Guide · updated 2026-10-31
What can Reachy Mini do? Real projects and apps
Reachy Mini costs $399 for the Lite, which plugs into your computer by USB, or $499 for the Wireless, which has a Raspberry Pi CM4 inside and runs on its own (hf.co/reachy-mini). Both ship as kits that take 2 to 3 hours to put together, and you can try the software free in a simulator before you buy. To make it drive around, add Pollen's $149 Hoverboard wheel base. It fits the Wireless only, so a driving Reachy Mini costs $648 before shipping. The wheels are a pre-order, and Pollen expects the first ones to ship at the end of January 2027 (pollen-robotics.com/reachy-mini). It's a small desk robot from Pollen Robotics and Hugging Face with a moving head, two antennas, a camera, four microphones and a speaker. Most projects below are easy one-click apps. A few need a GPU or a local AI setup.
| Reachy Mini Lite | Reachy Mini (Wireless) | Simulator | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $399 | $499 | Free |
| Brain | Your Mac, PC or Linux computer | Raspberry Pi CM4 inside | Your computer (MuJoCo) |
| Connection | USB, wall power | Wi-Fi and USB, battery | None |
| Sensors | Camera, 4 mics, speaker | Camera, 4 mics, speaker, accelerometer | Not needed |
| Assembly | 2 to 3 hours (kit) | 2 to 3 hours (kit) | None |
| Hoverboard wheels ($149) | Doesn't fit | Fits | Not needed |
| Pick it if | You code at your desk and don't mind a cable | You want it to work on its own | You want to try before buying |
Talk to it
Conversation is built in. A realtime voice model listens, answers out loud and moves the head while it talks, in a personality you choose. Pollen's open-source Conversation App does the same thing as a Python app you can change, with emotions, dances and tool use.
People on X are pairing it with ElevenLabs voices. In @ktoya_me's demo, Eleven v4 and the robot share the same emotion tags, so the voice and the head movement match.
Make it move with feeling
Binh (@pham_blnh) built a text-to-motion system for Reachy Mini. Type what the robot should act out, like "sneezing" or "heartbroken", and you get a head, antenna and body motion it can play right away. It comes in three model sizes (27B, 4B and 0.8B), with a free browser demo and an open dataset of 10,872 prompts the robot performed, about 15 hours of motion. The server wants Linux and an NVIDIA GPU, but the planners also run on a Mac or CPU, more slowly.
For ready-made moves, the community library on hf.co/reachy-mini has more than 400 that any Reachy Mini can play.
Keep it all at home with local AI
Baby Reachy-Mini Companion runs 7 AI models on your own hardware. When it hears a baby cry, it rocks, says calming words and sends the parent a photo on Signal. It also tells stories and answers kids' questions. A Mac is enough to start, and the author added an optional $700 NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX to cut replies from about 6 seconds to about 3.
Qdrant's Reachy Edge Memory gives the Wireless version a memory stored on the robot itself. It greets people by name when they come back, remembers old chats after they fall out of the model's context, and can tell you what it saw during the day. The language model runs on a laptop next to the robot, and there's a simulator mode if you don't own one yet. Their write-up explains how it works.
All local, no cloud
Reachy Mini Lite has no computer inside. Its brain is your Mac, PC or Linux machine (pollen-robotics.com), so if the models run on that computer too, nothing has to leave your home. You need one open model for each job the robot does, and the four below all publish their weights under the MIT or Apache-2.0 license.
Baby Reachy-Mini Companion is a working example. Its README lists Faster-Whisper for hearing, Kokoro for the voice, a small Ministral or Qwen model for reasoning and Qwen3-VL 4B for vision, all on a Mac with no cloud APIs. The language and vision models run through Ollama. It uses Qwen3-VL for the vision job where the table has MiniCPM-V.
| Job | Model | From its official page (checked Oct 31, 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Hearing (speech to text) | Whisper | MIT license. The small model has 244M parameters and needs about 2 GB of VRAM. |
| Thinking (language model) | Qwen3-4B | 4.0B parameters, Apache-2.0. The card lists Ollama, LM Studio, MLX-LM and llama.cpp for local use. |
| Seeing (vision) | MiniCPM-V 4.5 | 8B parameters, Apache-2.0. The card lists llama.cpp and Ollama for CPU inference on local devices. |
| Talking (text to speech) | Kokoro-82M | 82 million parameters, Apache-licensed weights. |
Most-liked Reachy Mini apps
You install apps with one click from the Applications tab in Reachy Mini Control, and every app lives on Hugging Face Spaces. Pollen lists more than 60. These had the most likes on Hugging Face on October 17, 2026.
