Every week people arrive at this site searching for a Microduck at Walmart or Five Below, sometimes "micro ducks near me", sometimes "microducks real". If that is you: the duck you have in mind is probably a toy. The Microduck on this site is not. This page is the clean-up - what is a toy, what this is, and how to tell which one you actually want.
The two Microducks
There are, effectively, two things wearing this name:
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Duck toys. Cheap plastic ducks - bath toys, ornaments, little wind-up or rubber ducks - sold in toy aisles, marketplaces and dollar stores. If it costs a few dollars, needs no charging and does nothing you can program, it is one of these. Enjoy it; it is not us.
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This Microduck. A 25 cm open-source biped robot sold for $399 as a pre-order at microduck.homes. It walks, balances, kicks and gets back up, and its moves are reinforcement-learning policies you can retrain. That is the product this entire site is about - the buy page and where-to-buy guide cover ordering it.
If a marketplace listing or a shelf tag says Microduck and the price is $12.99, you are looking at category one. No listing on Amazon, Walmart or eBay sells the robot on this site - it is sold direct by the maker, the where-to-buy guide explains the model.
What makes something a toy, and what makes this a robot
A toy is mostly finished. You press its buttons, it does its trick, and nothing you learn transfers anywhere. A development robot is mostly a starting point:
| A duck toy | Microduck | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | a few dollars | $399 before taxes and shipping |
| What it does | a fixed trick, maybe lights or sound | seven trained moves: stands, walks, turns, kicks, drives, grabs, gets up |
| What is inside | a motor, maybe a battery | 15 motors, camera, LiDAR, two IMUs, a 50 Hz policy loop |
| Can you program it? | no | yes - a full Python SDK |
| Can you train it? | no | yes - open reinforcement-learning environments |
| Where the "how" lives | in a sealed box | in public repositories under Apache-2.0 |
| Who supports it | nobody | a support email and a real community on Discord |
The dividing line is not price, and it is not cuteness - Microduck is a duck, and adorable is fine. The line is what you can change. You can change what this robot does, down to its walking gait, and the tools are public. That is the difference between a toy and a platform.
Why it looks like a toy (and that is on purpose)
Microduck is small, it is shaped like a duck, and it waddles. That is a deliberate design choice: legged robotics has a reputation problem - expensive, intimidating, academic - and a duck fixes a lot of that. The duck is the wrapper. Under the wrapper it is a serious biped:
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Balance and recovery are genuinely hard problems, and this robot does them at 25 cm.
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The seven moves came out of reinforcement learning, trained in simulation and moved onto real motors.
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The training stack is open, which means the robot is a teaching tool that happens to be charming - not a charming object that happens to include a motor.
Who it is actually for
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Makers and tinkerers who want a walking robot on the desk without a lab budget.
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Students and self-taught engineers who want a sim-to-real project with a real robot at the end.
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Families with a coder in them - the duck is the hook, the Python SDK is the lesson.
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Anyone tired of black boxes who wants the policies, the simulator and the training code all inspectable.
And if what you wanted was a $12 bathtub duck? Buy the bathtub duck. It is doing an honest job for its price, and it will not need firmware.
The safety talk, for households with kids
Kids love the duck immediately, and the robot is happy to be loved - but treat it as an electronic robot, not a plush toy:
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It is a moving machine with joints and motors: supervise young children, keep fingers out of the leg mechanism while it walks.
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Keep it away from water, sand and the edge of the desk. It recovers from pushes, not from swimming.
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The battery is a battery: charge it with the supplied cable, and keep the robot's own battery out of toy boxes.
For older kids who code, it flips the other way: the duck is the best motivator for a first Python project we have ever seen.
So which one is it, for you?
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You want a toy for a toddler: buy a duck toy - genuinely.
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You want a robot that walks, that you can program and train: that is this Microduck. It costs $399, and the pre-order page is the way in.
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You want to try before deciding: the simulator runs free in your browser. Ten minutes there will tell you more than any toy aisle ever will.
Is Microduck a toy? FAQ
Is Microduck a toy? It is a development robot shaped like a duck. It ships playable, but its purpose is that you can program it and train it - which is what separates it from a toy.
Is Microduck in Walmart or Five Below? No. Those aisles have duck toys that share the name; the robot is sold only at microduck.homes as a $399 pre-order.
Is it on Amazon? No, and there is no official listing anywhere except this site. See the where-to-buy guide.
Why is it so expensive if it is a duck? You are paying for 15 motors, a camera, LiDAR, two IMUs, the engineering behind a walking gait, and the open-source stack around it - not the duck shape.
Can kids use it? Yes, with supervision for young children. For teenagers, it is a genuinely good first robotics platform.
Does it need a phone or an app? It ships with a game controller and is driven out of the box; programming and training run from Python on a computer.
If I just want a cute desk companion, is it overkill? Slightly - but it is the cutest overkill in robotics, and the comparison with Reachy Mini may point you at the better fit.
Where to go next
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Where to buy Microduck - price, packs and ordering
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Microduck simulator - meet the real thing, free
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What is Microduck? - the robot and the stack in one post
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Documentation - SDK, simulator and training
