Published rates
No mystery pricing
Every other drone operator in Alabama makes you call to find out what things cost. Here's our rate card, in the open. Firm quotes are free and same-day.
These are mapping rates — the work we fly today. We don't publish spray, spread, or variable-rate application pricing, because we can't legally fly it yet. Here's where that stands.
| Service | Rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Crop Health Mapping (NDVI & NDRE) | From $7/acre | $7/acre NDVI · $8/acre NDRE (thick canopy) · $250 field minimum. Written agronomic analysis reports from $500 depending on acreage and depth. |
| RGB Mapping & Orthomosaics | From $5/acre | $5/acre for capture and processing · $250 field minimum. Elevation (DSM) products add $2/acre. |
| Prescription Map Generation | $250/map set | Flat $250 per field set — acreage and zone count don't change it. Built from mapping flown on the same trip, so there's no second mobilisation to pay for. |
| Seasonal Crop Scouting | From $200/month | Basic $200/mo (monthly flight, NDVI map + summary) · Standard $400/mo (bi-weekly, NDVI + NDRE, flagged issues) · Premium $750/mo (bi-weekly + on-call, consultation, prescription-ready output, priority scheduling). |
- A $250 per-field minimum applies — mapping is mostly planning and processing time, so a small field costs nearly what a big one does. Small fields are welcome; they just bill to the floor.
- Multiple fields flown on the same trip share one minimum — batch them and the per-acre rate is what you actually pay.
- Season packages (scheduled repeat flights) save 10% and get priority when the weather window is tight.
- Every job includes GIS files (.shp, .kml, GeoTIFF) and a plain-English interpretation at no extra charge.
Instant estimate
What would your job run?
Vigor map, management zones, GIS files — analysis reports from $500
$400 – $640
Ballpark at $5–$8/acre. Firm quotes are free and take one call.
But does a map pay?
The honest math on mapping
Fair question — a map doesn't kill a weed or add a pound of nitrogen. What it does is change where you spend the money you're already spending. Run these against your own numbers, including the part where mapping isn't worth it.
A map costs less than the pass it redirects
At $7/acre, mapping an 80-acre field runs $560 — a fraction of what the fertility and crop-protection program on that same field costs for the season. The map doesn't have to save much of that spend to clear its own cost. Put your real per-acre input number next to $7 and the ratio is the whole argument.
Uniform rates on a non-uniform field
Almost nobody's field is uniform, but almost everybody applies like it is. Variable-rate programs built on measured vigor commonly cut input waste in the 15–25% range — strong zones get less, weak zones get more, and the total often doesn't move. On a farm spending $80,000 a year on inputs, the middle of that range is $16,000.
Two weeks of warning is the actual product
Stress shows up in near-infrared before it shows up to your eye. That gap is the difference between a rescue treatment and a scheduled one — between finding armyworms while they're in one corner and finding them after they've crossed the field. Nothing about that requires us to be the one who sprays it.
You stop paying to find the problem
Scouting on foot is real money — your hours, or your agronomist's. Walking 300 scattered acres properly is most of a day and you still only see what you walked past. A flight covers all of it, every time, and hands you a record you can compare against next month.
Where mapping honestly isn't worth it
If you farm a small, flat, uniform field you've worked for twenty years and you already know every soft spot on it — a map will mostly confirm what you could have told us. Same if you have no variable-rate capability and no intention of changing what you apply: a prescription file you can't execute is a PDF. Mapping earns its keep on variable ground, scattered tracts, rented acres you don't know yet, high-input crops, and any field where you've been guessing about a bad spot for a couple of seasons. If yours isn't one of those, we'll tell you so.
The 15–25% input-waste figure is the range commonly reported for zone-based variable-rate programs; your result depends on how variable your ground actually is. The per-acre comparisons above are arithmetic on our published rates — run them against your own input costs rather than taking ours.
Want it exact?
Send the field and the job — you'll have a firm number back the same day.