# The $20,000 body: what NEO's price actually buys > 1X is the first company to put a humanoid in front of households with a real price and a real order button. Read the small print and you are buying two things: a machine, and a person somewhere else. Published: 2026-09-05 Section: Explainer Author: Geert Jan van Vlastuin, Editor, humanoid.observer Canonical: https://humanoid.observer/blog/the-20000-dollar-body/ Licence: editorial text all rights reserved. The underlying data is CC BY 4.0 at https://humanoid.observer/data/. Cite as: humanoid.observer, https://humanoid.observer/blog/the-20000-dollar-body/, accessed . --- Every other humanoid on our list is sold to a company, a lab or a school. NEO is sold to you. On 28 October 2025, [1X](/companies/1x/) opened preorders for [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) at $20,000, or $499 a month on subscription, with $200 refundable to hold a place and deliveries stated to start in 2026 in the United States. That alone puts it in a category of one: it is the first humanoid marketed directly to households at a published price. ## The order sheet NEO's buy record is the most complete we hold: a price, a monthly rate, a deposit, a warranty and a delivery window. No other maker among our 42 buy records states a warranty. | Item | What 1X states | |---|---| | Purchase price | $20,000 | | Subscription | $499 a month | | Deposit | $200, refundable | | Warranty | Three years on the Early Access purchase | | Lead time | US deliveries stated to start in 2026 | | Ships to | United States only | | Configurations | One | Two things stand out. The price is official, meaning it appears on 1X's own page, not in a press report; only 8 of the 35 prices in our records can say that. And there is one configuration. No EDU tier, no hands upgrade, no compute option. Compare the [Unitree G1 ladder](/blog/unitree-g1-cheap-one-cannot-run-your-code/), where headline and developer price are $30,400 apart. ## What the money buys The machine is 165 cm tall and about 30 kg, tendon-driven, with five-finger hands, a stated payload of 25 kg and a stated runtime of four hours, dressed in a soft knitted suit. A light, padded robot with compliant tendons can be let near a child or a glass table, which is the entire point of a home machine. It will not lift your washing machine, and 1X does not claim it will. What 1X does not publish matters too. Our record holds no joint count, no compute specification and no sensor list for NEO. The software is named (the 1X Redwood model and the 1X World Model); the hardware is described in prose. The money also buys a service. NEO ships with what 1X calls Expert Mode: with the owner's permission, 1X staff can take over the robot remotely and do the task it cannot yet do on its own. Our record marks NEO's teleoperation as yes, not partial. Reviewers at launch, the Wall Street Journal among them, reported that most of the household chores demonstrated were driven this way. 1X has been unusually open about it; the industry norm is to let the launch video imply autonomy and clarify later. ## How 1X got here 1X was founded in Norway in 2014 as Halodi Robotics, renamed in 2023, and now sits in Palo Alto with engineering in Moss, Norway. Its first humanoid, [EVE](/robots/1x-eve/), was a wheeled machine that patrolled buildings for ADT Commercial and collected training data; it is discontinued. NEO is the third generation of the legged line, after [NEO Beta](/robots/1x-neo-beta/) on 30 August 2024 and [NEO Gamma](/robots/1x-neo-gamma/) on 21 February 2025. The money is on record: a $23.5 million Series A on 23 March 2023 led by the OpenAI Startup Fund with Tiger Global, then a $100 million Series B on 11 January 2024 led by EQT Ventures for the NEO programme. In September 2025 it was reported that 1X was seeking up to $1 billion at a valuation above $10 billion ahead of the launch. We have not verified that the round closed, and 28 October reads as a fundraising event too. ## The cheaper home machine, and why it is cheaper Join our buy records with the home category and two machines come out: NEO at $20,000, and [Weave Isaac 1](/robots/weave-isaac-1/) at $7,999 or $449 a month with a $250 refundable deposit, first California deliveries stated for autumn 2026. Isaac 1 is 167 cm tall but rolls on a wheeled base instead of walking, which is why it costs $12,001 less. Its teleoperation is marked partial: Weave has said remote operators help with tasks the robot cannot finish alone. A third home machine, [Clone Alpha](/robots/clone-alpha/), takes preorders with no public price. NEO is the only full-size walking humanoid a household can order with a price attached; the rest is in [our home guide](/blog/humanoid-robots-for-your-home-what-you-can-actually-get/). ## What that means for a buyer For the first year at least you are buying a body in your house that a person elsewhere can inhabit. Whether that is a robot or a telepresence rig depends on how fast the autonomy arrives. Read charitably, $499 a month buys a technology that will improve underneath you. Read coldly, it is a remote operator's time spread across many homes. Three things to have answered before paying the deposit: - **How much of a typical day is autonomous now**, in minutes, not in a video. - **Who the operators are and where they sit.** A camera in your kitchen with a human on the other end is a privacy arrangement, and the launch set off a public debate on exactly that. - **What the delivery window actually is.** "2026" is a year, not a date, and this industry slips. ## Where it sits in the record NEO scores 59 out of 100 on our scale, fifth among the 44 machines you can order today. Buyability is 20 out of 20: official price, official store, subscription, stated delivery window. Proof is 4 out of 10: a 2025 home alpha in the houses of employees and early users in the US and Norway, largely teleoperated for data collection, and a consumer deployment that is announced, not delivered. No unit numbers, no named customers, because there cannot be any before the first deliveries in 2026. If you want a humanoid in your house this year and a seller who says plainly what it can and cannot do, this is the honest offer on the market. If you expected $20,000 to buy an autonomous housekeeper, it does not, and the company is the first to say so. ## Sources - [NEO](https://www.1x.tech/neo), 1X Technologies - [1X Technologies](https://www.1x.tech/), 1X Technologies - [1X newsroom](https://www.1x.tech/discover), 1X Technologies - [Humanoid robots for sale: 2026 guide](https://theresarobotforthat.com/blog/humanoid-robots-for-sale/), There's A Robot For That - [Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot](https://thenextweb.com/news/weave-robotics-isaac-1-home-robot), The Next Web