For owners, facility teams & roofing consultants

Commercial Roof Drone Inspection

Drone inspections from $175 near you

Overhead view of tiled rooftops in a dense town at golden hour
Flat roof of a brick warehouse building, seen from above
Flat roof of an office building with rooftop equipment
Overhead view of flat roofs crowded with HVAC units
What do you need?
Where's the property?

Free to post · Usually a reply the same day

219 inspection pilots listed · Pay the pilot directly, no commission

Independent FAA Part 107 pilots who cover your area quote and fly the job.

Free to post

Two minutes, no card, no commitment.

Pay the pilot directly

No commission or markup on their price.

FAA Part 107 pilots

The license all paid drone work requires.

Usually a reply the same day

From a pilot, or from our team if no pilot has answered.

How it works

Three steps, and the first one is free

  1. Describe the job

    The form opens with this page's answers already filled in. Add the location and anything specific to your site.

  2. A pilot near you sends a price

    Pilots whose service area and services match are emailed. Usually a reply the same day, from a pilot or from our team.

  3. Book them and pay them directly

    Check their certificate, kit and sample work, then pay the pilot. SkyLog takes no cut and adds no markup.

What to know before you book

Where flat roofs actually fail

Rarely in the middle of the field, and almost always at a detail. Perimeter flashings and terminations, where the membrane meets the parapet or edge. Penetrations — vents, pipes, conduit, anything added after the roof was built and flashed in by someone in a hurry. Curbs around rooftop plant, and the plant itself, which leaks condensate and drips oil and is the single most common source of a roof problem in a commercial building. Drains and scuppers, and whether they are blocked. Laps and seams, particularly on single-ply where a failed weld shows as a lifted edge. Ponding, which is both a symptom of drainage problems and a cause of accelerated ageing. Blistering, splitting and shrinkage in the membrane. Storm and hail damage, and mechanical damage from anyone who has been up there working.

Deliverables that earn their cost

The single most useful output is an orthomosaic of the whole roof, because it is a scaled plan. You can measure the roof area from it, mark each defect at its actual location, quantify how much membrane a repair area covers, and hand the whole thing to a contractor who can price from it without a site visit. Layered on top, a defect list with severity and a photograph per item makes it actionable. High-resolution obliques of details give a contractor what they need to see. For a portfolio, the same capture repeated annually and differenced turns roof management from reactive to planned. Where the question is water in the build-up rather than what the surface looks like, a thermal survey is a different exercise with its own conditions and its own page.

Rooftop plant is half the survey

On most commercial buildings the roof is also a plant room, and a great deal of what a survey finds is not the roof's fault. Condenser units leaking condensate onto the membrane. Access walkways missing or misplaced so technicians walk on the field. Pipework supported directly on the membrane. Cable trays and conduit run without support. Damage from previous plant installations. Debris and abandoned equipment. This matters for two reasons: it is frequently the actual cause of the leak someone is chasing, and it is a different budget from roofing, so identifying it correctly changes who pays. Ask for rooftop plant condition to be documented explicitly rather than assumed to be in scope.

Scoping a portfolio

Post the roofs together. A survey of one warehouse carries the whole mobilisation; a survey of eight in the same region spreads it, and the per-roof price falls substantially. Give the approximate area of each, the membrane type if you know it, the age, and whether there are known leaks. Say whether you want an orthomosaic per roof or imagery only, and whether rooftop plant is in scope. Say if this is a baseline for a recurring programme, so the capture can be set up to be repeatable. And flag anything unusual — solar arrays, skylights, roof-mounted safety systems, or restricted airspace over the site, which for a distribution park near an airport is not unusual.

What this settles

  • The details where flat roofs actually fail: perimeter flashings, terminations, penetrations, curbs and drains.
  • Laps and seams, blistering, splitting, shrinkage, ponding and storm or mechanical damage.
  • Rooftop plant condition — the condensate leaks and unsupported pipework that cause a large share of roof problems.
  • An orthomosaic: a scaled plan you can measure area from and mark each defect on at its real location.

What it does not

  • Tell you whether water is in the build-up. That is a thermal survey with its own conditions and its own timing.
  • Assess the deck, the structural capacity, or anything beneath the membrane.
  • Replace a roofing consultant where the survey flags something significant.
  • Price a repair. It gives a contractor what they need to price one without a site visit.

Ask for rooftop plant to be documented explicitly rather than assumed in scope — it is frequently the actual cause of the leak, and it is a different budget from roofing.

Why post it on SkyLog

Acres of roof, systematically

A distribution warehouse roof is measured in acres and inspected by someone walking it with a clipboard. A gridded flight covers all of it at consistent resolution, and misses none of it because it was raining that afternoon.

A measurable roof record

An orthomosaic of the roof is a plan you can measure areas on, mark defects against, and hand to a contractor for pricing — which a folder of photographs is not.

Nobody on an uncertain deck

The roofs most worth inspecting are the ones you least want to walk. Aerial survey removes the fall risk and the risk of damaging a fragile membrane by inspecting it.

Free to post

Posting and receiving quotes costs nothing, and SkyLog takes no commission and adds no markup. You pay the pilot you hire, at the price the two of you agree.

Inspection pilots with published profiles

Real published profiles. Open any one to see credentials, kit, service area and sample work before you post.

Before you post

How is this different from the infrared moisture survey?

This is a visual condition survey — what the surface, details and plant look like. Infrared answers a different question: where water is already sitting inside the roof build-up. They are often commissioned together, but they need different sensors, different conditions and different times of day.

What does it cost?

By roof area and deliverable, and much lower per roof across a portfolio. Inspection quotes on SkyLog have ranged $100 to about $1,550 with a $300 median across 13 quotes spanning all inspection types — a large warehouse roof with an orthomosaic sits above the middle. Post the roofs for real numbers.

Can I get roof area measurements?

Yes, from an orthomosaic, and it is one of the better reasons to ask for one. Areas measured off a scaled roof plan are what a contractor prices from.

Does it replace a walked roof survey?

For coverage and documentation it is better; for anything requiring touch it is not. A roofing consultant still needs to probe a suspect area, check a seam by hand and open up where necessary. The survey means they go to the right places.

How often should commercial roofs be surveyed?

Many owners work on an annual or biennial cycle, plus after any significant weather event. The comparison between years is where the value is, so set up the first survey to be repeatable.

Can it inspect roofs with solar arrays?

Yes, and the array is worth documenting too — panel condition, mounting, and the membrane around and under the mounting points, which is a frequent source of trouble. Mention the array when you post.

From a job poster

The jobs nobody else would quote

“I was not expecting to have a response so quickly after calling countless different companies.”
Jared OlroydOwner, Specialty Cleaning Agents
Quote in under 2 hours

Post your commercial roofs free

Give the roof areas, membrane type and how many buildings. Pilots quote the portfolio directly.

Overhead view of tiled rooftops in a dense town at golden hour