Head to head
Ameca vs Sophia
Ameca (Engineered Arts, no public price) against Sophia (Hanson Robotics, no public price), side by side on price, realism, specifications and availability.
The short version
- Ameca scores higher on our Realism Index: 55/100 to Sophia's 40. The widest gap is mind (58 vs 30).
- Neither has a public price.
- Ameca is shipping now; Sophia is still a concept.
Composed from the two directory records, so it updates when they do.
Our verdict
Both are faces first and bodies barely: torso robots that don't walk, built for stages, museums and labs rather than homes. Ameca is the more expressive and more capable platform, with 27 degrees of freedom in the face, LLM conversation in 70+ languages and a higher score on every dimension we rate. Sophia is the more famous robot, but her autonomy has been heavily oversold and the full-size robot isn't for sale, while Ameca can be bought or hired by quote.
- Pick Ameca if
- Pick Ameca if you're an institution that wants the most expressive robot face available to buy or rent.
- Pick Sophia if
- Pick Sophia if you want the famous name, which in practice means Hanson's $149 desktop Little Sophia, since the full-size robot isn't sold.
Ameca55/100
Sophia40/100
Realism Index sub-scores — six weighted dimensions built from public evidence. How we score
 |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Shipping | Concept |
| Type | Research | Humanoid |
| Form | Torso | Torso |
| Presents as | Androgynous | Female-presenting |
| Price | Quote only — roughly $100k–$500k by configuration | Not sold to consumers — a research and exhibition platform. The desktop Little Sophia retails around $149. |
| Subscription | — | — |
| Availability | Order or hire | Operational since 2016 |
| Origin | UK | Hong Kong |
| Realism index | 55/100 | 40/100 |
| Height | 187 cm · 6 ft 2 in | ~167 cm · 5 ft 6 in (with legs; usually shown as a torso on a base) |
| Weight | 62 kg | — |
| Skin & materials | Grey silicone over Mesmer animatronics | Frubber face and neck; transparent rear skull; decorative body |
| Actuation | Electric servos — 61 DOF (27 in the face) | 30+ motors in the head and face |
| Power | Mains powered | — |
| Runtime | Continuous (powered) | — |
| AI & conversation | Tritium OS with integrated LLMs (e.g. GPT) | Hybrid — scripted dialogue, a chatbot, OpenCog reasoning and LLMs; neural-net face and emotion recognition |
| Voice | Speech synthesis; 70+ languages | Synthesised speech; primarily English |
| Mobility | Fixed base — does not walk | Very limited — static or wheeled; a legged variant has been demoed but barely walks |
| Expressions | 50+ realistic expressions; gaze tracking | 60+ facial expressions; gaze tracking |
| Languages | — | Primarily English; multilingual demos |
| Connectivity | Cloud-connected; eye & chest cameras, LiDAR | Wi-Fi; cameras in the eyes and chest |