What happened to the Amazon Astro home robot
Astro is neither dead nor shipping freely. Nearly five years after its September 28, 2021 announcement it is still gated behind an invite request, its MSRP has climbed from a $999.99 introductory price to $1,599.99, and its own product page still advertises a Ring subscription tier that Ring renamed on January 14, 2026.
The Amazon Astro home robot is still for sale. You still cannot walk up and buy one.
As of August 7, 2026 the Astro listing on amazon.com is live, headed "Available exclusively by invitation," limited to shipping addresses in the 50 US states, and showing no price at all to a signed-out visitor. Where a price would normally sit, the page says: "This product has limited quantities available. Not all requests will be granted." That is the same Day 1 Editions gate Amazon put up when it announced the robot on September 28, 2021.
The part of the Astro program that genuinely died has a date on it. Astro for Business, the version Amazon sold to small businesses, stopped functioning on September 25, 2024.
The dated record
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| Sep 28, 2021 | Astro announced as a Day 1 Edition, invite-only. List price $1,449.99, introductory price $999.99, six-month Ring Protect Pro trial included (Amazon) |
| Sep 28, 2022 | Amazon reports "hundreds of thousands of invite requests," adds pet detection and door/window state alerts, promises a developer SDK starting with Georgia Tech, Maryland and Michigan (Amazon) |
| Nov 15, 2023 | Astro for Business is announced at $2,350 plus a $60/month Astro Secure subscription (The Verge) |
| Jul 3, 2024 | Amazon discontinues Astro for Business seven months after launch, saying it wants to focus on the home robot (TechCrunch) |
| Sep 25, 2024 | Every Astro for Business unit stops working. Customers get unused prepaid fees back plus a $300 credit |
| Jan 14, 2026 | Ring renames its plans. "Ring Home Premium is now Ring Pro" (Ring support) |
| Jun 16, 2026 | PCMag's updated review lists Astro at an MSRP of $1,599.99 and "still available on an invitation-only basis" (PCMag) |
| Aug 7, 2026 | The listing still sells a "30-day Ring Home Trial" and tells buyers to subscribe to "Ring Home Premium" |
The price went up while the gate stayed shut
Amazon's launch post set the list price at $1,449.99 with a $999.99 introductory price for Day 1 Editions buyers. Today Amazon publishes no price on the listing at all. The best-sourced current figure comes from PCMag, whose review was updated June 16, 2026 and carries an MSRP of $1,599.99. PCMag also documented the wait: it joined the list in 2021, got an invite in early 2023, and paid $999.99 at the time.
So the robot costs roughly $600 more than the introductory price of five years ago, and is no easier to buy.
What you get, and what Ring charges extra for
Astro is a 20.6-pound wheeled robot with a 10.1-inch touchscreen, a 5MP bezel camera, and a 1080p periscope camera that rises to 42 inches off the floor. It maps your home, follows you around with audio, delivers reminders and calls, recognizes faces on-device if you set up a visual ID, and carries small objects in a cargo bin rated to 4.4 pounds.
The home-monitoring features that justify the price are on the other side of a subscription. Per Amazon's own FAQ on the listing, Ring Home Premium is what enables scheduled autonomous patrols while you are out, investigation of detected events such as breaking glass or a smoke alarm, 180 days of cloud storage for patrol video, the routine that plays dog barking at motion outside, and integration with Ring Alarm and Ring doorbells. Without it, a $1,599.99 robot is a rolling Echo Show with a periscope.
Pricing that tier is where the neglect shows. Ring's plans page on August 7, 2026 lists Ring Solo at $4.99/month, Ring Multi at $9.99/month, Ring Pro at $19.99/month or $199.99/year, and Virtual Security Guard at $99/month. The words "Ring Home Premium" appear nowhere on it, because Ring's own support page says that plan became Ring Pro when Ring Home plans were renamed Ring Protect plans on January 14, 2026. Amazon's Astro page is selling a subscription under a name its sibling company retired almost seven months ago.
The envelope is narrower than the marketing
Amazon's "We Want You To Know" block on the listing is unusually candid, and worth reading before anyone romanticizes this thing. Astro operates in a single-floor indoor environment and cannot go up or down stairs. It covers areas up to 3,500 square feet. It is not compatible with curved edges, sunken areas, flooring transitions greater than 1.375 inches, or black glossy floors.
