Even those of us who take pride in our lawns don’t necessarily enjoy the monotonous chore of weekly lawn mowing. So if you’ve been considering buying an autonomous robot mower to take over your lawn mowing duties, you’re certainly not the only one.
But the major setback of robot mowers for most people is price. We’d probably see a robotic mower in every other garden if they were priced similarly to conventional lawn mowers. But the reality is that the average robot lawnmower costs two, three, or four times the cost of the push mowers we own today.
Why are robot lawn mowers so expensive? Is there such a thing as a cheap robot lawn mower? And are robot mowers worth the money? We’ve answered these questions and more in this guide.
✅Key Takeaways:
Robotic lawn mowers are expensive because of their advanced technology, performance perks, and limited competition.
The average cost of a robotic mower in the UK is £500-£750.
You can save money on a robot lawn mower by skipping the fancy features, only buying the mower size you need, buying off-season, and shopping around for deals.
Table of Contents
🤷♂️ Why Are Robotic Lawn Mowers So Expensive? 3 Key Reasons
Let’s take a look at 3 of the top reasons why robotic mowers are so expensive:
📡 Advanced Technology
The main reason why robot mowers are priced so highly is that they’re equipped with cutting-edge technology, including sophisticated sensors, GPS navigation, and artificial intelligence, which adds to their production cost.
In short, building mowers with this sort of advanced technology is expensive. Something that’s expensive to build will also be expensive to buy, or the manufacturers wouldn’t make any profit.
Plus, in a technology-obsessed world, manufacturers know that they can sell a technologically advanced product like a robot mower at a higher price, and customers will pay for a top-tier bit of tech.
🤼♂️ Limited Competition
We’ve seen the robot lawn mower industry blow up in the space of a year. When we first reviewed the best robotic lawn mowers, there were a few dozen models available on Amazon. Now, just a few months later, tens more models have emerged.
With that said, the robotic lawn mower industry is still much quieter, with much less competition, than the conventional electric lawn mower market.
With fewer manufacturers to compete with, robot mower manufacturers can benefit from the exclusivity of their products.
It’s likely that the price of robotic lawn mowers will continue to fall as the competition grows, but for now, they remain expensive.
🏎 Performance Perks
There are a few perks of robot mowers compared to conventional push mowers.
For one, they cut grass autonomously, so there’s the obvious perk of never having to manually cut your lawn again.
Plus, robot mowers have lower running costs than regular mowers (especially petrol mowers), and they support a healthy lawn by regularly mowing and dispersing the grass clippings back onto the ground, where they decompose and act as a natural fertiliser.
All these unique advantages mean that robot mowers have a higher purchase price, and people will pay this price for the convenience of a hands-off mowing solution.
💎 Why Are Some Robot Mowers More Expensive Than Others?
The main reason why some robotic lawn mowers are more expensive than others is that some are designed for much larger lawns than others.
The bigger the lawn that the mower is designed to cut, the higher the price. So, you’ll pay more money for a robot mower for a large lawn than you will for a robot mower that’s designed to mow a small space.
Prices also vary by brand, and features play a part in costs, too. Robotic mowers with smart features like Bluetooth and built-in GPS tracking are around 10-30% more expensive than mowers with basic functionality.
⚖️ What’s The Average Price Of A Robot Lawn Mower?
The average price of a robot lawn mower is £500-£750.
The price varies depending on the size of the lawn that the mower can cut, as well as its features, and the manufacturer’s reputation.
Some mowers with more basic functioning are cheaper than this – as little as £400. Some, designed for large gardens, cost £1,000-£1,200+.
📉 Are Robot Lawn Mowers Getting Cheaper?
From our research, robotic lawn mowers don’t appear to have gotten much cheaper in the past couple of years, but they haven’t gone up in price, either (promising news, since the price of everything else seems to be going up with inflation and an impending recession here in the UK).
We used Honey to see how the price of three popular robot lawn mowers had changed in recent months. Honey only shows price changes over the last 120 days (or just under 4 months). We found that during this time, prices for these mowers jumped up and down, but generally returned to the base-level price.
Only one of these mowers is now £20 more expensive than it was 3 months ago.
Take a look at the price differences below:
This is the price history for the Einhell Power X-Change 18V Robotic Lawnmower:
Here’s the price history for the LawnMaster L10 Robotic Lawnmower:
And this is the price history for the Flymo EasiLife 150 GO Robotic Lawn Mower:
Our findings don’t support the idea that robot lawn mowers are getting cheaper, but you’d probably need to look back at least 1-2 years to get a better insight into how robot lawn mower price trends are changing.
