For surveyors, planners & landowners

Drone Mapping & Surveying

Overhead view of graded earthworks with plant and haul roads
Overhead view of a suburban grid of houses and streets
Aerial view of a patchwork of farm fields
Aerial view of a commercial development site beside a highway
What do you need?
Where's the site?

Free to post · Usually a reply the same day

133 mapping pilots listed · Pay the pilot directly, no commission

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 questions adapt to the work: area for a mapping job, access and asset for an inspection.

  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

How accurate is a drone survey, really

There are two accuracies and conflating them causes most of the disappointment in this field. Relative accuracy is how well measurements inside the model agree with each other, and photogrammetry is good at it — often a few centimetres on a well-flown site. Absolute accuracy is how well the model agrees with real-world coordinates, and that depends entirely on how the model is tied to the ground. A drone flying on its own consumer GPS may be metres out in absolute terms while looking perfect internally. Surveyed ground control points, checkpoints, or an RTK/PPK aircraft are what close that gap, and they cost time and money. Decide which accuracy your deliverable actually needs before you ask for a price, because the answer changes the price several-fold.

Specifying the job

Give the site boundary and the area in acres or hectares, the terrain and ground cover, and what the survey is for. State the accuracy you need and how it will be verified. Name the deliverables and the file formats — GeoTIFF, LAS or LAZ point cloud, DXF or DWG contours, a textured mesh — and name the coordinate reference system and vertical datum. Say whether you can provide existing survey control or whether the pilot must establish it. If there is tree canopy, say so: photogrammetry cannot see the ground through leaves, and a site that needs bare-earth data under canopy needs lidar, not photographs.

Photogrammetry or lidar

Photogrammetry builds the model from overlapping images. It is cheaper, gives you true-colour output, and is the right default for open ground, stockpiles and site documentation. Lidar measures with a laser and can find the ground between vegetation, which photogrammetry fundamentally cannot. It costs more, both in equipment and processing, and it does not give you a photographic map unless a camera is flown alongside. If your site is open, photogrammetry is almost certainly what you want; if you need bare earth under trees, nothing else will do.

What you can rely on

  • Relative accuracy of a few centimetres on a well-flown site — measurements inside the model agreeing with each other.
  • Absolute accuracy in survey territory, once tied to surveyed control or flown RTK/PPK with independent checkpoints.
  • Deliverables in the formats your team opens: GeoTIFF, LAS or LAZ, DXF or DWG contours, a textured mesh.
  • True-colour output, which is what makes photogrammetry the right default for open ground and site documentation.

Where it stops

  • See the ground through leaves. If you need bare earth under canopy, nothing but LiDAR will do.
  • Deliver absolute accuracy from consumer GPS alone — a model can look perfect internally and be metres out in the world.
  • Give you a photographic map from LiDAR unless a camera is flown alongside.
  • Land in the right coordinate reference system and vertical datum by accident. A survey in the wrong datum is a survey delivered twice.

Two accuracies, and conflating them causes most of the disappointment in this field. Decide which one your deliverable needs before you ask for a price — the answer changes it several-fold.

Why post it on SkyLog

Orthomosaics

A single scaled overhead image of the whole site, geometrically corrected so you can measure off it. The workhorse output, and the one most people mean when they say they want a drone map.

Terrain and contours

Digital surface and terrain models, contour lines and cross-sections. Note the difference: a surface model includes the trees and buildings, a terrain model is the ground with those stripped out, and asking for the wrong one wastes a flight.

Volumes

Stockpiles, excavations, landfill cells and borrow pits, measured from the model against a base surface you define. Say which base surface you want the volume measured against — it changes the number.

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.

Mapping pilots with published profiles

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

Mapping & survey pilots by state

Before you post

How large an area can one flight cover?

It depends on the altitude, the aircraft and the resolution you need, since flying lower for finer detail means covering less ground per battery. Give the acreage and the resolution you want and pilots will tell you how many flights that is.

Does a drone survey replace a licensed land surveyor?

For legal boundary determination, no — that is a licensed activity in most jurisdictions and drone imagery does not change it. For topographic data, volumes and site documentation, drone survey is widely used, often by surveyors themselves as a data capture method.

What is a ground control point?

A marked target on the ground whose position has been measured with survey-grade equipment. Including several in the flight lets the processing software tie the whole model to real-world coordinates, which is what turns good relative accuracy into good absolute accuracy.

How long does processing take?

Longer than the flight, usually. A modest site might process overnight; a large one with high overlap can take days of compute plus a manual quality pass. Ask about turnaround separately from flight scheduling.

Can you map the same site repeatedly and compare?

Yes, and this is one of the strongest uses of the technique. Comparing surfaces flown weeks apart gives you change and volume moved, provided both flights are tied to the same control — which is why establishing control on the first visit is worth the cost.

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 mapping job free

Describe the site, the accuracy and the formats you need, and let survey pilots quote you. No commission, no obligation to hire.

Aerial view of fields divided by tree lines
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