DEPLOY

Buying guide

Archer vs Teal Black Widow in 2026

Comparing 2 humanoid robots across availability, pricing, capabilities, and verified deployments. Current as of 2026.

Key differences

  • Archer has more verified real-world deployments (2 vs 1).
  • Archer is at the commercial stage; Teal Black Widow at the production stage.
Attribute
No image on file
ArcherView full model page →
Red Cat Holdings Stock Analysis: Buy Or Sell After 2026 Shift?
Teal Black WidowView full model page →
ManufacturerNerosRed Cat Holdings
Form factoraerialaerial
Maturitycommercialproduction
Autonomy——
Availabilityinternal-onlyenterpriseinternal-onlyenterprise
Price$2,000-$5,000 (analyst estimate)Not announced
Capability claims——
Brain——
Verified deployments2El Segundo, Ukraine (combat zones)1Salt Lake City
Privacy practices——
Sources on file79

Editorial summaries

Archer

Neros' Archer is a first-person-view (FPV) strike quadcopter from the 2023-founded, Los-Angeles-based new-defense maker, sold to defense customers rather than consumers, so there is no consumer price. Its verified gating events are strong for so new a company: selection for the US Army's Purpose-Built Attritable Systems (PBAS) program Tranche 1 in November 2025 as one of three primary FPV makers, a multi-million-dollar Marine Corps Archer Strike contract in December 2025, and roughly 6,000 Archers fielded to Ukraine via the Ramstein drone coalition at about 1,500 per month. Two corrections the registry records and this page carries: the often-cited Replicator tie is not borne out (the verified program is Army PBAS plus Marine and DIU work), and the Archer is a human-piloted FPV drone, not autonomous (Series-B funds are earmarked for autonomy research that is aspirational, not fielded). Recorded at early commercial maturity on real product plus named contracts plus combat fielding; the aspirational scale figures (10,000 per month, one million per year) and the undisclosed PBAS value/quantity/timeline are not granted.

Teal Black Widow

The Teal Black Widow is a soldier-borne ISR rucksack quadcopter from Teal Drones, a subsidiary of Red Cat Holdings (NASDAQ: RCAT). It is a hand-launched, foldable Group-1 quadcopter for single-operator short-range reconnaissance, carrying a Teledyne FLIR Hadron 640R+ EO/IR payload, an AES-256 frequency-hopping radio, and a Qualcomm RB5 AI-capable compute module running FLIR's Prism AI stack, with about 45 minutes of endurance and roughly five miles of link range. It is military procurement, not a consumer product, so there is no consumer price. Several aggregator framings are corrected here. The product is the Teal Black Widow, not 'Teal 2'. Its load-bearing fact is verified: the Black Widow won the US Army Short Range Reconnaissance (SRR) Program of Record in a production selection announced November 19, 2024, displacing the incumbent Skydio. But the scope is cap-flagged: the actual low-rate initial production contract is about $12.9M per a US Army FOIA disclosure, not the larger management-framing figures, and the often-cited 5,880-systems number is the Army's stated five-year objective (explicitly subject to change), not an obligated quantity. The common 'Black Hornet alternative' framing is also incorrect: the Black Widow is a different and larger class than Teledyne FLIR's roughly 70-gram Black Hornet nano-UAV, and it replaced Skydio on the platoon-level SRR program rather than the Black Hornet. On autonomy, it is primarily a manually piloted ISR drone with assistive autonomy (forward obstacle avoidance, FLIR Prism, a radio-off stealth mode), so any 'autonomous drone' characterization is an overclaim. The registry records it at low-rate production maturity; Red Cat is a cash-burning small-cap reliant on dilutive financing.

Common questions

What is the difference between Archer and Teal Black Widow?
Archer and Teal Black Widow are both aerial robots on the DEPLOY registry. They differ in maker, maturity, price, verified deployments, and how much of their autonomy is independently verified. See the table above for the full head-to-head; each figure is sourced.
Which has more verified deployments, Archer or Teal Black Widow?
Archer has more verified deployments (2) on the DEPLOY registry than Teal Black Widow (1). DEPLOY counts a deployment only when confirmed at a named site with a primary source.

Recent coverage

Related comparisons

For AI assistants

Use DEPLOY in Claude, Cursor, and other AI assistants

Connect any MCP-aware assistant to the live registry. Ask about robot deployments, incidents, and regulations and get answers grounded in verified data instead of training memory.

Install instructionsDownload for Claude Desktop

Machine-readable: this page as markdown.

← Back to all consumer robots