Configuration for OpenClaw with Vertex AI $300 Free Trial Credit

Subject: Configuration for OpenClaw with Vertex AI $300 Free Trial Credit
I am running OpenClaw on a headless Oracle Linux instance and want to route my traffic through Vertex AI to utilize the $300 new account credit instead of the standard Gemini API free tier.
I have already created my GCP project and enabled the Vertex AI API.
Could someone provide the standard workflow for this? Specifically:

  1. The correct gcloud authentication commands for a headless server.
  2. The specific openclaw config set commands required to bind the project ID and region so that usage correctly bills against the trial credit.
    Thanks in advance.

I don’t think that is possible even I have tried to do so, but the problem you will face is that OpenClaw does not have direct integration with Vertex AI as a model provider. The best you can do is configure your open router with Vertex AI using BYOK and then use your open router API keys.

You can do this — run Gemini in OpenClaw on the Google Cloud free-trial credit by
connecting OpenClaw to Vertex AI’s OpenAI-compatible endpoint as a custom provider
(the service-account token auto-refreshes).

I wrote up the complete working setup — exact config, the token script, and how to
verify it’s billing the credit. Just follow it top to bottom:
:backhand_index_pointing_right: GitHub - Chelebii/openclaw-vertex-ai-gemini-free-credit: Run Gemini in OpenClaw on the Google Cloud $300 free-trial credit via Vertex AI's OpenAI-compatible endpoint — the working workaround for the broken native google-vertex provider. · GitHub

Verified on OpenClaw 2026.6.10. Ping me if anything’s unclear.