Humanoid robot prices in 2026: what each price actually buys

A new humanoid robot costs about $1,500 at the bottom of the Chinese market and up to about $250,000 at the top of the industrial one. One model name can span a wide stretch of that range. A Unitree G1 is $13,500 from Unitree, $17,363 to $17,990 from a US dealer and $41,700 in the version you may program, with the same 23 joints.

Four things set the final bill: the configuration, the customs route, the hands and the right to write code.

What humanoids cost from their makers

Below about $45,000 you are buying a platform for a lab, a classroom or a stage. The G1 carries about 2 kg per arm and runs for about 2 hours.

The two machines at the top are the ones their makers aim at real work, and neither version ships yet. Most other industrial humanoids have no maker's price. A 2026 filing by Deep Robotics on the Shanghai Stock Exchange lists Tesla's Optimus, Boston Dynamics' Atlas, Figure 03 and UBTECH's Walker line without a public price. AgiBot marks its A2 Ultra "Price on request".

Do resellers charge two to five times the maker's price?

For the same Unitree robot in the United States, no. Maverick Drone, TVC Robotics, Global Drone HQ (GDHQ) and RobotShop ask 29 to 52 percent above Unitree's price, and the US duty on a robot made in China is about 40 percent.

The 40 percent adds up from a 2.5 percent base rate, a 25 percent Section 301 duty and a 12.5 percent forced-labor Section 301 duty in force since 24 July 2026. US Customs ruling NY N356154 of December 2025 gives the first two for AgiBot's A2 Ultra and X2 Ultra humanoids, under heading 8479.89.95. Check yours with a customs broker, because the classification can change the sum.

A US dealer is often cheaper than importing. Unitree's G1 page leaves duties, taxes and clearance to the customer and quotes $300 to $1,200 for shipping. At list value that puts an imported G1 at about $19,200 to $20,100 before clearance fees. Dealers ask $17,363 to $17,990. Duty is charged on customs value, so a dealer buying below list pays less than this arithmetic shows.

A dealer's premium can also buy a robot sooner. On 5 November Unitree's store showed the G1 as backordered. Robotopian lists a G1 at the same $13,500, also backordered, and most of its new orders ship from Shenzhen. TVC ships from a US warehouse and asks for up to 30 days. Maverick's $17,363 G1 is a special order, currently out of stock.

Two to five times appears when two different configurations are compared. The $13,500 G1 and the $70,200 G1 EDU Ultimate D differ by 5.2 times, and the second has 41 joints, two tactile five-finger hands and developer access.

A few listings do sit far above the rest. Robosss lists a G1 at $99,000 on a page that describes 23 to 43 joints with optional hands and leaves import duty to the buyer. Pioneering Power asks $59,000 for an H2 that TVC sells for $39,900.

Where the multiple to the Chinese price is real

Unitree sets its export price close to its Chinese one, so its dealers compete around one number. Its 85,000 yuan for a G1 includes tax and its $13,500 does not. Other brands stand further from home, and the distance from China reaches 3.4 times.

Europe pays a margin that duty does not explain

The EU duty on the industrial-robot heading is 1.7 percent and the UK's is zero, so duty explains almost none of the gap of 44 to 91 percent. The rest is freight, margin, compliance work and warranty cover, and none of these shops breaks it down. VAT comes on top, and a VAT-registered company normally reclaims it.

What the right to program costs

Unitree's base robots do not take your code. The G1 store page says: "This product does not support secondary development. For customization needs, please select the EDU edition." The R1 and H2 pages say the same.

The G1 EDU starts at the same 23 joints. Unitree's comparison table adds about 3 kg per arm where the base has about 2 kg, 120 N·m at the knee where the base has 90, optional high-power compute and an 18-month warranty where the base has 8. Abroad Unitree answers "Contact sales", so dealers' prices are the only public ones.

Teams that plan to write their own control code should budget from the EDU line. A base G1 suits a buyer who will run Unitree's stock software for demonstrations.

The same robot in different shops

Unitree's published price keeps its US dealers close: 1.04 times between the cheapest and dearest G1 and 1.03 times on the H2. Where a maker publishes less, the same configuration moves much further.

The low price often needs a second look. Robotix Market sits at the bottom of half of these rows. It ships worldwide and confirms delivery and import duties with your quotation, and its product pages ask buyers to request a quote "for a firm delivered price and current lead time". Useabot's A2 Ultra price, the lowest in its row, already includes US tariffs, and its A3 price is "a planning figure". Robotopian sits at the top of five rows, and most of its new orders ship from Shenzhen.

Deep Robotics' own numbers show how thin this market is. Its filing reports four DR humanoids sold in 2024 and 2025 combined: three at an average of 390,400 yuan, about $58,400, and one at 823,000 yuan, about $123,100. It gives the DR01 a starting price of 600,000 yuan in China, about $89,753. Robotopian's $90,000 is close to that, and Robotix's $59,995 is a third below it.

