Social & companion robotShipping
Pollen Robotics / Hugging Face Reachy Mini
The $399 open-source companion that made robot ownership a weekend project.
We haven't tested this machine hands-on, so this profile carries no rating — every fact below traces to the sources at the end, and the judgments are clearly ours. Full methodology on the Robot Tracker.
At a glance
- Status
- ShippingReal units delivered to paying customers
- Can you buy it?
- Yes
- Price
- $399 (Lite, USB) or $499 (Wireless) — sold as a 2–3 hour assembly kit. Both rose from $299/$449; the increase we flagged as 'slated' has now landed.
- Form factor
- Desktop expressive robot (kit)
- AI brain
- Open source — runs any model; Python SDK + Hugging Face ecosystem
- Maker
- Pollen Robotics / Hugging Face (France / US)
- Backing
- Pollen Robotics, acquired by Hugging Face
Reachy Mini is the cheapest real robot on this site by an order of magnitude: a desktop-sized, endearingly expressive robot (think a webcam with a soul — head tracking, antennas, body language) sold as a $399–499 kit by Pollen Robotics under Hugging Face, the open-source AI giant. You assemble it in a couple of hours, program it in Python, and tap a growing library of community behaviors on Hugging Face Spaces. Everything — software and hardware designs — is open source.
It won't fold laundry or hold deep conversations out of the box; it's an expressive companion and an AI playground. But that's exactly why it matters: tens of thousands of developers tinkering with cheap, open companion robots is how the home-robot software ecosystem actually gets built — the Apple II move in a field of $20,000 mainframes.
What's real
- • Still the cheapest real robot with a serious ecosystem behind it: $399 Lite / $499 Wireless
- • Fully open source (Apache 2.0 software, open hardware) with a Python SDK and community app library
- • Backed by Hugging Face — the distribution and developer gravity every robot startup wishes it had
- • Expressive by design: camera, mics, motion, and personality-forward animation for human interaction
Know before you watch (or buy)
- • A kit and a platform, not an appliance — expect assembly, tinkering, and DIY spirit
- • Desktop-sized and stationary: it emotes and interacts; it doesn't move around or manipulate objects
- • Lead times have run 30–90 days — and the price rise we flagged has happened: $299→$399 (Lite) and $449→$499 (Wireless)
The evidence
Selling and shipping globally as kits ($399/$499) with published lead times; large open-source ecosystem (SDK, docs, community apps) under Hugging Face.
Sources: Pollen Robotics / Hugging Face · Hugging Face
What changed on Reachy Mini's own pages
Nothing yet. We re-crawl the maker's own price and product pages and record anything that moves — a price, a ship date, a caveat appearing or disappearing. We've been watching since 2026-07-12and this maker hasn't changed those pages since.
We report what changed and when, with the page it changed on. We don't speculate about why.
Bottom line
The best $300–450 you can spend to actually live with a robot today — and the most likely origin story for the software that future home companions will run. Buy it to build with; the companionship is what the community makes of it.
FAQ
What is Reachy Mini and what does it do?
A desktop, open-source expressive robot from Pollen Robotics/Hugging Face — $399 (USB 'Lite') or $499 (wireless with onboard Raspberry Pi). It ships as a kit you assemble in 2–3 hours, then program in Python or run community-built behaviors: face tracking, conversation via AI models you choose, games, and interactive companion apps. It's a platform for AI experimentation, not a household helper.