Open-source humanoids: what you can actually build
24 of the 182 humanoids on record call themselves open source. 15 publish hardware files and software, 3 name a licence, 12 can be ordered, and none of the four on preorder has any autonomy evidence yet.
“Open source” on a humanoid spec sheet covers everything from a full set of CAD files, a bill of materials and training code, to a software kit for a body you are not allowed to open. Our database flags 24 of 182 robots as open source. Per each record’s note on what is released: 15 publish hardware files and software. 3 publish software or documentation and sell the hardware as a kit. 1 releases an “open-source edition” of a product that stays proprietary. 5 say they are open and give no detail.
What “open” means on each record
The 15 with both are the ones a lab can reproduce. Berkeley Humanoid Lite from UC Berkeley put hardware, firmware, simulation and training code on GitHub in April 2025, with 3D printed cycloidal gearboxes and a bill of materials under $5,000. ToddlerBot from Stanford released hardware, firmware and learning code in February 2025 for a 56 cm, 3.4 kg, 30-DOF machine at about $6,000 in parts. Fourier N1 published CAD, a bill of materials and software under an open licence in April 2025. iCub from IIT has had open designs and software since 2008.
The 3 software-and-kit records are BRUCE from UCLA, open control software with the hardware sold as a kit by Westwood Robotics at an unpublished price, and two Robotis machines, ROBOTIS OP3 and the discontinued THORMANG3, which publish software and documentation rather than drawings. Their ancestor DARwIn-OP released drawings, electronics and code in December 2010.
Leju Kuavo is the one-off: an open-source edition of Kuavo 4.0 came out in December 2024 and the full product is proprietary. The 5 with no detail are HopeJR, Z-Bot, Tiangong 2.0, Roboy and Qinglong, whose note says only that it was released under the OpenLoong program. Reachy 2 has no note on the robot record; its price record says fully open-source hardware and software.
Only 3 of the 24 name a licence. iCub says GPL and similar. InMoov releases its files under a Creative Commons non-commercial licence, which matters if you planned to sell what you print. Poppy Humanoid from Inria uses Creative Commons and GPL. The other 21 say “open licences” or nothing: find the licence file before you build.
The 24, in one table
Height, weight and joint count come from the records where they exist: 12 give a height, 10 a weight and 14 a DOF figure. A bill of materials is marked as such.
| Machine | Maker | Open per the record | cm / kg / DOF | Price in data | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lingxi X1 | AgiBot | Structural design and software framework on GitHub | 130 / 33 / 29 | No fixed price | In stock |
| Fourier N1 | Fourier | CAD, BOM and software, open licence | 130 / 38 / 23 | $40,000 via distributor | In stock |
| Kuavo | Leju | Open-source edition of Kuavo 4.0; product proprietary | n.a. | No verified price | In stock |
| Qinglong | Humanoid Robots (Shanghai) | OpenLoong program, no detail | 185 / 80 / 43 | None | In stock |
| Reachy 2 | Pollen Robotics | Hardware and software, per price record | Wheeled base, n.a. | $70,000 to $75,000; $38,000 one arm | Built to order |
| ROBOTIS OP3 | Robotis | Software and hardware documentation | 51 / 3.5 / 20 | Low five figures, ask Robotis | In stock |
| Tiangong 1.0 | X-Humanoid | Design and software, Tiangong Open Source | 163 / 43 / n.a. | None | In stock |
| Tiangong 2.0 | X-Humanoid | No detail | n.a. | None | In stock |
| HopeJR | Hugging Face | No detail; sold as an arms-and-hands kit | n.a. / n.a. / 66 | $3,000 target | Preorder |
| K-Bot | K-Scale Labs | Hardware, firmware and software, open licences | n.a. | Developer pricing, unverified | Preorder |
| Z-Bot | K-Scale Labs | No detail | n.a. | $999 | Preorder |
| Reachy Mini | Pollen Robotics | Hardware and software | 28 / n.a. / n.a. | $299 Lite, $449 wireless | Preorder |
| BRUCE | UCLA | Software; hardware as a kit from Westwood Robotics | n.a. / n.a. / 16 | Kit price not public | Enterprise only |
| iCub | IIT | Hardware designs and software, GPL and similar | 104 / 33 / 53 | Historically around EUR 250,000 | Enterprise only |
| Berkeley Humanoid Lite | UC Berkeley | Hardware and software, open licences | n.a. / n.a. / 22 | BOM under $5,000 | Not for sale |
