Humanoid robots: Daily rental in China drops to 289 yuan, Shanghai wants to bring them into factories

Anyone in China wanting to rent a humanoid robot from Unitree for a day can now find listings starting at 289 yuan on the secondhand goods platform Xianyu. At the beginning of 2025, the same day still cost a five-figure yuan amount, as financial newspaper STAR Market Daily calculated on October 9.

The price collapse is more than just an episode from the event business, as it shows that China's factories are delivering humanoids faster than the economy can provide work for them. And it is precisely now that Shanghai is launching a counter-program, aiming to bring around 8,000 humanoid robots into factories by 2028, where they should finally be productive.

The decline happened in stages, as at the beginning of 2026 the usual daily rental was still 2,000 to 3,000 yuan, while numerous offers are now available for under 1,000 yuan. Online retailer JD.com charged 1,796 yuan in March, though this included an engineer. What is included in the listing for 289 yuan remains unclear, and transport, setup and an operator are often charged separately. The direction is nevertheless unmistakable, and observers cite growing supply and fiercer competition as the reason.

That supply is growing so rapidly is also evidenced by figures from analyst firms. According to Omdia, around 13,000 humanoids were delivered in 2025, of which about 85 percent were from China, and IDC counted nearly 25,000 units in the first half of 2026 alone, with almost four-fifths from Chinese production. According to Omdia's estimates, only around ten percent of these machines actually work in factories or warehouses; the vast majority serve research, data collection, trade shows and demonstrations. Rentals happen precisely in this demonstration segment, and there the flood of new devices meets demand that is slowly fading with the novelty factor.

How thin the margins for rental operators have become is shown by their own figures. One operator achieved around ten bookings per robot per month at an average of 2,500 yuan based on platform data, but these figures come from a time with significantly higher prices. The rental platform Qingtianzu openly calls its promotional offer of 999 yuan a test of demand and not a profitable business. A Unitree G1+ costs from 95,000 yuan to purchase, meaning a device at the lowest listing price would theoretically need to be rented continuously for almost a year before it paid for itself.

Shanghai therefore wants to take the machines out of the demonstration business and into the factory. At the opening of the industrial trade fair CIIF on October 12, the city presented a program that includes 8,000 humanoids alongside hundreds of intelligent factories and is intended to significantly increase the density of industrial robots. However, the plan does not name suppliers, budgets or counting methods, so it is for now a deployment target rather than orders. Nationally, Beijing had already demanded that over 10,000 humanoids work commercially rather than just for demonstration by the end of 2026.

Manufacturers are also seeking their way into industry, first and foremost UBTech, which on October 8 agreed with FAW-Volkswagen to test robots for logistics and manufacturing in its five Chinese factories. Four days later, UBTech founded a joint venture with trading company C&D from Xiamen, which is to sell at least 10,000 humanoids by 2030. Its own factory in Liuzhou is designed for 10,000 units per year, and this capacity also needs to be utilized.

For buyers in Europe, the gap is noteworthy, as AgiBot started its international rental platform in spring at prices from 899 euros per day, thus at a multiple of the Chinese level, albeit with different scope of services. Anyone in Switzerland needing a humanoid for a trade show or pilot project continues to pay European prices, while in China overcapacity is already setting the pace.

Where the machines are actually in operation, the staffing question remains unresolved. Over 300 AgiBot robots are running in the Chimelong theme park on Hengqin, but currently it takes one person for about three machines, while the manufacturer aims for ten robots per caregiver and calls twenty ideal.