ContextCapture alternative for Mac and cloud drone mapping with iTwin Capture pricing compared
ContextCapture is now Bentley's iTwin Capture Modeler. The Modeler Flex download is free for importing and aligning photos, but turning them into a mesh, orthophoto or point cloud needs iTwin Capture Engine, which Bentley's US store lists from $4,000 for a 12-month subscription, and it runs only on Windows with an NVIDIA graphics card. A ContextCapture alternative makes sense when the job is site maps, surfaces and volumes, several people need them, and nobody wants to buy and babysit a GPU workstation. DroneMapping processes photos from any drone in the cloud, in any browser including a Mac, with 10 seats on Team at $249 a month or $1,488 a year.
net volume
net volume
Side by side
ContextCapture and iTwin Capture vs DroneMapping on price, hardware and outputs
Bentley details come from the iTwin Capture Modeler, iTwin Capture Engine and iTwin Capture WorkSuite product pages on bentley.com, checked in October 2026. Bentley prices vary by region, and the figures below are the US store listings. DroneMapping prices are the ones on our pricing page.
| What you compare | ContextCapture (iTwin Capture) | DroneMapping |
|---|---|---|
| Published price | Modeler Flex free to download, Engine from $4,000 for 12 months, WorkSuite from $5,000 for 12 months | Starter $99 a month, Team $249, Business $599, or $588, $1,488 and $3,588 a year |
| What you pay for | Processing to final outputs, per license | The company plan, processing included |
| Cloud processing | iTwin Capture Cloud Services, price on request | Included on every plan |
| People | 1 license per subscription, plus 2 Keys for training or services | 3, 10 or 25 seats that all upload and measure |
| Operating system | Windows 11 or Windows Server 2022, 64-bit | Any browser on Mac, Windows, Linux or a tablet |
| Hardware | 16 GB RAM, 8-core Core i7 and an NVIDIA RTX 3070 at minimum, 64 GB and an RTX 4080 recommended | None, processing runs on our servers |
| Orthomosaic, DSM and DTM | Yes | Yes, on every plan |
| 3D model and point cloud | Reality mesh, point cloud, Gaussian splatting | 3D textured model and LAS or LAZ point cloud on Team |
| LiDAR | Photos and LiDAR in one project | No LiDAR |
| Volumes and cut and fill | Through other Bentley tools | Stockpile volumes on every plan, cut and fill against a design surface on Team |
| Project size | City and corridor scale | 500 photos per flight, larger sites split into flights |
| Client sharing | Exports and Bentley viewers | View links on every plan |
The short version: ContextCapture is a reality modeling engine for large meshes, mixed photo and LiDAR capture and Bentley infrastructure delivery. DroneMapping is the better buy for a survey or construction firm whose flights end in an orthomosaic, a surface, a volume and a link the client can open.
How Bentley prices it
Bentley ContextCapture price and how iTwin Capture licensing works
The old ContextCapture, ContextCapture Center and ContextCapture Master editions are gone from Bentley's store. What you buy now splits into three parts. iTwin Capture Modeler Flex is a free download, and Bentley describes it as the place to import, organize and align photos, LiDAR and other reality data. The step you pay for is processing those aligned photos into deliverables.
For processing on your own computer, iTwin Capture Engine starts at $4,000 for a 12-month Virtuoso subscription with 1 license and 2 Keys. Keys are Bentley credits you redeem for training or expert services, so 2 Keys do not mean 2 users. iTwin Capture WorkSuite starts at $5,000 for 12 months and bundles the Engine with iTwin Capture Manage and Extract and Descartes. Processing in Bentley's cloud, iTwin Capture Cloud Services, has no public price, and enterprise or perpetual licensing is quoted by Bentley or a reseller. Older figures such as $3,773 on software directory sites come from a previous WorkSuite bundle and are out of date.
Before you renew or sign a first quote, ask for three things in writing: the per-license price for each person who processes, what a cloud processing job costs per gigapixel or per project, and the price for a 24 or 36 month term.