| HECTOR | USC | Simulation and designs on GitHub | n.a. | None | Not for sale |
| HumanPlus | Stanford | Code and hardware modifications on a Unitree H1 | n.a. / n.a. / 33 | None | Not for sale |
| InMoov | InMoov | Files, Creative Commons non-commercial | Upper body; 5-DOF hands | Parts $1,500 to $3,000 | Not for sale |
| NimbRo-OP2X | University of Bonn | CAD and software on GitHub | 135 / n.a. / 18 | None | Not for sale |
| Poppy Humanoid | Inria | Creative Commons and GPL | 83 / 3.5 / 25 | Kits were several thousand euros | Not for sale |
| Roboy | Devanthro | No detail | n.a. | None | Not for sale |
| ToddlerBot | Stanford | Hardware, firmware and learning code on GitHub | 56 / 3.4 / 30 | BOM about $6,000 | Not for sale |
| DARwIn-OP | Robotis | Mechanical drawings, electronics and code | 45.5 / 2.9 / 20 | About $12,000 at launch | Discontinued |
| THORMANG3 | Robotis | Software and documentation | 137 / 42 / 29 | Not public | Discontinued |
Half of them come from universities
11 of the 24 come from a university or research institute: Berkeley, UCLA, USC, Stanford twice, Bonn, IIT, Inria, and the Chinese state innovation centres in Shanghai and Beijing behind Qinglong, Tiangong 1.0 and Tiangong 2.0. The other 13 come from companies: three from Robotis, two each from K-Scale Labs and Pollen Robotics, one each from AgiBot, Fourier, Hugging Face, Leju and Devanthro, plus InMoov, one sculptor and the people who print his files.
Five are 3D printed by design: Berkeley Humanoid Lite, ToddlerBot, InMoov, Poppy and NimbRo-OP2X, the 135 cm RoboCup machine from the University of Bonn. Here “open” means you can make one. InMoov’s record says thousands of builders have downloaded the files since 2012 and puts the parts at roughly $1,500 to $3,000, for a life-size upper body with 5-DOF tendon hands on hobby servos and Arduino boards. Poppy’s kits were once sold by Generation Robots for several thousand euros; it walks with light assistance. The two 2025 machines have learned locomotion: the Berkeley Lite paper shows walking and a whole-body policy, the ToddlerBot paper walking, push-ups and manipulation trained from teleoperated demonstrations.
Two machines people assume are open are not, per the record. The original Berkeley Humanoid of July 2024, 85 cm and 16 kg at a reported build cost under $10,000, published design details in its paper and left the open release to the Lite. The MIT Humanoid has no open-source flag at all: a research prototype, not for sale.
What you can order, and what it has proved
12 of the 24 can be ordered: 8 in stock and 4 on preorder. That is 12 of the 44 orderable humanoids in the database, about a quarter by count. Only 5 of the 12 have a verified price record: Reachy Mini at $299 tethered or $449 wireless, Z-Bot at $999, HopeJR at $3,000, Fourier N1 at $40,000 through the distributor Robotopian, and Reachy 2 at $70,000 to $75,000 built to order, or $38,000 for a stationary one-arm version. The four Chinese platforms in stock, Lingxi X1, Qinglong, Tiangong 1.0 and Tiangong 2.0, have no public price; neither does Kuavo. K-Bot is on preorder with developer pricing we could not verify.
Now look at what those 12 have proved. 6 have something in the autonomy evidence field: Lingxi X1 with walking demos and university use, N1 with over 1,000 hours of outdoor walking claimed by Fourier, Kuavo finishing the Beijing half marathon in April 2025, Qinglong with walking, stair and manipulation demos at WAIC, OP3 playing autonomous RoboCup soccer, and Tiangong running at 6 km/h at launch. Five of those six are marked partial teleoperation; OP3 is marked no. The other 6 have nothing there, including all 4 on preorder. Reachy 2 is built for VR teleoperation: teleoperation yes, autonomy evidence empty. HopeJR is built for leader-follower teleoperation with exoskeleton arms and gloves; our price record calls it arms and hands sold as a kit, not a finished robot. Reachy Mini is a 28 cm head and torso with no arms.
Two of the 12 appear in our deployment records, both marked unclear: Kuavo’s factory training work with BAIC, and Tiangong pilots in Beijing with no named commercial deployment verified. The third open machine with a deployment record is iCub: more than 30 copies in laboratories in Europe, the US and Asia according to IIT, enterprise only, historically around EUR 250,000.
