + Apache 2.0
Security: Docker sandboxing, Landlock (Linux), 3 autonomy levels (readonly/supervised/full), ChaCha20-Poly1305 encrypted credentials, 14 blocked system directories, null byte/symlink/traversal protection
Channels: 23 (Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Matrix, Signal, iMessage, Email, Lark, DingTalk, QQ, IRC, Nostr, etc.)
Providers: 30+ (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Bedrock, Ollama, OpenRouter, Groq, etc.)
Memory: SQLite hybrid search (vector + FTS5), PostgreSQL, Markdown backends
Migration: zeroclaw migrate openclaw imports OpenClaw config/memory
Weakness: 261 .unwrap() calls (crash risk), 9 days old, no multi-agent, no web dashboard

NanoClaw (qwibitai/nanoclaw) -- 10,995 stars

Language: TypeScript (~500 LOC)
Who: qwibitai (gavrielc: 108 commits)
License: MIT
Security: OS-level containers (Apple Container on macOS, Docker on Linux). Per-WhatsApp-group isolated agents. No shared process space
Channels: WhatsApp (primary)
Built on: Claude Code / Anthropic Agents SDK
Weakness: WhatsApp-only, minimal feature set, depends on Claude Code

IronClaw (nearai/ironclaw) -- 2,798 stars

Language: Rust (~42K LOC, 3.4MB binary)
Who: NEAR AI -- led by Illia Polosukhin (co-author "Attention Is All You Need", NEAR Protocol co-founder). NEAR Foundation: $540M+ raised
License: MIT + Apache 2.0
Security: WASM sandboxes (wasmtime v28), capability-based permissions, host-boundary credential injection (tools never see secrets), Aho-Corasick leak detection on all I/O, 5-layer prompt injection defense, SSRF protection, per-tool rate limiting + fuel metering
Channels: 5 (REPL, HTTP, Web, Slack, Telegram)
Providers: ~8 (NEAR AI, OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, Tinfoil zero-knowledge)
Memory: PostgreSQL + pgvector (hybrid RRF search), libSQL alternative
Docker: Per-job containers with ephemeral bearer tokens, auto-cleanup
Weakness: 19 days old, 2-3 core contributors, no multi-agent, fewest channels, no encryption at rest for data

TinyClaw (TinyAGI/tinyclaw) -- 2,339 stars

Language: Shell (~400 LOC)
Who: TinyAGI
Focus: Team of personal agents that collaborate
Channels: Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram (simultaneous)

NullClaw (nullclaw/nullclaw) -- 1,550 stars

Language: Zig (678KB binary, 1MB RAM, <2ms boot)
Security: Minimal attack surface by being tiny
Compatibility: OpenClaw config format (snake_case)

Clawlet (mosaxiv/clawlet) -- 669 stars

Language: Go
Focus: Ultra-lightweight, efficient

Tier 2: Early / Experimental

PicoClaw (sipeed/picoclaw) -- 17,591 stars

Language: Go
Who: Sipeed (hardware company)
Hardware: $10 RISC-V boards (LicheeRV-Nano), <10MB RAM
WARNING: "Do not deploy to production before v1.0"
Note: 95% of core generated by AI agents

SafeClaw (princezuda/safeclaw)

Radical approach: NO LLM. Rule-based intent parsing (VADER, spaCy, sumy, YOLO, Whisper, Piper)
Security: Prompt injection is impossible (no LLM to inject into)
Cost: Zero API costs
Trade-off: Deterministic rules vs. emergent capabilities

Moltworker (cloudflare/moltworker)

Who: Cloudflare (proof of concept, NOT a product)
Architecture: OpenClaw on Cloudflare Workers with Sandbox SDK
Cost: $5/mo minimum (Workers paid plan)

Tier 3: Specialized / Commercial

memU (NevaMind-AI/memU) -- 9,701 stars

Focus: Long-term memory via knowledge graph
Accuracy: 92.09% on Locomo benchmark
Behavior: Proactive, ambient -- learns habits over weeks

TrustClaw (trustclaw.app)

Who: Composio
Type: Cloud-hosted (not open source)
Security: OAuth-based, sandboxed cloud execution, 1000+ tools, environments destroyed after completion

Runlayer (runlayer.com)

Type: Enterprise governance wrapper for OpenClaw
Funding: $11M seed (Khosla Ventures, Felicis)
Customers: Gusto, Instacart, Homebase, AngelList

SecureClaw

Who: Alex Polyakov (Adversa AI)
Type: Security audit + hardening tool
Features: 55 automated checks, maps to OWASP Agentic Security Top 10, MITRE ATLAS

Blink

Type: Self-hosted agent OS with Tailscale integration
Security: No public internet exposure, cryptographic proof required

Security Architecture Comparison

Project	Isolation Model	Credential Handling	Prompt Injection Defense
OpenClaw	Docker (optional, off by default)	Plaintext on disk	Basic
IronClaw	WASM sandbox (wasmtime)	Host-boundary injection, never in tool	5-layer (sanitize, validate, policy, scrub, wrap)
ZeroClaw	Docker + Landlock (Linux)	ChaCha20-Poly1305 encrypted	Allowlist boundaries, 3 autonomy levels
NanoClaw	OS-level (Apple Container/Docker)	Container filesystem isolation	Per-group isolated agents
Nanobot	External (deployment-dependent)	Not specified	Auditability (4K lines)
NullClaw	Minimal surface (678KB)	OpenClaw-compatible	Tiny = less to exploit
SafeClaw	N/A	N/A	Impossible (no LLM)
TrustClaw	Ephemeral cloud environments	OAuth, no local storage	Cloud isolation