Booster Robotics
4.5Paid95
Editorial matchup · June 2026
Booster Robotics vs Figure: Which AI Tool Is Better in 2026?
Side-by-side comparison of Booster Robotics and Figure — pricing, features, and use cases. Reviewed by our editorial team in Jun 2026.
Use-case score 1–1Updated Jun 2026
AI/ML Models
Figure
4.6Paid151
Figure AI's Figure 02 is a second-generation commercial humanoid robot standing 168 cm tall and weighing 70 kg, designed to operate in human-centric environments with full-body mobility and AI-driven interaction.
It represents a major milestone in commercial humanoid robotics, becoming one of the first humanoid robots to achieve meaningful deployment in real-world manufacturing, deployed at BMW's Spartanburg plant in South Carolina.
Figure 02 runs a breakthrough Vision-Language-Action model (Helix) that controls the entire upper body at 200 Hz, handling objects it has never seen before without pre-programming for each specific object.
By contrast, Booster Robotics' T1 is a lightweight, high-performance, open-source humanoid robot designed for developers and researchers, standing 118 cm tall and weighing 30 kg, with 23 degrees of freedom and an NVIDIA AGX Orin GPU with 200 TOPS AI performance.
The T1 won the 2025 RoboCup AdultSize championship and the IEEE-RAS Humanoids conference racing and obstacle navigation events. Figure dominates industrial deployment at scale: its Figure 02 robot built 30,000+ cars at BMW's Spartanburg plant with 99% accuracy.
Figure 03 ran a 10-hour human vs. robot warehouse competition fully autonomously, powered by Figure's Helix-02 AI system, with every inference running onboard the robot.
Booster operates in a different segment: shipments in the first quarter of 2026 surged 500% year-on-year, and new orders signed in January and February jumped more than 800%, pushing the backlog into the hundreds of millions of yuan.
The T1 is the championship-winning model from 2025 RoboCup Soccer AdultSize, the preferred choice of 50+ top global robotics teams and research institutes. Figure AI operates as a venture-backed startup pursuing mass production and enterprise deployment.
In September 2025, a third round of financing exceeded 1 billion, raising Figure's total valuation to 39 billion.
Figure AI built BotQ, a dedicated manufacturing facility announced in March 2025 with a target capacity of 12,000 humanoid robots per year, with plans to progressively use its own robots to assist in manufacturing additional units.
Booster takes a different strategic path: on April 17, 2026, Booster Robotics announced it completed a financing round worth nearly 1 billion yuan, led by the Beijing High-Precision Industry Fund, Beijing Guosheng Fund, and Huakun Fund.
Founded in 2023, the company provides robot hardware and tools widely used in competitions and education, with their robots winning two RoboCup 2025 divisions, generating revenue through tournament IP, hardware sales, sponsorships, and educational courses now used in Chinese schools and universities.
The verdict hinges on use case: Figure wins decisively for enterprises seeking industrial-grade humanoids with proven autonomous task performance and real-world deployment validation.
Booster wins for academic research, robotics competitions, and developer-driven platforms seeking open-source customization and lower entry cost in the research segment.
Enterprise Manufacturing Deployment
Booster Robotics
Figure 02's deployment at BMW demonstrated its capability in real production environments, running 10-hour shifts five days a week, accumulating 1,250 hours of runtime over an 11-month pilot program, loading more than 90,000 sheet metal parts with 5-millimeter precision in 2-second cycles.
Research & Robotics Competition
Figure
Booster T1 is the 2025 RoboCup AdultSize championship-winning model, the preferred choice of 50+ top global robotics teams and research institutes.
Full-Body AI Autonomy
Booster Robotics
Figure 02 unloads and reloads a dishwasher across a full-sized kitchen—a four-minute, end-to-end autonomous task integrating walking, manipulation, and balance, the longest horizon autonomous task completed by any humanoid robot to date.
Section 01
Best for what
4 use cases scored. Booster Robotics wins 1, Figure wins 1.
- EvenPricing value
Neither tool publishes a starting price.
- EvenFree tier
Neither tool offers a free tier or trial.
- FigureUser ratings
Figure averages 4.6 / 5 vs 4.5 / 5 on the other side.
- Booster RoboticsReview volume
Booster Robotics has 99 ratings vs 98 on the other.
Section 02
Pros & cons
Where each tool earns its rating — and where it falls short.
Booster Robotics
AI/ML ModelsPros
- Figure 02's five-fingered robotic hands have 16 degrees of freedom, enabling precise, complex movements approaching human-level dexterity, with hands rated for maximum carrying weight of 25 kg.