Open SDK, closed body
Ten more records describe a different kind of open: software you can call, on hardware you cannot change. 8 carry a note saying so and 2 mention an SDK in the software field. This is where most of the research fleet lives.
| Machine | cm / kg / DOF | What is open | Price in data | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unitree G1 | 132 / 35 / 23 | SDK, URDF models and RL environments; hardware is not | $13,500 standard, closed to your code; $43,900 EDU with SDK | In stock, backordered |
| Unitree H1 | 180 / 47 / 19 | SDK and RL training code | From $90,000, sales conversation | Enterprise only |
| Unitree H1-2 | 180 / 70 / 27 | Same SDK family as H1 and G1 | Quote only | Enterprise only |
| Booster T1 | 118 / 30 / 23 | SDK open; hardware proprietary | $29,800 basic, $50,925 with grippers | In stock via distributors |
| EngineAI PM01 | 138 / 40 / 24 | Open interfaces and SDK; hardware proprietary | $13,700 | In stock, Chinese marketplaces |
| LimX TRON 1 | 85 / 20 / n.a. | Open SDK, RL examples | $15,000 reported | In stock |
| Rainbow RB-Y1 | n.a. / n.a. / 24 | SDK is open source | No public price | In stock |
| IHMC Nadia | n.a. | IHMC control software is open | Research platform | Not for sale |
| HRP-2 | 154 / 58 / 30 | OpenHRP control software was open | Several hundred thousand dollars, historical | Discontinued |
The Unitree G1 is the case that matters, and we have written it up in Unitree G1: why the cheap one cannot run your code. The short version: the SDK, URDF and RL environments are open, the $13,500 machine will not run your code, and the EDU that will starts at $43,900. The Booster T1 from Booster Robotics is the same deal at $29,800: open SDK, proprietary body, autonomous soccer at RoboCup 2025. You get a body that walks on day one and a user base that has already hit the bugs. You do not get the drawings, and when an actuator dies you buy the maker’s.
The comparison inside the data is direct. Fourier N1 at $40,000 gives you the CAD, the BOM and the training code for a 130 cm, 38 kg, 23-DOF body. The G1 EDU at $43,900 gives you the SDK, the hands and the Jetson for a 132 cm, 35 kg, 23-DOF body you cannot modify. Same size and price, opposite ideas of what you are paying for. HumanPlus shows the third way: Stanford took a closed Unitree H1, added hands, released the code and the modifications, and trained shoe-wearing and folding from shadowed demonstrations. Open research on a closed base is how most papers get written.
Build, kit or SDK
Build from files if you have a printer, a small workshop and time, and your goal is to understand the machine or change it. Berkeley Humanoid Lite, under $5,000 in parts with a paper behind it, is the benchmark; ToddlerBot at about $6,000 adds manipulation and a teleoperation pipeline; InMoov at $1,500 to $3,000 is an upper body for a school or a maker, on a non-commercial licence. All three are not for sale, because you are the factory.
Buy a kit if you want open hardware without the printing. Reachy Mini at $299 is a head on a desk and the cheapest door into the Hugging Face stack. Z-Bot at $999 and HopeJR at $3,000 are preorders from companies that publish their designs and have shown no autonomous work. OP3 is the proven one: 51 cm, 3.5 kg, 20 DOF, a ROS-based open framework, in stock at a price you ask for. Reachy 2 at $70,000 is the only full open stack sold assembled, and it rolls rather than walks.
Buy closed hardware with an SDK if what you need is a body that already walks and a fleet of other users: the G1 EDU at $43,900, the T1 at $29,800, the PM01 at $13,700 or the TRON 1 at $15,000. Then read the licence on that SDK too, and count the repair path: an open machine you fix with a printer, a closed one with a purchase order. Decide which you are set up for before you decide on the robot.
AgiBot Lingxi X1
Lingxi X1 is AgiBot's open-source humanoid, with design files and a software framework published in 2024 to seed a developer ecosystem.
Berkeley Humanoid Lite
Berkeley Humanoid Lite is a fully open source, 3D printed, mid sized humanoid from UC Berkeley intended to make humanoid research accessible. All hardware, firmware, simulation and training code are public and the parts cost under 5,000 dollars. It uses 3D printed cycloidal actuators that can be rebuilt after failure.
BRUCE
BRUCE is a kid size bipedal robot developed at UCLA's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory under Dennis Hong, with proprioceptive actuators and an open software stack intended for dynamic locomotion research. Westwood Robotics sells it as a research kit. It follows RoMeLa's earlier open platforms such as DARwIn-OP.
