1X Technologies NEO
The 1X NEO is a full-size home humanoid robot from Norwegian-American company 1X. You can reserve one now for a $200 deposit; it costs $20,000 outright or $499/month, with first US home deliveries in late 2026. It walks on two legs, is wrapped in a soft knitted suit for safety, and does light chores — though for anything tricky a remote human "expert" still takes over.
What is the 1X Technologies NEO?
If you've been waiting for the moment a humanoid robot actually shows up at a normal person's front door, the 1X NEO is the closest thing to that moment in 2026. It isn't a factory machine dressed up for a keynote — 1X built it, from the ground up, to live in a house full of people, pets and clutter.
That's the pitch, anyway. The reality is a little more nuanced, and honestly thats the interesting part. NEO can walk over, open the door, carry a cup, tidy a room and hold a conversation — but a good chunk of the harder work is still done by a human operator sitting somewhere else, steering the robot through your home. 1X doesn't really hide this; they call it Expert Mode.
So is it a finished household helper, or an early-access science project you pay $20,000 for? The honest answer sits in between, and below we go through exactly what NEO does on its own, what it costs, when it ships, and who should actually put down a deposit.
What is the 1X NEO, and what can it really do?
NEO is a bipedal humanoid about the height of an average adult (~1.65 m) and, unusually, quite light at roughly 30 kg. Instead of the hard industrial shells you see on Tesla Optimus or Figure, 1X wrapped NEO in a soft, knitted "suit" and used tendon-driven joints, so if it bumps into you it gives a little rather than clonks you. For a machine meant to share a kitchen with kids, that design choice matters more than raw strength.
On its own, NEO handles the calmer end of housework — opening doors, fetching a bottle of water, turning off the lights, light tidying, and chatting via a built-in conversational AI. The demos of it folding laundry or loading a dishwasher look great, but many of those tasks lean on a remote 1X operator. Think of today's NEO as a capable body with a still-growing brain: the hardware is here, the full autonomy is arriving over-the-air, update by update.
1X NEO price: how much does it cost?
There are two ways to get one. You can buy NEO outright for $20,000, or subscribe for $499 per month — which for a lot of households is the less scary number, and it bundles support and software as the robot keeps learning. Either way a $200 refundable deposit holds your place in line right now.
That makes NEO dramatically cheaper than most work-capable humanoids (Apollo, Digit and friends run into six figures on enterprise contracts), but it's still a serious purchase — you're paying roughly the price of a small car for a robot that, today, needs supervision. The subscription route is probably the sane way in for early adopters who want to bail if it underwhelms.
1X NEO release date: when can you actually buy one?
Pre-orders opened in late 2025, and 1X says the first NEO units start reaching customers' homes in 2026 — the United States first, other markets following in 2027. So "available" is true in the reserve-your-spot sense; it is not yet something you add to a cart and get next week.
A quick note on names, because it trips people up: NEO Gamma was the developer/in-home testing version 1X showed earlier. The NEO going to consumers is the productised evolution of that, not a separate robot.
The catch: autonomy vs the human "Expert" operator
This is the part worth being clear-eyed about. Early NEO owners get two modes. In autonomous mode it does the simpler, well-rehearsed tasks by itself. In Expert Mode, a trained 1X teleoperator connects in and drives the robot to do the hard stuff you asked for — the laundry, the more delicate cleaning.
1X is upfront that a person can be in the loop, and they've added privacy guardrails: sessions are scheduled by you, the robot geofences to zones you allow, and faces get blurred on the operator's side. Still, if the idea of a stranger occasionally piloting a robot around your living room bothers you, that's a completely fair reason to wait a generation. The whole point of the teleop is to gather data so future NEOs need it less.
Is the 1X NEO worth reserving?
Reserve it if you genuinely want to be first, you're comfortable with a robot that still phones a human for help, and $499/month (or $20k) is money you can spend on the future without wincing. You'll get a genuinely novel machine and a front-row seat as the autonomy improves.
Skip it, or at least wait, if you expected a fully self-driving butler out of the box, or if the teleoperation privacy angle is a dealbreaker. For most people the second or third NEO — with more on-device autonomy and a longer track record — will be the smarter buy. As a first real swing at a consumer home humanoid though, NEO is the one everyone else is now measured against.
Who the 1X NEO is — and isn't — for
+Where it shines
- You can actually buy or reserve it as an individual, at a consumer price.
- Among the most affordable humanoids on the market right now.
- US-built, with local support and supply chain.
- Open developer access (SDK/API) — good for builders and labs.
!Watch-outs
- Some demos rely on teleoperation, not full autonomy.