- Over an 11-month pilot program at BMW, Figure 02 accumulated 1,250 hours of runtime, loading more than 90,000 sheet metal parts with 5-millimeter precision in 2-second cycles, contributing to production of over 30,000 BMW X3 vehicles.
- Figure 02 has a 2.25 kWh torso-integrated lithium-ion battery providing 5 hours of continuous operation with 1.5-hour rapid charging.
- Figure 02 demonstrated a 4-minute continuous loco-manipulation task loading and unloading a dishwasher, the most complex autonomous manipulation sequence demonstrated to date using end-to-end pixels-to-whole-body control.
- Figure AI built BotQ manufacturing facility with target capacity of 12,000 humanoid robots per year, with plans to use its own robots to assist in manufacturing additional units.
Cons
- The estimated price tag limits accessibility, and the announcement of Figure 03 raises questions about long-term platform commitment.
- The robot performed one task at BMW: picking up sheet metal parts and placing them on a welding fixture for ten months straight—a mid-sized manufacturer cannot justify investment for a machine that does one thing, raising the question of whether this scales.
- Figure 02 is not available for direct purchase; it operates on an enterprise lease and partnership model, limiting accessibility to large industrial customers with integration engineering resources.
- In November 2025, the former head of product safety sued the company for being fired after raising concerns that the robot was strong enough to fracture a human skull.
- Figure AI ended its partnership with OpenAI after one year, citing that large language models had become a smaller problem compared to those allowing for high-rate robot control.
Booster Robotics
AI/ML ModelsPros
- Figure 02's five-fingered robotic hands have 16 degrees of freedom, enabling precise, complex movements approaching human-level dexterity, with hands rated for maximum carrying weight of 25 kg.
- Over an 11-month pilot program at BMW, Figure 02 accumulated 1,250 hours of runtime, loading more than 90,000 sheet metal parts with 5-millimeter precision in 2-second cycles, contributing to production of over 30,000 BMW X3 vehicles.
- Figure 02 has a 2.25 kWh torso-integrated lithium-ion battery providing 5 hours of continuous operation with 1.5-hour rapid charging.
- Figure 02 demonstrated a 4-minute continuous loco-manipulation task loading and unloading a dishwasher, the most complex autonomous manipulation sequence demonstrated to date using end-to-end pixels-to-whole-body control.
- Figure AI built BotQ manufacturing facility with target capacity of 12,000 humanoid robots per year, with plans to use its own robots to assist in manufacturing additional units.
Cons
- The estimated price tag limits accessibility, and the announcement of Figure 03 raises questions about long-term platform commitment.
- The robot performed one task at BMW: picking up sheet metal parts and placing them on a welding fixture for ten months straight—a mid-sized manufacturer cannot justify investment for a machine that does one thing, raising the question of whether this scales.
- Figure 02 is not available for direct purchase; it operates on an enterprise lease and partnership model, limiting accessibility to large industrial customers with integration engineering resources.
- In November 2025, the former head of product safety sued the company for being fired after raising concerns that the robot was strong enough to fracture a human skull.
- Figure AI ended its partnership with OpenAI after one year, citing that large language models had become a smaller problem compared to those allowing for high-rate robot control.
Figure
AI InfrastructurePros
- Booster T1 is the championship-winning model from 2025 RoboCup Soccer AdultSize, the preferred choice of 50+ top global robotics teams and research institutes worldwide.
- With 23 fully force-controlled joints and dual encoders, the T1 supports dynamic balance and complex gait dynamics, providing ROS 2 interface and 2 hours of walking autonomy for embodied AI development.
- The robot features complete open-source SDK with high-level motion control, ROS2 compatibility, support for edge LLM and YOLO object recognition, and simulation interfaces for Isaac Sim, Mujoco, and Webots.
- The T1 recovers from pushes up to 15N.s, balances smoothly, and can automatically stand back up from a prone position.
- Shipments in Q1 2026 surged 500% year-on-year, matching the total volume of the first eight months of 2025.
Cons
- The T1 family has a 10.5 Ah battery and runtime of approximately 2 hours walking or 4 hours standing, suitable for lab sessions and iterative development but not intended for full-day untethered deployment.
- The T1 Basic enables natural interactions like push-ups, dancing, and object carrying up to 5 kg, but lacks the dexterous manipulation and heavy-duty payload capacity of enterprise-grade systems.