Outside Unitree, get two written quotes for the same configuration, with duty, delivery and warranty stated. Two listings for one A2 Ultra were $57,999 apart on 5 November.

What hands add to the price

Most base robots ship without working hands. The G1 has dummy hands, and the R1 and H2 have no dexterous hands. 1X NEO and NEURA's 4NE1 Mini Pro and Gen 3.5 include hands in the price.

Robotix lists one H2 EDU, $67,500 with no hands fitted, with eight hand options, so the difference between its own listings is the price of the hands.

Makers' own prices start at $300 for Unitree's Dex1-1 gripper and $699 per hand for AgiBot's OmniHand 3 Lite-S. AgiBot's OmniHand 3 is $6,599 per hand, and Unitree's Dex5-S is $6,350 and the Dex5-S Pro $13,500.

Choose hands when you order the robot. RobotShop's separate pair of Dex5-1 hands is about $47,000, while the same model adds $32,200 in the Robotix bundle.

Ask what the warranty says about them. Unitree's own prospectus names "the precision and durability of dexterous hands" as one of two limits on large-scale use.

Runtime, warranty and spare batteries

An 8-hour shift takes four G1 charges on Unitree's own figure. A spare battery is $700 for the G1 and $500 for the R1 from Unitree.

Warranty terms change with the seller. Robotopian gives 1 year on a G1 main unit and 6 months on the battery, where Unitree's table says 8 months.

Prices are falling, and Unitree's margin with them

Unitree's average price fell 36 percent in 2025, from 260,400 to 166,400 yuan, about $38,950 to $24,890, as units sold rose from 412 to 5,215. The company names two direct causes, the move to the cheaper G1 and the price cuts it made in 2025. The move is large. The full-size H1 went from 44.75 percent of humanoid sales in 2024 to 1.86 percent in the first nine months of 2025, and the G1 from 40.27 to 88.90 percent. Gross margin on humanoids fell from 69.26 percent in 2024 to 63.18 percent in 2025. Deep Robotics' filing puts Unitree's unit cost at 80,100 yuan, about $11,980, in 2024 and 61,300 yuan, about $9,170, in 2025, so the price fell faster than the cost.

List prices followed. The G1 launched at 99,000 yuan in 2024, and Unitree now lists it from 85,000. The R1 launched at 39,900 yuan in July 2025, and the R1 Air now starts at 29,900.

In the first nine months of 2026 Unitree's revenue rose 55.71 percent and net profit after one-off items fell 18.78 percent. Revenue and cost of sales in that report put company-wide gross margin at about 54 percent, about 5.7 points below a year earlier.

Used robots. Listings are few. Sonny Robotics lists a used G1 Basic at AUD 19,000, or $13,275, which is about what Unitree charges for a new one before duty. TVC's certified pre-owned page showed one humanoid on 5 November, a G1 Basic at the same $17,990 as its new one.

Rental. In the United States, RoboNow Global charges $3,000 per G1 per event day with an operator and a technician, and travel and shipping on top. Six event days cost as much as a G1 from a US dealer.

Who buys humanoids at these prices

Unitree's reply to the exchange gives this split up to September 2025. In those nine months between 50 and 70 percent of the industrial slice was corporate guided tours, and manufacturing, inspection and logistics brought in 15.7 million yuan, about $2.3 million, 29.29 percent of the slice, about 2.6 percent of Unitree's humanoid revenue.

The International Federation of Robotics is blunt in World Robotics 2026. It puts most humanoids at the pilot stage or earlier, short of industrial grade, and adds: "At the current stage of technology, industrial robots are economically superior for industrial production tasks."

Counts differ with the definition. Leju Robotics' prospectus lists three for 2025: about 18,000 shipped from IDC, about 17,000 shipped from CCID Media and China Electronics News, and about 16,000 installed from Counterpoint. IFR counts about 7,000 sold in 2025 for commercial and professional use, and only above 140 cm, which leaves out the 1.32 m G1 and the 1.23 m R1.

A factory buying a humanoid today is paying for a pilot, and should budget it as one.

What Western makers charge

• 1X NEO. $20,000 with a 3-year warranty, or $499 a month, with a refundable $200 deposit and US deliveries starting in 2026.
• NEURA 4NE1 Gen 3.5. €98,000, or $109,776, per unit up to 19 units and €60,000, or $67,210, from 20, before tax and shipping. The reservation fee is €100 and NEURA expects the robot at the end of 2026.
• Agility Digit v5. The prospectus filed with the SEC gives two illustrative paths. A purchase is about $200,000, plus $20,000 to deploy and $36,000 a year, or about $400,000 over five years. Robots as a service are $8,500 a month plus $25,000 to deploy, or about $535,000.

