For a long time, buying a collaborative robot almost always meant choosing Universal Robots. According to EVS International, the Danish company remains the leader in 2026 with about 15% of the global cobot market, but three of the next four spots now go to China’s Dobot, AUBO, and JAKA. The market itself, per MarketsandMarkets, is set to grow from $1.4 billion in 2025 to $3.38 billion by 2030.
GrabaRobot compared models in the most popular 5 kg payload class. The UR5e has an 850 mm reach and ±0.03 mm repeatability. JAKA Zu 5 reaches further—954 mm—with ±0.02 mm repeatability; AUBO i5 offers 886 mm reach and the same ±0.02 mm. Dobot’s Nova 5 and CR5 represent this class. In payload, reach, and accuracy, the four brands are nearly identical.
The difference is price. Base UR arms cost about $30–45K for UR5e, $45–60K for UR10e, and up to $85K for UR20. JAKA Zu 7 is under $35K, AUBO ranges from $14–38K, Dobot Nova 5 retails at about $13.8K, CR5A at $24.3K, and CR10A at $33.4K. In comparable configurations, Chinese cobots are 30–50% less expensive.
UR’s strength is its ecosystem: the PolyScope environment and hundreds of certified UR+ accessories—grippers, cameras, software modules. Chinese brands offer other advantages: JAKA features drag-and-drop programming on an Android tablet, AUBO’s controller natively supports ROS2, and Dobot provides the Dobot Studio graphical environment and a lineup from educational to industrial manipulators.
Review conclusion: there’s no longer a hardware gap, and today’s UR premium mainly pays for its dense network of integrators and service, which Chinese brands are still building. Buyers should compare not just specs, but support conditions: availability of spare parts and service engineers in the region, warranty terms, and compatibility with required tooling.
