Cut and fill software for earthwork cut and fill calculation from drone surveys

DroneMapping is cut and fill software for contractors who fly their sites. Upload the drone photos, add the design surface as a GeoTIFF, and get cut, fill and net volume in cubic yards with a red and blue map over the orthomosaic, for the whole pad or any area you draw. Compare against the design or against last week's flight, share one link with the owner, and give 10 people access on Team for $249 a month.

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Earthworks pad, sample

Processed

Loading sample

net volume

Measurements

net volume

Area

Perimeter

Cut

Fill

Base plane method

Click on the map to add points. Double click to close the polygon.

How it works

How drone cut and fill works in four steps

The math is simple: the current surface minus the reference surface, cell by cell, over the area you care about. The work is in getting two clean surfaces on the same grid, and that is the part the software does for you.

Fly the site: a normal mapping grid with 70 to 80% overlap, flown in DJI Pilot 2 or any planner. Use ground control or an RTK drone if the numbers go into a pay application.
Process the flight: upload the geotagged JPEGs and get an orthomosaic, a DSM and a bare-earth DTM, usually the same day.
Pick the reference: the design surface for the project, or an earlier flight of the same site.
Read the numbers: cut, fill and net volume, the area that changed, the average and largest change, and a map where red is fill and blue is cut.

Superintendent with a tablet checking a graded building pad while a dozer and excavator move dirt

What you get

Earthwork cut and fill calculation your PM can check

Each comparison reports the numbers a project manager actually puts in a meeting:

Cut volume: material removed where the current surface sits below the reference.
Fill volume: material placed where the current surface sits above it.
Net volume: fill minus cut, so you see at a glance whether the pad is short or long on dirt.
Changed area: square feet of ground that moved more than your threshold, split into raised and lowered.
Threshold: ignore changes smaller than a value you set, 0.1 m by default, so grass and noise do not inflate the totals.
Area of interest: run it on the whole site or on one pad, one cut or one pond you draw on the map.
Units: metres or US survey feet per project, with volumes in cubic yards when the project is in feet.
Surface choice: compare the DSM, or the DTM when equipment and stockpiles on site would skew the result.

Side by side

Cut and fill software compared for drone survey work

Most earthwork software was built for takeoff from plans. Drone platforms add the as-built side. Prices are what each vendor prints on its own site, checked in October 2026 in USD. Where a vendor quotes, we say so.

What you compare	DroneDeploy	Propeller	Desktop CAD (for example Civil 3D)	DroneMapping
Cut and fill against a design	On the quoted Advanced plan	Yes, a core feature	Yes, after you build both surfaces yourself	Team plan, $249 per month
Price you can see before a call	Flight & Analysis $4,188 per year, without cut and fill	Platform quoted, AeroPoint $1,000 each	Per-seat software subscription, plus a workstation	Team $249 per month or $1,488 per year
Processes the drone photos	Yes	Yes	No, needs a point cloud from another tool	Yes
Compare two flights	Yes	Yes	Yes, manually	Yes
People who can measure	Set by plan or quote	Set by quote	One per seat	10 seats on Team, 25 on Business
Owner and sub access	Share links	Share links	Send files	View links, no seat needed
LiDAR	On quoted plans	Yes, supported DJI sensors	Yes, if you import it	No

The honest read: if your estimators already live in Civil 3D, keep it for design and grading plans. The drone platform is for the weekly as-built number, and that is where a printed per-company price saves money.

Who it is for

Who buys drone cut and fill software

Site and grading contractors: check the pad against design before the concrete sub mobilizes, and prove quantities on a change order.
Civil engineers and CM firms: verify the contractor's claimed yards for the pay application with your own flight.
Developers and owners: see progress on a link without installing software or holding a seat.
Landfills and quarries: track airspace used and material moved between two flights each month.
Survey firms: sell as-built and cut and fill deliverables to contractors without buying a second desktop license per technician.

Accuracy

How accurate is drone cut and fill?

With ground control or an RTK drone and good overlap, drone surfaces usually land within about 1 to 3 centimeters horizontally and 2 to 5 centimeters vertically of a ground survey. On a 10-acre pad, a 3 cm vertical bias is about 1,600 cubic yards, so control matters more than the software. Hold two points back as checkpoints and read the RMSE before you trust a number.

What causes wrong cut and fill numbers

Different datums: the design is in NAVD88 feet and the flight in ellipsoid meters. Set the project units and match the vertical datum before you compare.
Equipment on the pad: a dozer parked on the grade reads as fill on the DSM. Compare the DTM instead, or draw the area around it.
Vegetation: grass and brush raise the DSM. Use the DTM or a higher threshold on vegetated ground.
A design that stops short: cells outside the design extent are left out, so check the shared area in the result before you report it.

Try it on a real surface

Measure an earthworks pad before you create an account

The demo loads a sample earthworks pad, a stockpile yard and a field. Draw a volume, toggle contours and read an elevation profile in the browser, with no signup.

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Pricing

What cut and fill costs on DroneMapping

Cut and fill sits on Team, at $249 per month or $1,488 per year. Team includes 15,000 processed images a month, 10 seats, design surfaces, GCP and checkpoint reports, DXF and SHP contours and stockpile PDFs. Business at $599 per month or $3,588 per year adds 25 seats, the progress timeline, change detection and the API. Starter at $99 per month measures volumes against a base plane but does not compare surfaces.

See pricing

Compare drone mapping pricing

Questions

Cut and fill software FAQ

For takeoff from plans before a job starts, desktop earthwork tools and Civil 3D are the standard. For measuring what actually happened on site, the best fit is drone software that builds the surface from your flight and compares it with the design, such as Propeller, DroneDeploy Advanced or DroneMapping Team at $249 a month with 10 seats.

Yes. A drone survey produces a surface model of the site, and cut and fill software subtracts the design surface or an earlier flight from it cell by cell. The result is cut, fill and net volume plus a color map. With ground control or RTK, the numbers are close enough for pay applications.

DroneMapping takes the design surface as a GeoTIFF elevation raster in the project's coordinate system. Civil 3D, Trimble Business Center and most grading software can export a design TIN as a GeoTIFF DEM. Set the project to metres or US survey feet so the elevations match.

Cut and fill volume is the difference between two surfaces summed over an area. For each grid cell, subtract the reference elevation from the current one, multiply by the cell area, then add the positive results for fill and the negative ones for cut. Software does this over millions of cells in seconds.

Yes, but not on its printed Flight & Analysis plan at $4,188 a year. Cut and fill against a design sits on DroneDeploy's quoted Advanced plan. DroneMapping includes it on Team at $249 a month, with 10 seats.

Desktop earthwork and CAD tools are sold per seat, from a few hundred dollars for takeoff tools to several thousand a year for full civil design suites. Drone platforms are often quoted. DroneMapping prints its price: cut and fill on Team at $249 a month or $1,488 a year.

Compare your next flight against the design grade

Upload a flight of a pad you already know and check the cut and fill against your own takeoff.