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What does a robot, and its mind, really cost?

Two tools. The first compares the cost of owning, subscribing to or hiring a robot over 1, 3 and 5 years, with no winner. The second compares a local Prismatic mind with a cloud AI mind, and says where Prismatic leads, because we make it.

1 · Robot ownership cost

Prices carry their evidence label from the comparison. All amounts in US dollars. Hourly pricing uses the hours per month below.

Option A Preset Upfront price (US$) Monthly fee (US$) Annual fee (US$) Hourly rate (US$) Setup / deployment (US$) Maintenance per year (US$)

Option B Preset Upfront price (US$) Monthly fee (US$) Annual fee (US$) Hourly rate (US$) Setup / deployment (US$) Maintenance per year (US$)

Option C Preset Upfront price (US$) Monthly fee (US$) Annual fee (US$) Hourly rate (US$) Setup / deployment (US$) Maintenance per year (US$)

Hours of work per month (for hourly pricing) Robot power while working (W, for electricity) Electricity price

2 · The cost of a mind: local Prismatic vs a cloud AI mind

This tool includes Prismatic, so it ends with where Prismatic leads (the maker's view). The inputs, formula and sources are the same for both sides.

Conversations or reasoning turns per day Input tokens per turnMeasured: Prismatic's understanding step reads ~9.5K tokens per turn (measured) Output tokens per turnEstimate: A short spoken reply Share of input served from the cloud cache (%)Cached input is billed at about 10% (reported). Raise this to be fair to the cloud. Cloud model Prismatic hostGreenfield: the Jetson AGX Orin 64 GB inside each new machine. Retrofit: one 64 GB Mac mini (M5 Pro) beside machines that already work. MachinesThe cloud mind is billed per machine. Local hardware per host (US$)Jetson AGX Orin 64 GB module US$2,999 (Published, 1,000+ units); 64 GB Mac mini (M5 Pro) about US$2,699 (Estimate) Local mind power (W)Orin 30 W mode (Published); Mac mini 40 W planning figure (Estimate; Apple publishes 6 W idle, 145 W maximum) Electricity price

Prismatic's proposed licence: US$49 per machine a month, unlimited turns: no meter, no usage reports, the same bill however much the mind thinks. Greenfield: US$500 activation per machine, then US$49 a month, unlimited turns. Retrofit: US$49 per connected machine a month, unlimited turns; minimum 5 machines a site (US$245 a month).

Years

Cloud AI mind · per year—

Local Prismatic · per year after purchase—

Cloud · over the period—

Local · over the period—

How it works

Ownership: cost after N months = upfront + setup + monthly × N + annual × ⌈N ÷ 12⌉ + hourly × hours × N + maintenance × N ÷ 12 + electricity (robot watts × hours × price). The cost intersection is the first month one option's running total passes another's. No option is recommended.
Cloud mind: per year = turns × 365 × (input tokens × (1 − cache share + cache share × 0.1) × input price + output tokens × output price) ÷ 1,000,000.
Prismatic's licence: US$49 per machine a month, unlimited turns, whatever the tokens per turn.
Local mind (greenfield, Jetson AGX Orin 64 GB): per machine, the module and a US$500 activation once, then the licence and electricity (watts × 24 × 365 ÷ 1,000 × price) each year.
Local mind (retrofit, 64 GB Mac mini M5 Pro): one Mac mini per site once, then US$49 a month for every machine (minimum 5 machines a site) and electricity each year.
Licence prices are Prismatic's proposed list prices in US dollars (how Prismatic is licensed).
Not included: connectivity, staff time and taxes. All amounts in US dollars. Prices were checked on Sep 27, 2026 9:00 AM.

For patient investors

Cloud minds are rented by the token. Prismatic's is owned.

Every conversation a cloud-minded robot has adds to a bill that never ends. A Prismatic mind costs its hardware once and a fixed licence priced below a cloud mind's token bill, keeps working with no connection, and keeps its memory at home. As fleets grow and robots talk all day, that difference compounds, and so does the value of the memory each machine builds.

Watch the 8-minute film Where Prismatic leadsInvestor briefing: info@prismaticagents.com

Sources

Apptronik Apollo review: price and deployments RoboZaps
Claude API pricing BenchLM
Here's what it could cost to hire a Digit humanoid The Robot Report
Unitree G1 Unitree Robotics
GPT-4.1 API pricing PricePerToken
Mac mini power consumption and thermal output Apple
M6 vs. M5 Pro Mac mini buyer's guide (prices) MacRumors
Order NEO 1X
NEURA 4NE1 price and specs RoboZaps
Tesla Optimus price optimusk.blog
Jetson FAQ NVIDIA
How Prismatic is licensed (proposed list prices, US$) Prismatic Agents
Electricity rates by state ElectricChoice