No workstation needed
ContextCapture for Mac and why a cloud tool solves the hardware question
Is there ContextCapture for Mac? No. Bentley lists Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022, both 64-bit, as the only supported systems, and there is no macOS or Linux build of iTwin Capture Modeler or the Engine. People searching for ContextCapture Mac or ContextCapture Linux usually end up with Boot Camp on an old Intel Mac, a remote Windows desktop, or a second computer under the desk.
The GPU is the other half of the cost. Bentley's minimum is an NVIDIA RTX 3070 with 16 GB of RAM and an 8-core Core i7, and the recommendation is an RTX 4080 or better with 64 GB of RAM and a Core i9. That machine sits in one office, and only one person processes on it at a time.
A cloud tool removes both problems. In DroneMapping the pilot uploads geotagged JPEGs from a browser on a MacBook, a Windows laptop or the office PC, and processing takes about 20 to 55 minutes for 100 photos or 1.5 to 3.6 hours for 500. Nothing installs, and the laptop does not need a graphics card. Our page on photogrammetry software for Mac compares the desktop options that do run on Apple Silicon.
Worked example
What a 3-person site team pays for iTwin Capture and for DroneMapping over 3 years
Take a civil site contractor with a drone pilot, a project engineer and a superintendent. The pilot flies two active sites every two weeks, about 3,000 photos a month. The engineer needs surfaces and a cut and fill map against the grading design, and the superintendent counts stockpiles at month end.
| What the team buys | iTwin Capture Engine | DroneMapping Team, yearly |
|---|---|---|
| Processing software | 1 license, from $4,000 a year | Included |
| Processing workstation | A Windows PC with an RTX 3070 or better, priced by you | Not needed |
| Second person processing at the same time | A second license | Included in 10 seats |
| Volumes and cut and fill | Separate Bentley or CAD tools | Included on Team |
| Client view | Exports or a Bentley viewer | View links, included |
| Known 3-year software total | $12,000 for one Engine license, hardware and extra tools on top | $4,464 |
The Bentley column is a floor, because the workstation, a second license and the measurement tools are not in it. Even the floor is about 2.7 times the DroneMapping figure. If the deliverable is a reality mesh of a bridge or a downtown block, that gap buys something we do not make. If it is a surface, contours and a volume, it usually does not.
Honest fit
When ContextCapture is still the better choice
Keep iTwin Capture, or run it next to us, if most of these are true:
- You deliver reality meshes at corridor or city scale, for a DOT, a utility or an engineering client who asked for a Bentley format.
- You combine drone photos, terrestrial scans and LiDAR in one project.
- Your engineers work in MicroStation, OpenRoads or iTwin, and the mesh feeds those models directly.
- Your projects run well past 500 photos per flight and cannot be split.
- You want Gaussian splatting or very high detail meshes for inspection and visualization.
- You need offline processing on your own hardware for security reasons.
The trade is cost and hardware per person. A small firm where the pilot, the engineer and the superintendent all touch the data pays for a license and a workstation that only one of them can use at a time.
Built for site work
A ContextCapture alternative for survey and construction crews
Most site teams bought ContextCapture, or were quoted it, because it was the name they knew for drone photogrammetry. What they produce each week is narrower: an orthomosaic for the progress meeting, a DSM and a bare-earth DTM, contours for the engineer, a stockpile number for accounting and a cut and fill map against the design.
DroneMapping covers that list in one plan. Contours export as DXF or SHP, surfaces as GeoTIFF and the point cloud as LAS or LAZ, in the State Plane or UTM zone you pick by EPSG code. The GCP and checkpoint report shows RMSE in X, Y and Z, so the engineer can sign off on the surface. Our cut and fill software page shows what the design comparison reports, and the superintendent opens the same project through a view link without an account.
What we do not do: LiDAR, thermal, Gaussian splatting, city-scale meshes and flights over 500 photos. If those are why you looked at ContextCapture, keep it for those jobs and run the routine site flights through us.
Switching
How to test a ContextCapture alternative on a project you already processed
A fair test uses a flight with a known answer.
- Pick a site you trust: a surveyed stockpile or a pad with checked elevations.
