1X NEO price and where to buy

The short version

NEO costs $20,000 to buy or $499 a month on subscription, and both start with a $200 deposit that 1X calls fully refundable (1X order page, checked November 2026). The price has not changed since preorders opened on October 28, 2025 (1X launch page). Deliveries are US only in 2026. 1X says international expansion starts in 2027.

What the price buys is less clear than the number. NEO arrives with some autonomy and a human backup: for chores it has not learned, a 1X operator can take over remotely. That shapes who should buy now and who should wait, which is most of what this page covers.

What the two options include

	Early Access (buy)	Standard (subscribe)
Price	$20,000 once	$499 per month
Deposit	$200, refundable	$200, refundable
Warranty	3 years	Not stated on the order page
Support	Premium support	Not stated
Software	Not stated	“Starter Productivity Package”
Delivery	Priority, 2026	Standard, after Early Access
In the box	Charger, lint roller, case	Same robot
Region	US	US

Source: 1X order page. Things the order page does not say: sales tax, delivery or setup fees, the subscription’s minimum term, whether repairs are included in the subscription, and what happens to the robot if you cancel. Ask 1X for these in writing before you pay anything beyond the deposit.

The hardware is the same either way. 1X lists NEO at 5 ft 6 in and 66 lb, with 22 degrees of freedom per hand, an 842 Wh battery and about 4 hours of runtime per charge (1X NEO specs). Colors are tan, gray and dark brown (1X). Our full spec sheet and evidence grade are on the 1X NEO profile.

Is $20,000 a fair price for the hardware?

On parts alone, NEO looks cheap. Bank of America Global Research estimates the bill of materials of a typical China-built humanoid at about $35,000 in 2025, and says small pilot batches cost $90,000 to $100,000 in parts (BofA Institute, March 2026). 1X builds NEO in California, makes its own motors, batteries, structures and sensors (The Next Web), and still asks $20,000.

There are two plausible reasons, and both are our reading of the evidence, not 1X statements.

First, NEO is a lighter robot than the industrial humanoids those estimates describe. At 66 lb it weighs about half as much as a 61 kg Figure 03 and is built to carry 55 lb, not to lift car parts all day. Smaller joints need smaller, cheaper actuators, which BofA expects to make up more than half of a humanoid’s parts cost by 2030.

Second, the early units are partly a data business. Every Expert Mode session teaches 1X’s models a new task in a real home, and Børnich has said plainly that the product improves with owners’ data. A price set below cost to get 10,000 robots into homes would make sense for a company that SoftBank was reported to value at about $6 billion.

Either way, the compute inside is serious. 1X lists NVIDIA Jetson Thor as the onboard computer (1X), a module whose developer kit alone launched at $3,499 (CNX Software).

The teleoperation and privacy question

This is the part of the price that matters most and that the order page says least about.

1X describes the feature this way: “For complex tasks NEO doesn’t know, an Expert from 1X can remotely supervise its actions at scheduled times to help it learn new abilities and get the job done” (1X). In practice the operator wears a VR headset and sees through NEO’s cameras. At launch, CEO Bernt Børnich told Engadget: “If we don’t have your data, we can’t make the product better.” Wall Street Journal columnist Joanna Stern reported that as of October 2025, most tasks she saw were teleoperated (summary on Wikipedia).

The controls 1X has described, according to Engadget and Startup Fortune:

• Owners schedule and approve every remote session. Operators cannot take control without permission.
• People can be blurred from the operator’s view.
• Owners can set no-go zones that the robot and its operators cannot enter.
• A light ring around NEO’s “ear” glows when a human is in control.

What we could not verify: data retention periods, where footage is stored, and whether any of these controls has been tested by an outside party. 1X’s own product page lists the questions “Do I need to share my data for NEO to work?” and “How will 1X use my data?” but we could not read the answers on the public page. Read 1X’s privacy policy before you go past the deposit stage.

How we score this: our methodology credits a robot only for tasks shown without hidden remote control, so NEO’s autonomy score on the leaderboard is lower than its spec sheet would suggest. The price you pay today is partly for a robot and partly for a remote service that trains it.

3-year cost of ownership: buy vs subscribe

This is our estimate. The 1X prices are official; every other line is an assumption we state so you can change it.

Cost over 36 months	Buy (Early Access)	Subscribe (Standard)
Robot	$20,000	$17,964 (36 x $499)
Sales tax (assumed 7%)	$1,400	$1,257 if taxed
Electricity (assumed 2 full charges a day at $0.18/kWh, about $110 a year)	$330	$330
Repairs	$0 (inside 3-year warranty)	Unknown, not stated
Cost of cash (assumed 4% a year on $20,000)	about $2,500	$0
Estimated 3-year total	about $24,200	about $19,550
What you hold at month 36	A robot of uncertain resale value	Nothing

Three things fall out of the table:

1. The subscription wins for three years. The two options cross at about 40 months on sticker price alone ($20,000 / $499). Add the cost of tying up $20,000 and the break-even moves past four years.
2. Ownership wins only if NEO stays useful past the warranty. After month 36 you pay for repairs yourself, and 1X has published no repair prices.
3. Buying gets you the robot sooner. Early Access buyers are first in line. If being early matters to you, that is what the extra money pays for.

