Unitree's cheapest humanoid fell from about $90,000 to $4,400 in three years, but it's child-size
The cheapest are small robots for research and teaching. A robot sold for home chores still costs $20,000 and relies on remote human help.
Price of Unitree's cheapest humanoid robot
Starting list price of the lowest-priced humanoid sold by Unitree, one of the two biggest humanoid makers by shipments, in US dollars. Log scale.
What this measures: How much it costs to buy the cheapest humanoid robot from Unitree, from its first humanoid in 2023 to today. These are prices for basic versions of small research and hobby robots, not for a robot that can do housework.
List prices for base models, converted to dollars at each source's rate; prices outside China are higher. The G1 and R1 are child-size (121–127 cm) and sold mainly to universities, labs and developers. What buyers paid fell too: Unitree's average selling price per humanoid dropped from about $85,000 in 2023 to about $25,000 in the first nine months of 2025, according to its IPO filing.
Show data table and sources
| Date | Label | Value |
|---|---|---|
| 15 Aug 2023 | H1 | $90,000 |
| 15 May 2024 | G1 | $16,000 |
| 25 Jul 2025 | R1 | $5,900 |
| 25 Jun 2026 | R1 (price cut) | $4,370 |
- Unitree teases new H1 humanoid robot (The Robot Report)
- Unitree Robotics unveils G1 humanoid for $16K (The Robot Report)
- New Unitree humanoid sells for under $6,000 (Rocking Robots)
- Unitree makes humanoid robots more affordable (Xinhua)
- Unitree to launch cheapest humanoid robot globally next week, starting at over $4,000 (VnExpress International (citing SCMP))
- Unitree IPO shows a real hardware business, but the humanoid case is still early (The Robot Report)
Humanoid robots have become much cheaper to buy. In August 2023 Unitree said its adult-size H1 (180 cm) would cost under $90,000. In May 2024 it listed the 127 cm G1 at $16,000. Its 121 cm R1 launched in July 2025 at 39,900 yuan (about $5,900), and in June 2026 Unitree cut it to 29,900 yuan (about $4,400) in China. That is about a twentieth of the H1’s price in three years.
What buyers actually paid fell too. Unitree’s IPO filing shows its average price per humanoid sold dropping from about $85,000 in 2023 to about $25,000 in the first nine months of 2025, according to The Robot Report’s reading of the filing.
Other makers sit on either side. Noetix’s Bumi, a 94 cm robot for education and family entertainment, went on sale in China in October 2025 for 9,998 yuan (about $1,380). 1X’s NEO, a humanoid meant to do housework, takes pre-orders at $20,000 or $499 a month; we found no announced customer delivery by November 2026.
What it means
Small humanoid robots are now cheap enough to sell in numbers to research labs, schools and entertainment companies. The price drop does not mean a cheap robot can help at home: the only one here sold for chores costs $20,000 and still relies on remote human help.
Caveats
- The cheap robots are small and sold mainly for research, education, sport and entertainment. In the first nine months of 2025, 73.6% of Unitree’s humanoid revenue came from research and education buyers.
- These are starting prices for basic versions, converted to dollars at the rate each source used. Prices outside China are higher.
- A low price says nothing about usefulness. NEO, the only robot here sold for chores, relies on remote human operators for tasks it hasn’t learned.
- The 2023 H1 figure was Unitree’s announced ceiling for a robot not yet on sale; The Robot Report listed it at $90,000 in May 2024.