Agility's filing also shows the cost gap. It assumes about $150,000 of parts per Digit at launch, falling to $75,000 at 1,000 robots a year and $30,000 at 10,000. Unitree's average cost per humanoid was about $9,170 in 2025. Agility's 2025 net sales were $1.8 million.

Whether you can buy it where you are

United States. On 28 July 2026 the FCC added foreign-produced advanced robotic devices to its Covered List, so new models cannot get the authorization they need to be imported, marketed or sold. The FCC's FAQ says the listing "does not prohibit the import, sale, or use of any existing device models the FCC previously authorized." Unitree's R1 and H2 were authorized in June 2026 and the G1 in March 2025. Ask the seller for the FCC ID before paying.

No humanoid maker named here holds one of the 13 conditional approvals for robots granted by 30 October. The same page describes how the FCC could extend a ban to authorized equipment, through a public notice and at least 30 days of comment, and so far it has not used this for robots.

Two more risks sit on top. The Pentagon added Unitree to its 1260H list in June 2026. Anyone spending federal money should check it. Proclamation 11077 of 28 October 2026 found that robot imports threaten national security and ordered talks, with no new duty yet and an update due within 180 days. A US quote with a long delivery date should say who carries a duty change.

European Union. A humanoid sold here needs CE marking. Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 replaces the Machinery Directive from 20 January 2027. Most machinery can self-assess. Annex I lists the categories that need a notified body, among them machinery with embedded machine-learning systems that ensure safety functions. Radio parts fall under Directive 2014/53/EU. Ask for the EU declaration of conformity. CE marking does not replace the employer's own risk assessment, which Germany requires under section 3 of its Industrial Safety Regulation.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a humanoid robot cost?

Unitree lists the R1 Air at $4,900, the G1 at $13,500 and the H2 at $29,900, before duty and tax. A programmable G1 starts at about $41,700 from US dealers. NEURA estimates about $109,776 for the 4NE1 Gen 3.5, and Agility's filing uses about $200,000 for Digit v5. Shops list the UBTECH Walker S2 at $146,500 to $246,600.

What is the cheapest humanoid robot?

The Noetix Bumi at under 10,000 yuan, about $1,500, in China, and from $3,469 outside it. The cheapest walking humanoid we found with a maker's international price is the Unitree R1 Air at $4,900. Unitree's R1-A5 costs $4,290, and it has two arms and no legs.

Do resellers charge two to five times the maker's price?

For the same Unitree configuration in the United States, no: 29 to 52 percent, against a duty of about 40 percent. In Europe the G1 costs 44 to 91 percent more before VAT. Bumi costs up to 2.7 times its Chinese price abroad, and the DR02 up to 3.4 times. A gap of five times on a Unitree usually means a different configuration.

Do prices include shipping, duty and VAT?

It depends on the seller. Unitree and AgiBot exclude duty and tax. Useabot says its price includes applicable US tariffs, with shipping at checkout. Knox Labs adds $4,200 per Oli for US freight and customs at checkout. In Europe, evolt and Elektor show prices with VAT and Terra Robotics shows them before VAT. Ask for a delivered price in writing.

How much do hands add?

On one H2 EDU at one shop, $1,200 for a gripper, about $14,660 for three-finger hands and $32,200 to $37,200 for five-finger hands.

Can you rent a humanoid robot?

Yes. RoboNow Global charges $3,000 per G1 per event day in the United States, with an operator.

Are used humanoids cheaper?

Listings are few, and the saving varies. Sonny Robotics lists a used G1 Basic at about $13,275, close to Unitree's new price before duty, and TVC lists a pre-owned one at the same $17,990 as new.

Can you still buy a Unitree in the United States after the FCC rule?

Yes, for models the FCC authorized before the rule. The G1, R1 and H2 have FCC IDs. The rule stops new foreign-produced models from getting one.

Sources

• Prices: the maker and shop pages linked above, read on 5 November 2026. EngineAI's list comes from the 12 September 2026 archive copy. Yuan, euro and Australian dollar prices are converted at European Central Bank rates for October 2026.
• Unitree: prospectus, May 2026, first and second replies to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, March 2026, third-quarter report, October 2026.
• Deep Robotics: reply to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
• Leju Robotics: prospectus, May 2026.
• Agility Robotics: prospectus filed with the SEC, October 2026.
• Launch and presale prices: 36Kr Research, EqualOcean, CAICT and Tsinghua University.
• US duty: USITC, CBP ruling NY N356154, CSMS #69326983.
• FCC: FAQ, fact sheet, DA 26-786, Covered List.
• IFR: World Robotics 2026 executive summary, service robots release, 30 September 2026.

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