Resale value is a real unknown. No used NEO market exists yet, and the robot depends on 1X’s cloud and remote experts to do new tasks.

Delivery timeline so far

Date	What happened	Source
Oct 28, 2025	Preorders open: $20,000 or $499 a month, $200 deposit	1X
Within 5 days	1X says first-year capacity of 10,000 units booked	1X factory post
Apr 30, 2026	Full production starts at the 58,000 sq ft Hayward, California factory; 1X targets 100,000+ units a year by end of 2027	The Next Web
Spring 2026	1X tells buyers “some of you will get your NEO this year, some will get them later” and that 1X employees get early units	1X factory post
Aug 26, 2026	SoftBank reported in talks for a majority stake at about a $6 billion valuation	Euronext / The Information
Mid-Oct 2026	No independently verified delivery to a customer outside 1X’s early-access program	Startup Fortune
Nov 2026	Order page still shows $20,000 / $499 and “US Deliveries start 2026”	1X order page

If you order today, assume the subscription queue lands in 2027 or later. 1X has given no date for standard delivery. We update this table when a verified customer delivery is reported; our news feed carries the dated reports.

Will the NEO price drop?

Not soon, on the evidence we have. The $20,000 and $499 figures have not moved in the year since launch, and with the first year of production booked, 1X has no reason to cut. The longer view is more hopeful. 1X wants to build more than 100,000 units a year by the end of 2027 (1X factory post), and Goldman Sachs, as reported in September 2026, expects average humanoid selling prices to fall about 6% a year through 2035 (BigGo Finance). A lower-priced NEO, or a cheaper subscription tier, is a reasonable thing to expect once the San Carlos plant is running. Nobody at 1X has promised one. We log every change on this page’s price history and in the humanoid robot price index.

Costs nobody has priced yet

A few running costs could change the math, and 1X has not published numbers for any of them:

• Repairs after year three. Owners pay once the warranty ends. No parts or labor prices exist yet.
• Connectivity. NEO lists Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 5G. If 5G use needs a data plan, that is a monthly cost.
• Future software. The subscription includes a “Starter” package, which suggests paid tiers above it.
• Insurance. Check whether your home or renter’s policy covers a $20,000 robot, and whether it covers damage the robot causes.

Who NEO suits, and who should wait

NEO suits you if you want to be among the first households with a humanoid, you are comfortable with a scheduled remote operator in your home, and you treat the first year as a paid beta. People who like training a product and filing feedback will get the most out of it. So will anyone who values the light chores it does on its own (fetching items, opening doors, tidying) more than the $499 a month.

You should wait if you need dependable, unsupervised chore help, if remote viewing of your home is a deal breaker, or if you live outside the US. Waiting costs you little: the deposit is refundable, the price has not moved in a year, and competitors are due to publish home pricing over the next two years.

Alternatives and what they cost

No other home humanoid has a price you can pay today. The closest options:

Robot	Price	Status	Fits a home?
Figure 03	$400 to $600 a month lease floated by CEO Brett Adcock in May 2026 (Humanoids Daily)	No home product or preorder	Designed for it, not offered
Tesla Optimus	$20,000 to $30,000 long-term target (Musk)	No orders, no waitlist	Not yet
MenteeBot V3	About $20,000 expected shelf price (Ynet)	Pre-commercial	Planned
Unitree R1	From $4,900 (R1 Air) and $5,900 (Unitree shop)	Buy now	A developer toy; no chore software
Unitree G1	$13,500 base (Unitree shop)	Buy now, backordered	Research platform; base cannot be programmed

Unitree’s robots are cheaper and ship now, but they come with no household skills; you would be writing the software yourself. For a head-to-head on specs and evidence, see 1X NEO vs Figure 03 and 1X NEO vs Unitree G1. The wider picture is on our humanoid robots for home list and the humanoid robot price hub.

Before you pay the balance

• Get the full delivered price in writing, with tax, delivery and any setup fee.
• For the subscription, ask for the minimum term, the cancellation fee, whether repairs and parts are covered, and who owns the robot at the end.
• Ask what happens to your data if you cancel, and how long recordings from Expert Mode sessions are kept.
• Ask whether NEO keeps working if 1X’s cloud service is down or the company changes owner.
• Check the warranty: what counts as damage, and who pays for shipping a broken robot.
• Confirm the delivery quarter, not just the year.