💰 Do Cheap Robot Mowers Exist?
Everyone has different opinions of what makes something “cheap” or affordable. In our view, no, cheap robot mowers don’t exist.
We consider a cheap lawn mower to be less than £100-£150. Since the starting price for most robot mowers is 500, this puts them firmly in the “expensive” category for us.
However, there are a few robotic mowers that we would reluctantly categorise in the “moderate” price classification, like the LawnMaster L10 Robotic Lawnmower (<Amazon link), which costs around £400 – about £100 cheaper than its competitors.
With that said, if you’re looking for a bargain, you won’t find a robotic mower that fits this description. You’re best waiting it out to see if the price of robot mowers starts to fall once they become cheaper to make and the competition is higher.
💲 How To Save Money On A Robot Mower
As we’ve indicated already, robotic mowers are by no means cheap.
With that said, there are a few ways that you can at least save a few pounds on a new robot lawn mower, without compromising on quality or performance.
These include:
🎦 Skip The Fancy Features
WiFi, integrated GPS, Bluetooth, and an attractive facade might be alluring, but you don’t need any of these features in a functional, capable robot lawn mower.
The only feature that a robot mower truly needs is the ability to autonomously cut your lawn, which even the more basic models are capable of.
So, if you’re looking to save money, skip the fancy features and go for a mower that offers a reliable performance without the expense of extra bells and whistles.
❄️ Buy Off-Season
Like the traditional mower market, the robot lawn mower market tends to be a better place to shop at during the off season.
When peak mowing season hits, mower manufacturers raise their prices because they know that many people need a new mower.
But during the winter months, nobody’s grass is growing, so manufacturers often reduce their prices to tempt customers to spend their money on something that they don’t need right now.
You might be able to buy a robot mower for 10-20% less in January and February than you would from April-May onwards.
It’s not guaranteed, though – it just depends on the manufacturer you buy from.
📐 Avoid Unnecessary Size Upgrades
Another way to save money on a robot lawn mower is to make sure you only buy the mower size you need.
Don’t just assume your lawn size. Get the tape measure out and measure your lawn in cm, first widthways, then lengthways – then multiply these numbers together. That’s your lawn size in m².
Accurately measuring your lawn size may help you save £50-£100 on your robot lawn mower purchase. There’s no need to oversize the mower – it only needs to be capable of cutting your lawn space. So, choose a model on the more affordable end of the spectrum when possible.
The average lawn size in the UK is 188m², so, actually, the smallest available model in a robot mower range might do just fine for you.
🛍️ Shop Around
Shopping around can often help you buy the best deal, so don’t click “buy” on the first product page you come across.
It’s common for robotic mowers to be sold at different prices by different sellers. Some sellers might have deals for specific events (like Prime Day or Black Friday), and some might have special stock clearance sales.
Buying in-store is often the worst value for money, so check pricing online before you open your wallet.
A word of warning here: Make sure to buy from a reputable seller, and be wary of sellers with prices that seem too good to be true. They probably are! We recommend buying direct from the manufacturer, DIY stores like B&Q, and online marketplaces like Amazon.
🧐 Are Robotic Lawn Mowers Worth The Cost?
In our opinion, robot mowers are worth the cost because they eliminate the physical task of mowing the lawn with a traditional mower.
If you hate the manual labour associated with traditional mowers, including lugging the mower in and out of storage and emptying the grass box, you’ll love the freedom of owning a robot mower. And this freedom might make the high price tag worth it in your eyes.
Robotic mowers also have lower running costs than petrol mower models, and can help you to sustain a healthier lawn.
With that said, robot lawn mowers are very expensive, and you might simply be unable to justify their cost, regardless of their benefits.
In this case, robot mowers probably aren’t worth it for you – but, if the price goes down, they might be in the future.
💳 What’s The Best-Value Robotic Lawn Mower?
We think the LawnMaster L10 Robotic Lawnmower is the best-value robotic lawn mower available today.
It costs just under £400, which is about £100 cheaper than the base models offered by other manufacturers.
Price doesn’t affect quality, though, and you can rely on this mower to keep your lawn in tip-top condition. The only downside is that it doesn’t have built-in Bluetooth or WiFi, so you have to do all the programming using buttons on the mower interface.