- Use the same control: export the GCP coordinates as CSV and hold two or three points back as checkpoints.
- Upload the original photos: the geotagged JPEGs from the drone's card, not the tiles ContextCapture produced.
- Match the coordinate system: the same EPSG code and the same vertical units.
- Compare the numbers: checkpoint RMSE in X, Y and Z, the stockpile volume and the contour lines against your ContextCapture output.
- Share it: send the view link to the superintendent and see whether anyone misses the desktop workflow.
Weighing other desktop engines too? Our RealityCapture alternative and Metashape alternative pages cover the same workstation question for those tools.
Try it on a real surface
Measure a processed site before you create an account
The demo loads a sample stockpile yard, an earthworks pad and a field. Toggle contours, draw a volume and read an elevation profile in the browser, on a Mac or a PC.
Pricing
What DroneMapping costs next to an iTwin Capture quote
Starter is $99 per month or $588 per year: orthomosaic, DSM and DTM, measurements and volumes, view links, 3 seats and 3,000 processed images a month. Team is $249 per month or $1,488 per year and adds the 3D textured model, the dense point cloud as LAS or LAZ, GCP and checkpoint reports, DXF and SHP contours, stockpile PDFs and cut and fill, with 10 seats and 15,000 images. Business is $599 per month or $3,588 per year for 50,000 images, 25 seats, multispectral indices, the progress timeline and the API.
Questions
ContextCapture alternative FAQ
For a survey or construction firm that needs orthomosaics, surfaces, volumes and cut and fill for several people, a cloud platform priced per company, such as DroneMapping, replaces ContextCapture without a GPU workstation. For desktop processing, Pix4Dmapper, Agisoft Metashape and RealityScan are the usual shortlist, each with its own license and hardware.
ContextCapture is now iTwin Capture. The Modeler Flex download is free, and you pay to process outputs. Bentley's US store lists iTwin Capture Engine from $4,000 and iTwin Capture WorkSuite from $5,000, each for a 12-month subscription with 1 license. Cloud processing and enterprise licensing are quoted, and prices vary by region.
No. Bentley supports iTwin Capture Modeler and iTwin Capture Engine only on 64-bit Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022. Mac users run it through Boot Camp on older Intel Macs or a remote Windows machine. A cloud tool such as DroneMapping processes on its own servers, so a MacBook only uploads photos and measures in the browser.
Bentley lists an NVIDIA RTX 3070 as the minimum GPU, with 16 GB of RAM and an 8-core Intel Core i7. The recommended setup is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 or better, 64 GB of RAM and a Core i9. Large projects run slowly or fail on less, which is why many teams price the workstation along with the license.
No. There is no Linux build of iTwin Capture Modeler or iTwin Capture Engine, and Bentley lists only Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022. Teams on Linux use a Windows virtual machine with GPU passthrough or Bentley's cloud processing, which is quoted. A browser-based tool works on Linux without either workaround.
They are the same product line under a new name. Bentley renamed ContextCapture to iTwin Capture Modeler and split processing into iTwin Capture Engine on your own hardware and iTwin Capture Cloud Services. The older ContextCapture Center and Master editions are no longer sold under those names.
Partly. iTwin Capture Modeler Flex is a free download for importing, organizing and aligning photos and LiDAR. Producing final outputs such as reality meshes, orthophotos and point clouds needs a paid processing option, either iTwin Capture Engine from $4,000 a year or quoted cloud processing.
Related pages
More on choosing ContextCapture or another option
- ContextCapture price with every iTwin Capture license and a 3-year team cost
- DJI Terra alternative for teams leaving another Windows and NVIDIA desktop tool
- RealityCapture alternative for teams quoted RealityScan seats
- Metashape alternative for firms weighing Agisoft Professional
- Pix4D alternative with the full Pix4D price list for a 3-person team
- Photogrammetry software for Mac for Apple Silicon offices
- Best drone mapping software compared by job and budget
Process your next site flight without a GPU workstation
Upload a flight you already ran through ContextCapture and compare the checkpoint error, the volumes and the contours side by side.