Topographic survey and contours
A measured surface model of the site with contours, spot elevations, and breaklines, ready for civil design and grading.
Drone and Aerial Survey
The whole site, measured from the air, in a single day.
A rover captures the points a crew can reach; a drone captures the whole surface. We fly a planned grid over your site and turn it into a survey-grade topographic model, stockpile and earthwork volumes, or a roof inspection, flown with ground control for centimeter accuracy. On anything over a few acres it is faster, safer, and denser than walking it, and it hands you a measured record of the entire site instead of a scatter of shots.
Cover the whole site in a day, from the air.
A crew walking a site with a rover captures the points they can reach and takes days doing it. A drone flies a planned grid and captures the entire surface, ground, stockpiles, roofs, and structures, in a single mobilization. For anything over a few acres the aerial method is faster, safer, and denser, and it hands you a measured record of the whole site instead of a scatter of shots.
The output is survey-grade when it is flown right. With ground control points or RTK correction, drone photogrammetry reaches roughly three to five centimeter horizontal and one to three centimeter vertical accuracy, and drone LiDAR reaches about two centimeter horizontal and four centimeter vertical at typical flight heights. That is enough for topography, site planning, volumes, and construction monitoring.
What a drone survey delivers
Stockpile and earthwork volumes
Accurate volume calculations for stockpiles, cut, and fill, computed from the surface, so material is measured, not estimated.
Roof and structure inspection
Close, safe visual and dimensional capture of roofs and structures without putting anyone on a ladder or a rope.
Photogrammetry or LiDAR, matched to the site.
Two aerial methods cover most work. Photogrammetry builds the model from overlapping imagery and delivers a rich, colored surface, ideal for open ground, stockpiles, and visual records. LiDAR pulses the ground and reads returns between vegetation, so it is the method when a canopy or brush hides the bare earth. The site and the goal choose the method, and where terrestrial scanning fits better, we say so.
Published 2026 ranges put drone photogrammetry around $150 to $300 per acre and drone LiDAR around $150 to $500 per acre, with per-acre cost falling on larger sites as fixed mobilization spreads out. A twenty acre site commonly lands in the low thousands and captures in a single day, typically well below the cost of an equivalent ground survey on sites over about five acres. Those are industry reference figures, not our quote.
Published prices.
| Deliverable | Price |
|---|---|
| Half-day scan (capture) | $1,500 to $2,300 to start |
| Full-day scan (capture) | $3,500 to $4,100 to start |
| Modeling from the scan | $0.10 / sq ft ($500 min) |
The published half-day and full-day rates cover terrestrial capture and set the baseline. Aerial survey is priced by acreage, method, accuracy, and deliverable, so we quote it once we know the site and what you need out of it. Tell us the acreage and the deliverable and we price it.
Tell us about the site.
Send us the location, the acreage, and what you need, topography, volumes, a roof inspection, or a site model. We fly it, process it against control, and hand you a survey-grade surface and the deliverable you came for.
Get a quoteQuestions about a project? Reach us at info@scanningandmodeling.com or (772) 210-4584.