Sony aibo and LOVOT need a monthly fee: can the price rise after you buy?
The sticker price buys the machine once. A required monthly plan keeps it switched on, and whether its price holds at what you started on is the part the box never tells you.
The price of a LOVOT goes up on October 26, 2026. GROOVE X is raising the list price of its LOVOT 3.0 companion robot from ¥577,500 to ¥599,500, with a second step to ¥649,000 planned for mid-January 2027, a price-increase notice shows. The company blames the rising cost of parts, manufacturing and shipping.
A price rise on a robot you are weighing is easy to read. A price rise on one you already own is the stranger question, and it is the one that decides what these machines cost across the years you keep them.
The box price is only the entry fee. A LOVOT will not run without a monthly care plan, ¥9,900 to ¥19,800 a month depending on the tier, a companion-robot price tracker records. Sony’s aibo and the eldercare robot ElliQ work the same way: you buy the machine, then you pay to keep it switched on.
These are not vacuums you can run offline in a pinch. aibo, LOVOT and ElliQ are sold as companions, built to recognize the people in a home and answer to them, and that recognition runs through the maker’s servers. The monthly plan is the connection that makes the behavior possible.
The fee is the robot’s on switch
Without an active plan, aibo ‘can only perform simple, pre-loaded actions,’ a hands-on review found; it stops learning, will not form a personality, and cannot recognize faces or voices.
An aibo AI Cloud Plan subscription is required in order to enjoy all the features of an aibo.
The subscription is what links the robot to Sony’s cloud, where the learning and the memory of a household live. The dog on the charger is the same hardware either way. What the fee buys is the part that makes it behave like aibo at all.
Figure
What the required plan switches on
- What lapsesThe hardware keeps every one of these. The licence does not, so the capability leaves an unchanged machine.
- The licenceWhat lapses is permission to use the gated features. It lives in the account, not in the machine.
- The hardwareThe sensors and compute for the gated features are already in the machine and stay there.
- Runs regardlessbought outright with the machine
- Behind the gatestops when the subscription stops
ElliQ turns the same dependency into a contract. Intuition Robotics does not sell the robot; it leases it to the household. A one-time $249 fee starts the service, then $39.99 a month on a two-year commitment, $49.99 on a one-year, or $59.99 month to month, a review of its terms notes.
The device ‘only functions with an active membership.’ Cancel and you return the hardware within 45 days or owe a $1,500 non-return fee. A year of use builds no equity in a machine the owner never owns.
Is the price you agreed to the price you keep?
aibo includes three years of the plan in its purchase price. After that it renews, at whatever the plan costs when the renewal comes due, about $300 a year in the United States.
In Japan the bill arrives differently. An owner renewing an older unit put it at ¥33,000 for the year, ‘a hefty chunk of change,’ they wrote on an owner forum. The charge there renews automatically each April 30 unless cancelled by April 20.
Dropping the basic plan drops the premium tier with it. The bill that lands each spring reflects the plan’s price that year, whatever it has become.
GROOVE X went the other way with the same kind of news. Its increase falls on new buyers. People who already own a LOVOT keep paying what they agreed to: ‘Payments for those who have already welcomed a LOVOT will not increase,’ the notice states.
The three monthly care tiers, which cover repairs, maintenance and software updates, do not change. The company had held the base price for more than four years before raising it.
Three companion robots and the fee behind them
| Robot | Own the hardware? | Ongoing fee | Is your price locked? |
|---|---|---|---|
| aibo | Yes | About $300 a year after a three-year included plan | Renews at the going rate, not the price you started on |
| LOVOT | Yes | ¥9,900 to ¥19,800 a month, required | Held for current owners when the list price rose, per GROOVE X |
| ElliQ | No, the hardware is leased | $39.99 to $59.99 a month, required | Set by whichever membership term you are on |
Only one of the three freezes the number for the people who already bought. GROOVE X has put in writing that the price an owner starts at is the price they keep. aibo reads its fee fresh at each renewal, and ElliQ’s rides on a lease that converts into no ownership at all.
For an owner, the figure on the box is the smallest one in the story. A buyer can compare sticker prices in an afternoon. The plan that follows is harder to see and larger over time: at $300 or ¥33,000 a year, or $40 to $60 a month, it is what a companion robot costs across the five or ten years someone keeps it.
Sony leaves no cushion in its own terms: ‘Fees paid are non-refundable, regardless of the reason.’ The plan is what teaches aibo a face, a voice and a name. When it lapses, that is the part that goes quiet.