Battery is quick to fill and does not last long: Amazon says roughly 45 minutes to charge, and PCMag measured about three hours of active use before it went looking for its dock, with one occasion where it died mid-living-room.
The accessory list has not moved in years either. The listing still promotes the same three add-ons: a Ziploc container sized for the cargo bin, a Furbo camera that tosses dog treats, and an OMRON wrist blood pressure monitor. A cupholder, a treat launcher and a medical peripheral, which is a reasonable summary of how unresolved the use case has always been.
Guys, I've been living with a robot for two weeks. Amazon Astro moved right on in and it's been fun! And annoying. And creepy. This robot can do so much. I also have no clue what it's really for. (@JoannaStern, 2022-04-06)
The business version is the part that actually died
Amazon introduced Astro for Business in November 2023 at $2,350, with an Astro Secure subscription at $60 per month, an optional $20 per month for Ring alarm and motion features, and an optional $99 per month for human monitoring agents. On July 3, 2024, TechCrunch reported that Amazon was retiring it after seven months. Every unit stopped working on September 25, 2024. Amazon refunded unused prepaid Astro Secure fees, issued a $300 credit toward a replacement, and offered free shipping to recycle the robots.
The statement Amazon gave at the time: "We are fully committed to our vision of bringing world-class consumer robotics solutions to the home. To accelerate our progress and ongoing research to make Astro the best in-home robot, we've made the decision to wind down support for Astro for Business. We're excited about the in-home experiences we're inventing for Astro, and look forward to sharing more in the future."
Two years and one month later, the sharing consists of a product page advertising a retired subscription tier. A hardware business that bricks a $2,350 device to focus on its consumer line owes that consumer line a release note.
The other unfinished promise from the same era is the Astro SDK, announced in September 2022 with Georgia Tech, the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan as the first partners. I can find no sign it ever reached developers outside those pilots.
Three tells that the program is parked
The plan name. Covered above, and the cheapest possible signal. Nobody is doing a monthly pass over that page.
No Alexa+. Amazon's Alexa+ page lists where the new assistant runs: Alexa.com, the Alexa app, Echo, Fire TV, Fire tablets, and Alexa built-in devices. Astro is not among them. The string "Alexa+" does not appear anywhere on Astro's own listing either. Amazon rebuilt its assistant around a large language model and left its household robot on the old one.
The eldercare pitch evaporated. The 2021 launch post led with remote care for aging relatives, powered by Alexa Together. The words "Alexa Together," "elder" and "senior" now appear zero times on the Astro listing. If you are shopping this category for a parent, the products actually built for it are covered in the companion robots for seniors guide, starting with ElliQ at $249 plus $39 to $59 a month.
What Amazon is building instead
Not a better Astro, at least not publicly. On June 5, 2025, Reuters relayed a report from The Information that Amazon is developing AI software for humanoid robots that could eventually replace delivery drivers, and completing a "humanoid park," an indoor obstacle course at a San Francisco office, using other companies' hardware for the tests. Reuters noted it could not independently confirm the report, and Amazon did not comment.
That is the split worth noticing. The robotics money at Amazon is going to logistics, where a robot has one job in a controlled space. The home robot, which has to do many loosely defined jobs in a space nobody controls, has spent five years in a limited-quantity pilot. It matches the pattern across the whole category: the home machines that work are single-purpose appliances, and the general-purpose ones are still programs rather than products. The survey of what actually works in a house sorts the current lineup, and the consumer robot graveyard counts what happened to the ones whose makers gave up entirely.
Astro, to be fair, belongs on neither list. It has not been bricked, the servers are up, and the listing is still taking requests.
If you want one anyway
The request flow is at amazon.com/astro, it requires signing in, and Amazon states plainly that not all requests are granted. Budget $1,599.99 as the working MSRP, plus $199.99 a year for the Ring tier that turns on patrols and investigations, and verify both numbers at checkout, because Amazon does not publish the price until you are through the gate.
Charlie Tritschler, then VP of Products, opened the 2021 announcement with a question his team had asked itself: "Do we think in five to 10 years that customers will depend on robots in their home?" The five-year mark lands on September 28, 2026. Amazon's answer, as posted on its own storefront, is a sign-in form and a warning that quantities are limited.
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