How the 1X NEO stacks up
Side by side with similar robots — the one you're reading about is highlighted.
| This robot 1X Technologies 1X NEO |  Weave Robotics Weave Isaac |  Agility Robotics Agility Robotics Digit |  Foundation (Foundation Robotics) Foundation Phantom | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price (US) | ~$20,000 | $7,999 – $9,999 | ~$250,000 | $100,000 – $150,000 |
| Availability | Reservations open | On the market | Lease / RaaS | Lease / RaaS |
| Height | ~1.68 m | Unknown | 1.75 m | 1.75 m |
| Payload | Carry 25 kg | Unknown | 16 kg | 40 kg dual-arm |
| DoF | Hands | Isaac | 16 | 29 |
| Buyer | Individuals | Individuals | Enterprise | Enterprise |
| Made in | US | US | US | US |
What the 1X NEO costs — and how to get one
Announced Oct 2025: $20,000 to buy or $499/mo subscription; US deliveries 2026.
Consumer pre-order/reservation; no separate enterprise channel for NEO
Leasing / RaaS: Consumer $499/mo subscription = effectively home RaaS/lease
Every spec, grouped & sourced
Tap a group to expand. Values are labelled official vs third-party; unknowns are omitted, not guessed.
Body & movement▾
Power & endurance▾
Hands & senses▾
Brains & control▾
Claims vs evidence
Built-in LLM conversation; 1X explicitly states NEO 'not fully autonomous today' - chores rely on teleop
Where it's working
NEO Gamma in-home testing; EVE at customer facilities since ~2022; no verified large-scale autonomous consumer deployment
Intended use cases: Household chores/assistance (tidying, fetching, laundry, vacuuming), conversational AI assistant
Should you consider the 1X NEO?
The 1X NEO isn't the finished home robot the marketing daydreams about — a human still drives it for the hard stuff — but it's the first one a regular person can genuinely reserve and live with, at a price that isn't insane. That alone makes it the benchmark for consumer humanoids in 2026.
Score reflects stated criteria (availability, data confidence, US relevance) — not hands-on testing or user ratings. We're an independent review & comparison site; we don't sell robots. *Financing figure is illustrative.
How we know this
Data confidence 78/100 · last verified 2026-06-23. Specs are labelled official vs third-party and dated; unknowns are omitted, not guessed.
1X NEO — your questions, answered in full
How much does a 1X NEO robot cost?+
NEO costs $20,000 to buy outright, or $499 per month on a subscription, with a $200 refundable deposit to reserve one. The subscription includes ongoing software and support as the robot's abilities expand.
Is the NEO robot available to buy?+
It's available to reserve, not yet to buy off the shelf. Pre-orders opened in late 2025 and the first units ship to US homes in 2026, with other countries following in 2027.
What is Elon Musk's $5,000 robot that cooks?+
That's a common mix-up — NEO is made by 1X, not Musk, and it isn't $5,000. Musk's robot is Tesla's Optimus, which Tesla has floated at a future $20,000–$30,000 target but is not selling to consumers yet. NEO is the home robot you can actually reserve today, at $20,000 or $499/month.
Does the NEO robot work fully on its own?+
Not entirely, not yet. NEO does simpler tasks autonomously, but harder chores are often handled by a remote 1X human operator in "Expert Mode." Autonomy grows through over-the-air updates, so the amount of human help should shrink over time.
Is the 1X NEO robot real, or just a concept?+
It's real — a working bipedal robot you can reserve, not a render. What's still maturing is the autonomy: the body and the reservation program exist today, but a lot of the impressive chores currently rely on a remote human operator, so "real" and "fully autonomous" aren't the same thing yet.
How is the 1X NEO different from Tesla Optimus?+
NEO is aimed squarely at the home right now and you can reserve one; Optimus is aimed first at Tesla's own factories and isn't for sale to consumers yet. NEO is lighter and soft-bodied for living around people, while Optimus is a harder, industrial-style build. Different bets — NEO went consumer-first, Tesla went work-first.
What is NEO Gamma, and is it the same as the NEO I can buy?+
NEO Gamma was the earlier developer / in-home testing version 1X used to gather data. The NEO shipping to customers is the productised evolution of it — same lineage, more polish. So they're not two separate robots, just two points on the same timeline.
Does the 1X NEO need Wi-Fi or the internet to work?+
Yes for the full experience. Basic on-device behaviours run locally, but the conversational AI and especially Expert Mode (the remote human operator) depend on an internet connection. No connection means a much more limited robot.
Peer-reviewed research on the 1X NEO
Published academic work — peer-reviewed papers and preprints — involving this robot or its maker's systems, indexed in scholarly databases (OpenAlex, arXiv). Not blog posts or press write-ups.
- Generative World Modelling for Humanoids: 1X World Model Challenge Technical ReportRiccardo Mereu, Aidan Scannell, Yuxin Hou et al. · 2025 · arXiv (cs.LG) · DOI 10.48550/arXiv.2510.07092
- Humanoid World Models: Open World Foundation Models for Humanoid RoboticsMuhammad Qasim Ali, Aditya Sridhar, Shahbuland Matiana et al. · 2025 · arXiv (cs.RO) · DOI 10.48550/arXiv.2506.01182
Academic references are factual citations from open scholarly indexes; listing is not endorsement.