Price War (Humanoid Robots)

Manufacturers repeatedly undercutting each other's prices to win share of the humanoid-robot market.

A price war is when makers of similar products repeatedly cut prices to compete for market share. The humanoid-robot price war has been clearly visible since roughly 2024: Unitree's G1 launched starting at RMB 99,000, and afterward Unitree's R1 and Songyan Power's Bumi, among others, pushed entry-level humanoid prices down to the tens of thousands of RMB, some even under RMB 10,000. Prices have come down partly through domestic supply-chain sourcing, replacing metal with plastic, and smaller designs to cut bill-of-materials cost, and partly as a bid to capture early markets like research/education and paid appearances. Lower-priced models generally have fewer degrees of freedom, less payload, and less onboard compute, and are suited to teaching and development rather than a direct price comparison with full-size factory-grade models.

ExampleAs reported, Songyan Power's Bumi, launched in October 2025, was priced at RMB 9,998, seen as the moment the humanoid-robot price war dropped below RMB 10,000.

Related

10,000-Yuan-Class Humanoid Robot · Bill of Materials Cost · Hundred-Robot War · Consumer-Grade Robot · Research & Education Market · Domestic Substitution

Sources

Price war - Wikipedia

As of

2026-09