Search for what a B9 costs and you will find numbers. Most of them are wrong, some of them are about a different robot entirely, and the most-quoted ones are old enough to vote.

This matters more than it sounds, because the build-or-commission decision is usually made once, early, on the basis of whatever figure the person found first. So before any comparison: what the circulating numbers actually are, and why none of them is a quote.

What is genuinely published

Officially sanctioned parts run through the B9 Robot Builders Club. Fred Barton Productions manufactures retooled body parts taken from the screen-used robot; those components are officially sanctioned and listed on the club site, which is an official licensee of Synthesis Entertainment. The club is the retail channel; FBP is the authorised manufacturer.

Assembly is available as a service. For builders who would rather not do the mechanical work, Fred Barton Productions will assemble and animate a robot built from club-purchased parts, for an assembly fee.

No price is published for any of it. The FBP page carries the standard “Pricing and Specifications subject to change without notice” and no figures. Club parts pricing sits behind the members’ area. That is not evasiveness — it is the normal posture for low-volume, made-to-order work in a hobby where material costs move — but it does mean any specific commission price you find online came from somewhere other than the vendor.

The numbers that circulate, and what they actually are

"$2,000 to well over $10,000." This is the widely repeated range for a self-built robot, and it is directionally reasonable. The spread is not vagueness; it is the animation question. A static display prop and a fully animated robot with motorised head, arm travel, lighting, and sound are different machines that happen to share a silhouette.

“About $4,000 and four years.” A single builder’s documented project. Useful as a data point, not as a benchmark — it reflects that builder’s choices, fabrication skills, and how much they made rather than bought.

"$15,000 to $29,000." This one gets quoted as a B9 commission price and it is neither. It comes from a 2005 Forbes article and it refers to life-size Robby the Robot replicas. Different robot, different tooling, different decade. If you see this figure attached to a B9, whoever posted it did not read the source.

The same article is where the club’s “$28 annual fee, about 300 members” line originates. Twenty-one years on, quoting it as current is a good illustration of the whole problem: hobby cost data ages badly and gets copied forward without its date.

How to cost a scratch-build honestly

Build the estimate yourself, in this order, and you will land closer than any published range.

1. Decide static or animated before anything else. This is the single largest cost fork and it drives every downstream decision. Be honest about which one you want rather than telling yourself you will “add animation later” — retrofitting motion into a body built without provision for it is substantially harder than building for it from the start.

2. Price the officially sanctioned parts you intend to buy, as a member. Join the club and read the actual current parts pricing. This is the one number nobody on a forum can give you accurately and the vendor will give you immediately.

3. Cost what you intend to fabricate, and cost it at two attempts. Materials for the sections you make yourself — resin, fibreglass, acrylic, sheet stock, fasteners. Then assume you will make at least one significant part twice. Every experienced builder does. Budgeting for a single perfect attempt is the most common way a build goes over.

4. Add consumables separately. Sandpaper, filler, primer, mixing cups, gloves, release agent, blades. Individually trivial, collectively a real line item over a multi-year project, and almost always left out of the estimate.

5. Cost the electronics as a system, not a parts list. For an animated build: motors, controllers, power supply, wiring, lighting, audio, and — the one people forget — the mounting hardware and brackets that hold all of it inside a body that was not designed around your specific components.

6. Add tools you do not own. If the build needs a tool you would not otherwise buy, that is a build cost. It has resale value and residual use, but it comes out of the same budget in the same year.

Where the commission genuinely wins

The honest case for paying someone, which the DIY-forever framing tends to skip:

  • You want the robot, not the project. These are different desires and only one of them is served by four years of evenings.
  • The mechanical animation is beyond your shop. Assembly and animation is exactly what the FBP service exists for, and a mechanism built by someone who has built many of them will work better than a first attempt.
  • You have money and not time. A commission converts years into dollars at a rate that is sometimes obviously worth it.
  • Failed attempts have a cost too. The scratch-build budget above includes making parts twice for a reason. Enough repeats and the gap narrows.

Where scratch-building genuinely wins

  • Total spend, in most cases, even accounting for waste — because your labour is free and it is the largest input.
  • Serviceability. You know how every section comes apart, because you put it together. When something fails in five years, that knowledge is the difference between an afternoon and a shipping crate.
  • Modification. A robot you built is one you can change. A commissioned one you are reluctant to open.
  • The thing most builders actually came for. A large fraction of this hobby is here for the building. If that describes you, the cost comparison is not really the question you are asking.

The practical recommendation

Get a real quote before deciding. Contact the vendor, describe the specification you want — static or animated, which options — and ask what it costs and what the lead time is. That single email produces a current, accurate number for your configuration, which is more than any article, forum post, or twenty-one-year-old magazine feature can give you.

Then build your own scratch-build estimate using the six steps above and compare like with like. Most builders who do this discover the decision was never really about the money.