DARwIn-OP
DARwIn-OP (Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence, Open Platform) is a 45 cm open hardware and open software humanoid developed by Virginia Tech's RoMeLa lab with Purdue, Penn and Robotis under a US National Science Foundation grant. Released in late 2010, it became the standard kid size platform in RoboCup and in university teaching. Robotis productised it and followed with OP2 and OP3.
Fourier N1
N1 is Fourier's open-source humanoid: the company published the bill of materials, CAD files, actuator specs and training code. It is 130 cm tall and aimed at developers and universities.
HECTOR
HECTOR is a small open source humanoid developed by Quan Nguyen's Dynamic Robotics and Control Laboratory at the University of Southern California for research on model predictive control and learning based locomotion. Its simulation environment and designs are public. It is one of several university platforms built to make humanoid control research reproducible.
HopeJR
HopeJR is a low-cost open-source humanoid announced by Hugging Face with The Robot Studio in May 2025, with 66 degrees of freedom and a target price of about USD 3,000. It is aimed at hobbyists and researchers using Hugging Face's LeRobot library.
HumanPlus
HumanPlus is a Stanford research system in which a Unitree H1 humanoid with added hands learns from human motion data and then shadows a human operator seen by a single camera. Demonstrations collected this way are used to train autonomous skills such as putting on shoes and folding clothes. The code and hardware modifications are open source.
iCub
iCub is the open-source child-sized humanoid developed by the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genoa from the EU RobotCub project (2004 to 2010). With 53 DoF and full-body tactile skin, it became a standard platform for cognitive robotics research, with dozens of units in labs worldwide. iCub3, a larger 125 cm version, was introduced in 2021.
InMoov
InMoov is a life size, 3D printable open source humanoid started in 2012 by French sculptor Gael Langevin. Its upper body, hands and head can be printed on a desktop printer and driven by hobby servos and Arduino boards. It is the most widely built open source humanoid and a common school and maker project.
K-Bot
K-Bot is the open-source full-size humanoid from K-Scale Labs, a Palo Alto startup founded in 2024 by Benjamin Bolte. It is sold as a developer platform with published hardware and software and is intended to seed an open humanoid ecosystem.
Leju Kuavo
Kuavo is the humanoid line of Leju Robotics, a Shenzhen company in the Huawei ecosystem. Kuavo 4.0 was released with open-source components in December 2024.
NimbRo-OP2X
NimbRo-OP2X is an open source, largely 3D printed, adult size humanoid from the Autonomous Intelligent Systems group at the University of Bonn led by Sven Behnke. It is the third generation of the NimbRo-OP line that started in 2012 and has won multiple RoboCup Humanoid League adult size titles. Hardware designs and software are public.
Poppy Humanoid
Poppy Humanoid is an 83 cm, 3D printed open source humanoid developed at the Inria Flowers team in Bordeaux by Matthieu Lapeyre and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer. It was created to study the role of body morphology in walking and became an education and art platform. Designs and the pypot software are fully open.
Qinglong (OpenLoong)
Qinglong is the 185 cm open-source humanoid of the Shanghai national humanoid robot innovation center, released as the OpenLoong platform at WAIC 2024.
Reachy 2
Reachy 2 is an open-source humanoid with two arms, an expressive head and a mobile base from Pollen Robotics of Bordeaux, designed for VR teleoperation and AI research. Hugging Face acquired Pollen in April 2025 and sells Reachy 2 alongside its LeRobot software.
ROBOTIS OP3
ROBOTIS OP3 is the third generation of the open platform humanoid line that started with DARwIn-OP. It is a 51 cm, 3.5 kg kid size research robot with 20 degrees of freedom, an Intel NUC and a ROS based open source software stack. It is used in RoboCup and in teaching labs worldwide.
Roboy
Roboy was created at the University of Zurich's AI Lab in 2013 as a tendon-driven humanoid mimicking human musculature, and later developed at TU Munich as Roboy 2.0 and 3.0. It is the research origin of Devanthro's Robody telepresence robots.
THORMANG3
THORMANG3 is a modular full size humanoid built by Robotis from its Dynamixel Pro actuators and released in 2015 for research teams, including at the DARPA Robotics Challenge finals. It runs an open source ROS framework and was sold to universities worldwide. It represents the DRC era of modular research humanoids.
Tiangong 1.0
Tiangong was presented as the first full-size electric humanoid able to run, and released as an open platform by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center in April 2024.