- As an open-source platform targeted at developers and researchers, Booster T1 requires significant software integration and customization expertise to deploy at scale in production environments.
- Of the more than 13,000 humanoid robots shipped in 2025, Chinese companies AGIBOT and Unitree each shipped over 5,000, while U.S. rivals like Figure AI and Tesla each shipped a few hundred or less—Booster's market position in global industrial deployment remains niche.
- Booster T1 is still establishing commercial viability beyond research and robotics competition segments; enterprise adoption in manufacturing logistics remains limited compared to Figure's proven industrial track record.
Section 03
At a glance
Every spec on one page. Live-pulled from each tool's detail page.
- PricingPaidInquire
- Pricing modelPaidPaid
- Free tierNoNo
- Free trialNoNo
- Rating4.5 / 5 (99 ratings)4.6 / 5 (98 ratings)
- Saves95151
- CategoriesAI/ML Models, AI AgentsAI Infrastructure, AI/ML Models
- VerifiedNoYes
- Top 100 tier——
- Last updatedMay 2026Jun 2026
Frequently asked
Booster Robotics vs Figure FAQs
Quick answers to the questions readers ask before picking between these two.
Which robot is better for warehouse and logistics automation?
Figure 02 is the proven choice for warehouse and logistics deployment, having achieved meaningful industrial deployment at BMW with 90,000+ parts handled in production environments. Booster T1's 2-hour battery life and research focus make it unsuitable for continuous logistics operations.
Can I buy and customize Booster T1 for my specific research project?
Yes. The Booster T1 is designed for developers and researchers, featuring a complete API, ROS2 compatibility, advanced simulation environments, and comes in three versions: standard, with grippers, and with robotic hands, depending on your grasping needs.
What is Figure AI's current production capacity and availability?
Figure AI built BotQ, a dedicated manufacturing facility announced in March 2025 with a target capacity of 12,000 humanoid robots per year, with plans to progressively use its own robots to assist in manufacturing additional units. Availability remains limited to enterprise partnerships rather than direct sales.
Which robot has better battery life for continuous operation?
Figure 02 has a 2.25 kWh battery providing 5 hours of continuous operation with 1.5-hour rapid charging. Booster T1 provides approximately 2 hours of walking or 4 hours of standing endurance with a 10.5 Ah battery.
Is Booster T1 used in RoboCup and robotics competitions?
Yes, the Booster T1 is the championship-winning model from 2025 RoboCup Soccer AdultSize, the preferred choice of 50+ top global robotics teams and research institutes worldwide.
How much AI autonomy does Figure 02 have without human control?
Figure 03 ran a 10-hour warehouse competition fully autonomously, powered by Figure's Helix-02 unified visuomotor neural network capable of full-body control, with every inference running onboard the robot without cloud processing.
Bottom line
Figure AI and Booster Robotics operate in fundamentally different markets within humanoid robotics. Figure AI wins decisively for enterprises seeking industrial-grade humanoids with proven autonomous task performance at scale.
Its Figure 02 has been deployed in real manufacturing at BMW, achieved 99% accuracy on production tasks, and demonstrated multi-minute autonomous sequences that no other humanoid has matched.
Figure's valuation, BotQ manufacturing facility targeting 12,000 units annually, and integration with major automotive partners signal a company focused on commercial deployment of general-purpose industrial robots. The Helix AI system enables genuine autonomy without teleoperation or pre-programming for each task.
However, pricing is in the premium enterprise tier, it is lease-only for partner organizations, and current deployments remain specialized to specific manufacturing tasks despite general-purpose design goals.
Booster Robotics is the clear winner for research labs, robotics education, robotics competitions, and developer-driven innovation.
The T1 won the 2025 RoboCup championship, is used by 50+ global robotics research teams, supports open-source development with ROS2, and enables researchers to iterate on embodied AI algorithms without vendor lock-in.
Its Q1 2026 500% shipment growth and multi-billion-yuan funding reflects strong traction in academic and educational robotics markets. However, Booster's 2-hour battery life, 5 kg payload, and research-focused design make it unsuitable for multi-shift industrial deployment or heavy-duty manufacturing tasks.
Its addressable market is research institutions, universities, and competition teams rather than Fortune 500 manufacturers.
For organizations choosing between them: select Figure AI if your priority is deploying autonomous humanoid robots into production environments with proven reliability and validated task performance.
Select Booster if you are a research institution, robotics team, or AI lab needing a flexible, open-source platform to develop and test embodied AI algorithms before investing in industrial-scale hardware.
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