en.Wedoany.com Reported - In May 2026, the Chinese humanoid robot industry experienced a sharp price drop, entering the mass production scaling phase. Engineering prototypes that cost nearly one million yuan a year ago are now sold in bulk second-hand for just 50,000 yuan per batch, while new robot prices have fallen to as low as 9,998 yuan.
Data shows that in 2025, China produced approximately 15,000 humanoid robots, accounting for 90% of global output. The extremely low pricing has attracted attention from overseas media, who believe that the price advantage of Chinese humanoid robots could reshape the global manufacturing competitive landscape.
The price decline began simultaneously in both consumer-grade and industrial-grade products. 2026 is considered the first year of mass production scaling for Chinese humanoid robots, with the localization rate of the supply chain reaching 90%. Companies such as UBTech, Fourier, and Unitree have shipped large volumes, ending the inverted second-hand pricing situation seen in 2025. The Unitree G1 starts at 85,000 yuan, the R1 Air at 29,900 yuan; the Accelerated Evolution K1 series is priced at a promotional 29,900 yuan; UBTech products start at 128,000 yuan; and Songyan Power Bumi is priced as low as 9,998 yuan. The industrial-grade product, Xingchen Intelligent T1, starts at 89,900 yuan, entering the sub-100,000 yuan range for the first time.
The second-hand market has also seen significant declines. Older models from 2024 and 2025, such as the early research version of the Unitree H1 and the Fourier GR-1, originally priced between 300,000 and 800,000 yuan, now trade second-hand for 30,000 to 60,000 yuan. Due to ample production capacity, delivery times for this year's main models have been shortened to within 7 days, with second-hand prices typically at 60% to 70% of the original price. Rental rates have also dropped, from a peak daily rate of 10,000 yuan in 2025 to between 800 and 1,500 yuan.
There are four main reasons for the sharp price drop. First, supply chain reuse: humanoid robots directly adopt motors from the new energy vehicle industry and perception and computing components from the consumer electronics industry. The total material cost for the basic Unitree G1 model is only 41,600 yuan, with core joint costs at 27,500 yuan, maintaining a gross margin of approximately 40% even after price cuts. Second, the domestic substitution rate for core components has risen to between 75% and 90%. Reducers, servo systems, and controllers together account for over 70% of total costs, while the cost of hollow-cup motors has dropped to below 1,000 yuan. Data disclosed by Tesla shows that the material cost of a robot entirely without Chinese supply chain components is as high as $131,000, whereas relying on the Chinese supply chain can reduce costs to $46,000.
Third, economies of scale. In 2025, China shipped 14,400 units, with Unitree alone shipping over 5,500 units, ranking first globally. Production in 2026 is expected to reach 100,000 to 200,000 units. Fourth, strategic engineering downgrades: low-priced models have removed capabilities for extreme industrial environments, limiting single-arm loads to around 2 kilograms and battery life to 1 to 2 hours. Companies believe that hardware is becoming a standardized product, with barriers lying in large models and proprietary algorithms; price cuts can place products in real-world scenarios to gather training data.
The fundamental reason for the significant price reduction of Chinese humanoid robots lies in the foundation of China's manufacturing industry: cross-industry supply chain reuse combined with a high localization rate compresses costs to the level of ordinary large household appliances. In 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology explicitly stated that China should achieve mass production of humanoid robots by 2025 and make them a new engine for economic growth by 2027. Data released by the International Federation of Robotics in May shows that China's manufacturing sector has approximately 2 million operational industrial robots, about 4.5 times that of Japan. Ding Han, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Academic Committee of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, publicly stated that in the past, AI processed information such as text and documents, but now it must enter the real physical world—a paradigm shift of AI moving from the virtual to the real. On the external front, U.S. lawmakers proposed a bipartisan bill in March, citing security risks to ban federal agencies from using Chinese-made humanoid robots. From nearly one million yuan to less than 10,000 yuan, Chinese humanoid robots have completed a sharp price drop in just one year, with domestic substitution of core components and industrial collaboration being key factors.
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