Tiangong 2.0
Tiangong 2.0 is the 2025 update of the Beijing open humanoid platform, released together with the Huisi Kaiwu software stack.
ToddlerBot
ToddlerBot is a 56 cm, 3.4 kg open source humanoid from Stanford University designed as a low cost platform for machine learning research on locomotion and manipulation. It has 30 degrees of freedom, is built from 3D printed parts and Dynamixel servos, and includes a full simulation and teleoperation pipeline. Everything needed to build it is public.
Z-Bot
Z-Bot is K-Scale Labs' small, low-cost open-source humanoid, sold from 2025 as a developer and education kit for about USD 999.
Reachy Mini
Reachy Mini is a desktop-size expressive robot head and torso from Pollen Robotics, now part of Hugging Face. It is not a walking humanoid, it is the cheapest legitimate way to start building with the open embodied-AI stack that runs on its full-size sibling Reachy 2.
Berkeley Humanoid
Berkeley Humanoid is a mid sized, low cost bipedal research robot from UC Berkeley's Hybrid Robotics Lab, presented in a July 2024 paper as a reliable platform for learning based control. It was designed to be built and repaired by a small team and to survive many falls. It led to the fully open source Berkeley Humanoid Lite in 2025.
MIT Humanoid
The MIT Humanoid is a small, high power bipedal robot from Sangbae Kim's Biomimetic Robotics Lab, built around the proprioceptive actuators of the MIT Cheetah quadrupeds. It was designed for dynamic and acrobatic behaviour such as jumping and flipping. It has served as a testbed for learning based locomotion.
Unitree G1
G1 is Unitree's compact humanoid, announced in May 2024 at USD 16,000 and now listed at USD 13,500. Its low price and open SDK made it the default research and education humanoid worldwide. Read the configuration carefully: the standard machine does not support your own code, and the EDU version that does starts at USD 43,900.
Unitree H1
H1 is Unitree's first full-size humanoid, revealed in August 2023. It set a walking speed of 3.3 m/s and performed the first standing backflip by a full-size electric humanoid in March 2024. Sixteen H1 units danced on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in January 2025.
Unitree H1-2
H1-2 is the second iteration of the full-size H1 line with 27 degrees of freedom (six per leg, seven per arm, one waist joint) and support for dexterous hands. It is mainly a research platform.
Booster T1
Booster T1 is a 1.18 m robust humanoid built for research and robot soccer. Its ability to survive falls made it popular with university RoboCup teams.
EngineAI PM01
PM01 is EngineAI's 1.38 m humanoid sold at CNY 88,000, with a design that includes a chest display. It was the first humanoid shown doing a standing front flip.
LimX TRON 1
TRON 1 is a legs-only biped research platform whose feet can be swapped between point, flat and wheeled configurations. It is one of the lower-cost legged research robots.
Rainbow Robotics RB-Y1
RB-Y1 is a wheeled two-armed humanoid platform from Rainbow Robotics with 7-DOF arms and a 6-DOF torso, aimed at embodied AI research.
Nadia
Nadia is a humanoid developed by the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition with Boardwalk Robotics for research in whole-body teleoperation and dynamic walking. It follows IHMC's long involvement with Atlas and Valkyrie in the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
HRP-2 Promet
HRP-2, designed with Kawada Industries and styled by anime designer Yutaka Izubuchi, was the workhorse humanoid of the Japanese Humanoid Robotics Project and of labs such as LAAS-CNRS.
Sources
- 01Berkeley Humanoid LiteUC Berkeley
- 02ToddlerBotStanford University
- 03InMoovInMoov
- 04Poppy HumanoidPoppy Project
- 05ROBOTIS OPRobotis
- 06Fourier N1 open source pageFourier
- 07Reachy 2, the open-source humanoid for embodied AIPollen Robotics
- 08Unitree G1 product pageUnitree
Startups, automakers, universities: who builds humanoids
108 makers, nine kinds. Startups hold 37 of the 44 humanoids you can order. Automakers, universities, big tech, conglomerates and NASA hold 45 robots between them and sell none of them.
How a humanoid robot works: actuators, compute, sensors and the model
Of 182 humanoids on record, 178 say what moves the joints and 43 say what computer is inside. The further a layer sits from the metal, the less the maker tells you about it.
Humanoid races, games and fights: what the competitions proved
Our record holds 11 competition events from 1997 to 2025 and 17 machines tied to them. Six can be ordered, three at a public price, and 13 of the 17 carry a teleoperation flag of yes or partial.