Three brands dominate the part of the ROV market a small survey firm, a marina, or a public safety dive team can actually afford: QYSEA and Chasing out of Shenzhen, and Blue Robotics out of Torrance, California. All three publish add-to-cart prices, which makes them rare in robotics and easy to compare honestly.
I read all three on 6 August 2026 — QYSEA and Blue Robotics on their own stores, Chasing through UrbanDrones, an authorised US dealer, because Chasing does not sell direct in the US. Currency was confirmed as USD from each store's own cart endpoint. Everything below is a listed price on that day, not a quote.
The ladder
| Vehicle | Depth rating | Listed price |
|---|---|---|
| QYSEA FIFISH V-EVO, Standard Pack | 100 m | $1,399.00 |
| Chasing M2 S Lite (100 m tether) | 100 m | $2,499.00 |
| QYSEA FIFISH V6 EXPERT, Standard Pack | 100 m | $2,999.00 |
| Chasing M2 S, 200 m tether + arm | 100 m | $3,698.00 |
| QYSEA FIFISH V6 EXPERT, Extended Range Arm | 100 m | $4,298.00 |
| **Blue Robotics BlueROV2, acrylic** | **100 m** | **from $4,900.00** |
| **Blue Robotics BlueROV2, aluminium** | **300 m** | **from $5,300.00** |
| Chasing M2 Pro Max, base | 200 m | $6,994.00 |
| QYSEA FIFISH E-GO, Extended Operation Arm Pack | 100 m | $8,697.00 |
| Chasing M2 Pro Max, Professional Set | 200 m | $12,999.00 |
Depth is not on the price curve
The single most useful thing in that table is how badly price tracks depth.
Every consumer and prosumer FIFISH — from the $1,399 V-EVO to the $8,697 E-GO, a 6.2× range — is rated to 100 metres. Chasing's M2 S is 100 m too, whatever the "200 m" in the set name suggests; that number is tether. Only the M2 Pro Max reaches 200 m, at $6,994 and up.
Blue Robotics gets to 300 m for $5,300 — the same vehicle as the $4,900 model with aluminium tubes instead of acrylic. That $400 delta buys three times the depth rating, and the resulting vehicle is rated deeper than anything either Chinese brand sells below $13,000.
So the honest guidance is inverted from what the price ladder implies. If your job is shallow — hull inspection, aquaculture pens, a 40-foot slip, a lake search — the extra money at QYSEA and Chasing buys payload, light, endurance and tooling, and buys them well. If your job has a depth number attached to it, the cheapest qualified vehicle on this list is the American one.
The same arm costs three different prices
Every brand here prices manipulation inconsistently, and each does it in its own way.
QYSEA sells its two-finger arm at $399 (V-EVO) and $699 (V6 EXPERT, E-GO). Inside the packs, the same $699 arm is discounted $258 on the V6 EXPERT Arm Pack and sold at exactly list on the Extended Range Arm Pack — same product page, two prices for the same part.
Chasing is stranger. On the M2 S, adding the arm costs $799 on the 100 m configuration ($2,699 → $3,498) and $699 on the 200 m one ($2,999 → $3,698). On the M2 Pro Max, the robotic claw costs $304 on the base battery, $799 on the 300 Wh, and $600 on the 700 Wh. The circular claw and the sediment sampler show the same pattern: $603 and $703 on the base, $1,098 and $1,198 on both larger batteries. The accessory is priced by which battery you chose, which no spec sheet explains. Two of the dealer's claw listings also imply two different arm prices — $899 in one bundle, $790 in the other.
Blue Robotics avoids the problem by not bundling: its Newton gripper is a single catalogue line at $720 (our 1 August reading), the same whichever vehicle you put it on.
Sensors are the real budget, and closed platforms tax them
Nobody buys an inspection ROV and stops at the vehicle. This is where the architectures separate.
On the same dealer shelf, a Water Linked DVL A50 kit packaged for Chasing is $11,999. Blue Robotics lists the Water Linked DVL from $8,710 on its own store (our 1 August reading, not re-checked today) — the same sensor family, 37.8% cheaper when it goes onto an open platform. Sonar shows the same shape: Chasing's own Ping 360 is $5,999, while a third-party Cerulean Omniscan 450 FS for the same Chasing hulls is $3,500 (100 m) or $4,100 (300 m), and a Micron Gemini kit for the M2 Pro is $1,499.
QYSEA's tooling is priced per platform and per accessory rather than per port. Its water-quality sensors — dissolved oxygen $2,899, pH $4,499, salinity $4,899, turbidity $5,899 — are not sold on qysea.com at all; they only appear on the dealer's site. One QYSEA "accessory", the QYMT AI measurement system, is a subscription: $3,999 for six months, $5,999 for a year.
Who should buy which
Buy QYSEA if the work is shallow and tool-heavy and you want it to work out of the box. The V6 EXPERT Extended Range Arm Pack at $4,298 is the most capable turnkey package under $5,000 here, and the accessory catalogue (samplers, laser scaler, metal detector, second camera) is the deepest of the three.
Buy Chasing if you need 200 m and a bigger power budget. The M2 Pro Max's 300 Wh and 700 Wh options and 400 m horizontal radius are real operational advantages — just build the configuration you want on paper first, because the option pricing will not behave the way you expect.
Buy Blue Robotics if you need depth, if you intend to integrate your own sensors, or if you plan to own the vehicle for years. It is the only one of the three where every part has a published price and a replaceable equivalent — and, as we found when we priced the full catalogue, also the one where the tether and reel can cost more than the robot.
Model-level pricing for the FIFISH line is in our QYSEA price guide; the broader category sits on our underwater robot page.
Sources
- QYSEA official US store (read 6 August 2026): https://store.qysea.com/collections/fifish-rov
- Blue Robotics BlueROV2 product page, from-price and depth ratings (read 6 August 2026): https://bluerobotics.com/store/rov/bluerov2/
- UrbanDrones, Chasing and QYSEA listings (read 6 August 2026): https://www.urbandrones.com/collections/qysea-underwater-drones
- Blue Skies Drone Shop, Chasing M2 Pro and Chasing X listings: https://www.blueskiesdroneshop.com/
- Chasing M2 S technical specifications (100 m max depth): https://www.chasing.com/en/chasing-m2s-specs.html
- Maverick Drone, Chasing M2 Pro Max 200 m depth / 400 m radius: https://www.maverickdrone.com/products/chasing-m2-pro-max-rov-industrial-grade-underwater-rov
Limitations. Single-day listed prices from three sellers; two of the three brands were read at dealers rather than the manufacturer, so dealer margin is inside those numbers. Blue Robotics accessory prices other than the vehicle from-price are our 1 August record and were not re-read today; they are flagged where used. Depth ratings are manufacturer figures. "Same sensor" comparisons match by product family, not by part number — packaging, cabling and integration differ between platforms and account for some of the gap.