| App | What it does | Likes | Made by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reachy Phone Home | Watches for your phone with its camera and nudges you to stay focused | 369 | itsMarco-G |
| F1 Commentator | Calls past Formula 1 races out loud, with head moves to match | 207 | d10g |
| Conversation App | Talk with the robot through a language model | 180 | Pollen Robotics |
| Baby Reachy-Mini Companion | Local baby monitor, storyteller and tutor | 179 | ravediamond |
| Small Talk | Reachy Minis host an AI-to-AI podcast | 141 | build-small-hackathon |
| Hello World | One app with 146 APIs and 81 emotions | 116 | panny247 |
| Telepresence | Drive the robot from anywhere and see what it sees | 65 | Pollen Robotics |
| Judgy Reachy No Phone | Shames you when it catches you on your phone | 37 | yozkut |
| ClawBody | Gives an OpenClaw AI a robot body with face tracking | 37 | tomrikert |
| cookAIware | Tracks the family's food and plans menus and shopping lists | 37 | jimenezcarrero |
| Reachy Dance Duo | Turns any song into a dance party | 35 | TwinPeaksTownie |
| Language Partner | Practice speaking another language | 29 | mattdotvaughn |
| Reachy Mini for Home Assistant | Connects the robot to Home Assistant | 26 | djhui5710 |
| Hand Tracker V2 | Follows your hand around | 20 | Pollen Robotics |
Build your own app with a coding agent
Pollen wrote an AGENTS.md file so coding agents know the SDK. Paste this into Claude Code, Codex or Cursor: "I'd like to create a Reachy Mini app. Start by reading https://github.com/pollen-robotics/reachy_mini/blob/main/AGENTS.md".
Most new apps are web apps that drive the robot from a browser with the JavaScript SDK, so the people who use them don't install anything. If you'd rather stay in Python, the SDK moves the head in a few lines. Publish the finished app as a Hugging Face Space to share it with other owners.
Common questions
How much does Reachy Mini cost?
Reachy Mini Lite is $399 and the Wireless version is $499 on hf.co/reachy-mini. Shipping and any import duties are extra. Pollen's store ships to the EU, UK, US and Canada, and other countries order through Seeed Studio. Pollen says lead time can be up to 90 days, though many orders ship sooner.
Can Reachy Mini drive around?
Yes, on Pollen's $149 Hoverboard base, which you steer from the phone app while watching its camera. It only fits Reachy Mini Wireless, so the total is $499 plus $149, or $648 before shipping and taxes. It's a pre-order, with first orders expected to ship at the end of January 2027, per Pollen's store.
Can Reachy Mini run fully offline?
Yes, if the app runs its models on your own computer. Reachy Mini Lite uses your Mac, PC or Linux machine as its brain, per pollen-robotics.com. The Baby Reachy-Mini Companion app runs all 7 of its AI models on a Mac, and its README says no internet is required.
What can Reachy Mini do?
Out of the box it holds spoken conversations and moves its head and antennas as it talks. With apps it can follow your hand, play games like rock-paper-scissors, dance to a song, work as a telepresence robot, help you practice a language or keep you off your phone. Pollen lists more than 60 apps.
Should I get the Lite or the Wireless?
Get the Lite if you're fine keeping it plugged into your computer, which does the thinking. Get the Wireless if you want it to run on its own with Wi-Fi and a battery. Some projects, like Qdrant's on-robot memory, need the Wireless version's built-in Raspberry Pi.
Can I try Reachy Mini without buying one?
Yes. The free MuJoCo simulator runs the robot's own software, so apps and SDK scripts work there first. Pollen Pet by @mattt is a free macOS app that puts an animated Reachy Mini on your desktop.
How long does it take to build?
Pollen's README says 2 to 3 hours. Both versions ship as kits, and Pollen publishes a step-by-step assembly guide.
How do you program Reachy Mini?
In Python or JavaScript. The Python SDK moves the head and antennas in a few lines, and the JavaScript SDK runs apps in a browser. Pollen's AGENTS.md lets coding agents like Claude Code write apps for you.
What to build next
Builds that share a board, robot or agent with this one.
Turn Reachy Mini into a fully local baby companionAlso built on Reachy Mini
Give Reachy Mini a real-time voice and personalityAlso built on Reachy Mini
Set up Reachy Mini as a talking desk companionAlso built on Reachy Mini
Make Reachy Mini move with emotion in real timeAlso built on Reachy Mini
Caduceus: a voice robot body for Hermes Agent, wired up over MCPAnother humanoid
Build an ESP32 AI voice robot with XiaoZhi and MCPAlso for MCP
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