2026 Wire-Free Robot Mower Cost Index: What 25 Models Cost per 1,000 Sq Ft

A wire-free robot mower’s sticker price tells you very little. A $999 mower that covers 0.15 acre and a $1,599 mower that covers 0.89 acre are not in the same conversation. The fair comparison is cost per unit of lawn. So we built one.

This index takes 25 wire-free robot mowers on sale in the US in October 2026, divides each model’s list price by its rated coverage, and reports the cost per 1,000 square feet. Every price and coverage figure was checked against the maker’s own site on October 18, 2026. Where a model could not be verified against a maker page, we dropped it.

Method

The formula is simple. Take the list price. Divide by rated coverage in acres. Multiply by 1,000 and divide by 43,560 to get the cost per 1,000 square feet. A $999 mower rated for 0.15 acre works out to $153 per 1,000 sq ft.

A few rules we applied:

• We use list price (MSRP), not the sale price of the day. Sales expire. List prices anchor the comparison.
• Coverage is the maker’s own rating, in acres. Makers measure this under ideal conditions, so treat it as an upper bound for real lawns with slopes, trees and narrow passages.
• Only wire-free models are in. That means RTK, vision, LiDAR or camera navigation with no buried boundary wire.
• Prices are a snapshot from October 18, 2026. They move. The caveats section lists the active sales we know about.

The full index

Rounded to the nearest dollar. The Navimow figures come from the i2 AWD, i2 LiDAR, H2 and X3 pages. Mammotion figures come from the LUBA 3 product page. Husqvarna figures come from the 410 iQ, 420 iQ and 440 iQ pages. The eufy E15 figure comes from its product page. ECOVACS figures come from the GOAT shop. Worx figures come from the Landroid Vision lineup. ANTHBOT figures come from the Genie product page. The Dreame A1 coverage comes from its product page and its $1,999 US price from Dreame’s launch announcement.

The price floor is $999

Two models sit at the bottom of the market. The Segway Navimow i206 AWD lists at exactly $999 and covers 0.15 acre. The ECOVACS GOAT O1000 RTK lists at $999.99 and covers 0.25 acre. The GOAT is the better value on paper at $92 per 1,000 sq ft against the i206’s $153, and it is the cheapest entry point into wire-free mowing for a quarter-acre lawn.

The floor matters because it has held near $1,000 for two years. Nobody has shipped a credible wire-free mower under that line. The technology stack (RTK receivers, cameras, LiDAR, onboard compute) still costs too much. If your budget is below $999, the honest options are a wired mower or waiting.

Small lawns pay 2.5 times more per square foot

Here is the pattern the table makes obvious. Take the eight models rated for 0.25 acre or less. Their average cost is $147 per 1,000 sq ft. Take the seven models rated for one acre or more. Their average is $58. The small-lawn buyer pays two and a half times more for each unit of grass the machine can handle.

The reason is fixed cost. Every wire-free mower needs the same navigation hardware, battery, motors and app platform whether it covers 0.15 acre or 2.5 acres. A bigger rating mostly means a bigger battery, a wider deck and more software patience. Those parts are cheap compared with the base platform. So makers spread nearly the same hardware cost over much more lawn in the acre-class machines, and the per-area price collapses.

The practical read: if your lawn is near the top of a model’s rating, the next size up often costs less per square foot and gives you headroom. The Navimow H220 covers twice the H210’s area for $400 more, and its per-area cost drops from $165 to $101. The LUBA 3 AWD 3000 costs the same $2,799 as the Navimow X350 but rates for half the coverage, so the X350 halves the per-area cost if your lawn qualifies.

Where the premium sits

The most expensive mower per unit of coverage is the eufy E15 at $207 per 1,000 sq ft. It is a vision-only mower rated for 0.2 acre, and you pay a premium for skipping both the wire and the RTK antenna setup. The Worx WR210 is close behind at $184, also vision-based, also rated for a quarter acre. Vision systems for small lawns are the most expensive way to mow a square foot with a robot.

At the other end, the Navimow X390 and the ANTHBOT Genie 3000 tie at $41 per 1,000 sq ft. The X390 is a $4,499 machine rated for 2.5 acres. The Genie 3000 is a $1,599 machine rated for 0.89 acre. Two very different mowers land on the same number, which is the point of an index like this. Big coverage and an aggressive list price produce the same efficiency from opposite directions.

The mid-pack tells the brand story. Husqvarna’s iQ line lands between $49 and $119, priced like a premium brand throughout. Mammotion’s LUBA 3 line runs from $61 to $149 depending on deck and battery. Navimow spans the whole range from $41 to $165 because it sells into every lawn size from 0.15 to 2.5 acres.

Caveats that move these numbers

Sales are constant in this market. ANTHBOT is running a Halloween sale through October 30 that cuts the Genie 600 to $799, the Genie 1000 to $799 and the Genie 3000 to $899 on its US store. At those prices the Genie 3000 drops to $23 per 1,000 sq ft, the cheapest figure in this index by a wide margin. Worx discounts its Vision line hard and often: on the day we checked, the WR210 was marked down from $1,999.99 to $899.99 and the WR220 from $2,499.99 to $999.99, which flips their per-area math completely. Navimow, Mammotion and eufy all had live discounts on several models when we priced them.

List prices drift too. Makers adjust MSRPs between seasons. Treat this index as a dated snapshot, and recompute with the current price before a purchase decision.

Mammotion has retired the LUBA 2. The old LUBA 2 AWD line no longer appears on Mammotion’s US store. Its slot is now the LUBA 3 AWD series we priced here, plus the LUBA mini 2 for smaller lawns. If you own or were quoted a LUBA 2, the LUBA 3 is the current equivalent.

Coverage ratings are optimistic. A 0.5-acre rating assumes a flat, open lawn. Slopes, trees, narrow passages and split zones all reduce real coverage. Budget 20 to 30 percent of headroom above your actual lawn size when you pick a tier.

What to do with this index

Use it in two passes. First, find your lawn size and look at the models rated for it with some headroom. Second, compare their per-area costs against the $99 median. Above the median, you are paying for something specific: vision-only navigation, a premium brand, or a small-lawn platform. Below it, you are getting scale working in your favor.

And when you are ready to narrow down, our step-by-step robot mower buying guide walks through lawn measurement, slopes and features, and our robot mower size matcher maps your lawn to a coverage tier.