Bentley ContextCapture price at a glance
Prices come from Bentley's product pages for iTwin Capture Modeler, iTwin Capture Engine and iTwin Capture WorkSuite, checked in October 2026 on the US store. Bentley shows different prices by region, and every figure is a "starting at" price for a 12-month Virtuoso subscription.
| What you are pricing | Price | What it gets you |
|---|---|---|
| iTwin Capture Modeler Flex | Free download | Import, organize and align photos, LiDAR and other reality data, no final outputs |
| iTwin Capture Engine | From $4,000 a year | On-premises processing to reality meshes, orthophotos, point clouds and 2D outputs, 1 license and 2 Keys |
| iTwin Capture WorkSuite | From $5,000 a year | Engine plus iTwin Capture Manage and Extract and Descartes, 1 license and 2 Keys |
| iTwin Capture Cloud Services | Price on request | Processing on Bentley's servers instead of your own PC |
| Perpetual or enterprise license | Quoted | Bentley or a reseller sets the price, perpetual licenses carry yearly SELECT maintenance |
| DroneMapping Team | $1,488 a year | Orthomosaic, DSM and DTM, volumes, DXF and SHP contours, cut and fill, GCP and checkpoint report, 10 seats |
Keys are Bentley credits you trade for training or expert services. They are not extra seats, so a WorkSuite subscription with 2 Keys is still one person processing.
How much does ContextCapture cost?
ContextCapture costs at least $4,000 a year for processing, because that is the starting price of iTwin Capture Engine, the part of the renamed product that turns aligned photos into deliverables. The WorkSuite bundle starts at $5,000 a year. US reseller Virtuosity lists the WorkSuite at the same $5,000 with taxes not included. The $3,773 figure that still appears on software directory sites belongs to an older WorkSuite bundle and should not be used in a 2026 budget.
Is iTwin Capture Modeler free?
Only the setup step is free. iTwin Capture Modeler Flex downloads at no cost and lets you import, organize and align photos and LiDAR, which is useful for checking a dataset before you spend anything. Producing a reality mesh, orthophoto, DSM or point cloud needs a paid processing option, either iTwin Capture Engine on your own computer or Bentley's quoted cloud processing.
What does iTwin Capture Engine cost?
iTwin Capture Engine starts at $4,000 for a 12-month Virtuoso subscription on Bentley's US store, with 1 license and 2 Keys for training or services. It runs aerotriangulation and produces 3D and 2D outputs on your own hardware. A second person who needs to process at the same time needs a second license, and larger enterprise terms are quoted by Bentley.
Does ContextCapture run on Mac?
No. Bentley lists Windows 11 64-bit and Windows Server 2022 as the only supported systems for iTwin Capture Modeler and Engine, with no macOS or Linux version. Mac offices either keep a Windows PC for processing or use a cloud tool. Our page on photogrammetry software for Mac lists the options that do run on Apple Silicon.
What GPU does ContextCapture need?
Bentley's minimum is an NVIDIA RTX 3070 with 16 GB of RAM and an 8-core Intel Core i7. The recommended build is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 or better, 64 GB of RAM and a Core i9. That puts a capable processing workstation in the same budget conversation as the license itself, and it sits in one office for one user at a time.
ContextCapture price vs Pix4D and Metashape
On license price alone ContextCapture sits near the top of the desktop market. Pix4Dmapper is $3,990 a year and PIX4Dmatic runs $2,290, $3,990 or $4,990 a year. Agisoft Metashape Professional is a one-time $3,499 per license, with Standard at $179 for work that does not need survey outputs. RealityScan is $1,250 per seat per year for companies above $1 million in revenue. All of them still need a strong Windows PC for heavy jobs, and only PIX4Dmatic and Metashape run on a Mac. The details for each are in Pix4D vs Metashape pricing and RealityScan pricing.
| Software | Yearly or one-time price | Runs on Mac |
|---|---|---|
| iTwin Capture Engine (ContextCapture) | From $4,000 a year | No |
| Pix4Dmapper | $3,990 a year | No |
| PIX4Dmatic | $2,290 to $4,990 a year | Yes |
| Agisoft Metashape Professional | $3,499 one-time | Yes |
| RealityScan | $1,250 per seat a year above $1M revenue | No |
| DroneMapping Team | $1,488 a year, 10 seats | Yes, in the browser |
What a 3-person survey team pays over 3 years
Take a land surveying and site work firm with a drone pilot, a project surveyor and a CAD technician. They fly about 3,000 photos a month and deliver an orthomosaic, a bare-earth DTM with contours, stockpile volumes and the occasional cut and fill check.
| Cost over 3 years | iTwin Capture Engine, 1 license | iTwin Capture Engine, 2 licenses | DroneMapping Team |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software | $12,000 | $24,000 | $4,464 |
| People processing at once | 1 | 2 | 10 seats |
| Workstation | One Windows PC with an RTX 3070 or better, priced by you | Two of them | Not needed |
| Volumes and cut and fill | Other Bentley or CAD tools | Same | Included |
| Client sharing | Exports or a Bentley viewer | Same | View links included |
With one license the pilot and the CAD technician take turns on one machine. Even before hardware, the single-license column is about 2.7 times the DroneMapping figure, and the two-license column is more than five times.
When the Bentley license is worth paying for
Some firms should buy iTwin Capture, and we would tell them so.
- You deliver reality meshes of bridges, corridors or city blocks for DOT, utility or engineering clients.
- You merge drone photos, terrestrial scans and LiDAR into one model.
- Your engineers model in MicroStation, OpenRoads or iTwin and want the mesh in a Bentley format.
- You need Gaussian splatting or very high detail meshes for inspection and visualization.
- Your projects run to thousands of photos per flight and must stay in one block.
If that describes your work, compare Engine against WorkSuite and ask about a multi-year term.
What to ask a reseller before you sign
Bentley quotes most of what matters beyond the starting price, so get these answers in writing:
- The price per license for each person who will process, not only the first one.
- What iTwin Capture Cloud Services charges per job or per gigapixel, if you plan to burst large projects to the cloud.
- Whether the quote is a 12-month Virtuoso subscription or a perpetual license with SELECT maintenance, and what year two costs.
- How many Keys come with the quote and what they buy.
- The renewal terms, including whether the subscription renews automatically and how much notice cancellation needs.
Software subscriptions like this one tend to renew quietly, and a contract management tool that flags auto-renewal dates keeps the Bentley renewal from slipping past the office.
When a cloud plan with seats costs less
A cloud platform wins when the job ends at an orthomosaic, a surface, contours and a volume, and more than one person touches it. In DroneMapping the pilot uploads geotagged JPEGs from any drone in a browser, and processing takes about 1.5 to 3.6 hours for 500 photos on our servers. The surveyor checks the GCP and checkpoint report with RMSE in X, Y and Z, the CAD technician downloads DXF contours, and the client opens a view link. We do not process LiDAR, Gaussian splats or city-scale meshes, and flights are capped at 500 photos, so firms that live on those jobs should keep Bentley for them. The ContextCapture alternative page compares the two side by side, and every plan is printed on the drone mapping pricing page.
Is there a cheaper alternative to ContextCapture for a survey team?
Yes, if your deliverables are surfaces, contours and volumes rather than reality meshes. DroneMapping Starter is $99 a month or $588 a year with 3 seats, and Team is $249 a month or $1,488 a year with 10 seats, DXF and SHP contours, cut and fill and checkpoint reports. Processing runs in the cloud, so there is no workstation to buy.