How much does a humanoid robot cost?

A humanoid robot with a public price costs about $5,900 to $29,900 to buy, before tax and shipping. If you pay by the hour instead, with the person who runs the robot included, expect about $10 to $20 an hour.

Public robot prices today

The table lists only robots whose price anyone can read online. Two of them are not humanoid, but buyers often compare them with humanoid robots, so they are included.

Prices checked in November 2026. They change often; check the linked pages.

Some well-known humanoid robots have no public price at all. Agility Robotics, for example, sells Digit for industrial work through its sales team, so with vendors like this you have to ask for a quote.

Three ways to pay

Buy

You pay once and the robot is yours. That suits a team that has engineers and a long-term plan for the robot, because the price tag is only part of what you will spend. It leaves out:

• tax and shipping, which Unitree states are not in its prices
• staff time to set up, program, charge and watch the robot
• maintenance and repairs after the warranty ends
• software, if the task you need is not included
• insurance for a machine that moves near people

Ask the vendor about each of these before you compare one price with another.

Lease or subscribe

You pay each month and keep the robot on site, an arrangement that is often called "robot as a service". The monthly price is lower than a purchase, and some plans include service. Read the contract term all the same, because a lease still bills you in a quiet month and your staff still run the robot each day.

Pay by the hour

You pay only for the hours the robot works, and the vendor keeps the robot, the maintenance and the risk.

This is how Starlife Bella works. Bella is not autonomous: a trained robot pilot controls it live from a laptop, with AI assistance. Starlife provides the robot pilot, the driving and the maintenance, and all three are in the hourly price.

Tau Robotics also sells by the session, and Euronews reports that a trained person controls each Tau robot remotely.

What changes the price

Start with the hours of use. A bought robot costs the same whether it works two hours or twelve, while an hourly robot costs nothing when it is idle.

Then look at who runs it. If your staff must program or supervise the robot, you pay for that in staff time. A service that includes the person costs more per hour but less in salaries.

The task matters too, since a robot that greets and guides costs less than a robot that lifts and carries in a warehouse.

Custom software and support can also move the price. Unitree lists secondary development only on its EDU models, which have no public price, and Double charges $5,098 for the same robot with a 3-year warranty.

Worked example: one robot by the hour and a staffed desk

This example compares the cost of one front desk for one month, and it rests on two assumptions.

The first is the wage. The example uses the US median pay for receptionists, $18.27 an hour in May 2025, from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure is the wage only, so payroll taxes, benefits, hiring and cover for sick days all come on top of it.

The second is the opening time. The desk is open 8 hours a day, 22 days a month, which makes 176 hours.

At the low end the robot costs a little over half the wage alone. At the high end it costs slightly more than the wage, although the wage figure leaves out taxes and benefits. The larger difference is in the hours, because many desks are busy for only part of the day. If Bella covers 4 busy hours a day at $20 an hour, the month costs $1,760.

A robot does not replace every desk task. Bella greets visitors, answers their questions and guides them, in more than 30 languages, but it does not handle parcels, keys or paperwork, so keep a person for those tasks.

When buying is the better choice

Buying makes more sense in a few cases:

• You have engineers who want to program the robot. Unitree's G1 EDU supports secondary development, with pricing available on request; the standard $13,500 G1 does not.
• You run the robot many hours a day for years, and you have staff to maintain it.
• You need a task that no hourly service offers, such as custom research.
• You need remote presence for one known person. A telepresence robot such as Double 3 costs less than any service after a few months.
• You need trays of food moved along a fixed route, which is the task a delivery robot such as BellaBot is built for.

If you want a result this month and you have no robot team, pay by the hour.

Where Starlife Bella fits

Starlife Bella works as a mall concierge, a front-desk receptionist, a hotel front desk and a companion in senior living. Most deployments cost $10 to $20 an hour, and there is no big contract.

The normal start is a 14-day pilot, and the lead time is about one week. In a 14-day pilot at American Dream mall, one robot had 2,222 guest engagements. The specs and the pricing pages have the details.

If you tell us your hours and your site, we will give you a price. Book a demo.