A buying guide with a database behind it.

What we do

Two things. First, a buying guide: 44 humanoid robots you can order today, each with a price, a channel, a score out of 100 and a plain verdict. Second, the database underneath it: 182 machines from 109 makers going back to 1972, with the money, the deployments and the milestones, each with its sources.

The guide is the part most people need. The database is the part that makes the guide trustworthy, because a recommendation is only as good as the record behind it. Both are free. The data is open under CC BY 4.0; the editorial judgement is ours.

We are neutral on the facts and direct in the analysis. A demo is a demo. A deployment is a deployment. A list price that buys a machine you cannot program is not the same as a list price that does. We say which is which.

How the buying score works

Every robot gets the same treatment: capability out of 30, value out of 25, buyability out of 20, ecosystem out of 15 and proof out of 10. Value is judged inside a price bracket rather than across the whole market, so a $299 desktop robot is compared with other $299 robots. The full method, including where we overrule the arithmetic by hand, is on the method page.

What counts as a humanoid

A robot with a human-like body plan intended to work in spaces built for people: two legs or a wheeled base under a torso with two arms, and a head or sensor mast. We include upper-body platforms and wheeled humanoids when the maker positions them as general-purpose, and we include historic and research platforms because the field's history matters. We exclude quadrupeds, industrial arms, exoskeletons and animatronics without manipulation.

How the Humanoid Index is scored

The Index is a separate ranking from the buying score, and it asks a different question: not what is worth your money, but what is genuinely shipping and working. Each active product robot gets up to 100 points.

• Deployment, 0 to 50. Units at customer sites and named customers, weighted by how long they have been running. Internal use at the maker counts for less. Undisclosed numbers score low on purpose.
• Autonomy, 0 to 30. What has been shown running without teleoperation, ideally seen by someone independent. Teleoperated demos, scripted routines and edited videos score little.
• Availability, 0 to 20. A public price, an order button, a delivery date that held. "Enterprise only" scores less than "in stock", and "not for sale" scores zero.

Scores are recomputed when evidence changes. The rationale for each score is on the robot page. Retired and research-only platforms are not ranked.

The lineup

The to-scale lineup on the home and robots pages shows every robot with a documented height next to a 175 cm human reference, colour-coded by status. It exists because height is the one number every maker publishes and the one most people misjudge from press images.

Where the data comes from

Official product pages and spec sheets first, then company newsrooms, regulatory filings and reputable outlets: Reuters, Bloomberg, the Financial Times, IEEE Spectrum, The Robot Report, TechCrunch, Nikkei, SCMP and 36Kr among others. Every record carries its sources. When sources disagree we take the official figure and note the discrepancy. When there is no source, the field stays empty.

Who writes this

Geert Jan van Vlastuin is the editor of humanoid.observer. He built the database and the scoring, checks the prices, writes the verdicts on the robot pages and the articles in News & Blog. "We" on this site is him, plus the sources every record carries. He has no stake in any of the companies covered. Reach him at hello@humanoid.observer. His other work is at geertjan.net.

Corrections

Write to hello@humanoid.observer with a public source. Sourced corrections are applied within 24 hours and logged in the record's sources.

Independence

We take no commission on any sale, run no affiliate links, hold no positions in these companies and accept no payment for placement or coverage. Links to sellers are marked nofollow. If that ever changes, it will say so here first and on every page it touches.

Image and video credits

Robot images on record pages are official press material or Wikimedia Commons files, credited on the image. Ambient video: "Person wearing prosthetic arm" by cottonbro studio, "A black and white image of a grid" by Nicola Narracci, "Dynamic black polygonal abstract animation" by Chandresh Uike and "Humanoid robot moving" by The Instagrapher, all via Pexels. Type: Bricolage Grotesque, Geist and Geist Mono.

Records: 182 robots, 109 companies, 69 rounds, 52 deployments, 111 events. Version 0.1, updated 2026-09-04.