Site Scan for ArcGIS alternative with Site Scan cost and licensing compared for survey and construction teams
Site Scan for ArcGIS is Esri's cloud drone mapping platform, and its only public price is the AWS Marketplace listing: $5,310 for 12 months per Operator license, which covers one person who uploads imagery. Downloading, editing and analyzing project data needs a separate Access license, and Esri's US product page sends everyone else to sales. A Site Scan for ArcGIS alternative makes sense when two or three people need to upload and measure, and the company has no ArcGIS organization to build around. DroneMapping processes photos from any drone in the cloud, with 10 seats on Team at $249 a month or $1,488 a year.
net volume
net volume
Side by side
Site Scan for ArcGIS vs DroneMapping on cost, licenses and survey outputs
Site Scan details come from Esri's US product page, the Site Scan documentation on roles and the Operator privilege, and Esri's own listing on AWS Marketplace, all checked in October 2026. DroneMapping prices are the ones on our pricing page.
| What you compare | Site Scan for ArcGIS | DroneMapping |
|---|---|---|
| Published price | $5,310 for 12 months per Operator license on AWS Marketplace, other terms quoted by Esri | Starter $99 a month, Team $249, Business $599, or $588, $1,488 and $3,588 a year |
| License unit | Operator license per person who uploads flights, Access license per person who downloads, edits or analyzes | The company, with 3, 10 or 25 seats that all upload and measure |
| Viewers | Read-only users included and unlimited | View links on every plan, nothing to install |
| Where it runs | Cloud, results published to an ArcGIS organization | Cloud, any browser, Mac included |
| Flight planning | ArcGIS Flight app with 3D flight planning and fleet records | Not included, fly in DJI Pilot 2 or any mapping app |
| Orthomosaic, DSM and DTM | Yes | Yes, on every plan |
| 3D model and point cloud | Yes | 3D textured model and LAS or LAZ point cloud on Team |
| Ground control | Automatic GCP detection | GCP and checkpoint workflow with an RMSE report in X, Y and Z on Team |
| Volumes and cut and fill | Volumes, cut and fill, change over time and design overlays | Stockpile volumes on every plan, cut and fill against a design surface on Team |
| Fleet management | Flight history, hardware tracking, preflight checklists | Not included |
| Project size | Not stated on the listing | 500 photos per flight, larger sites split into flights |
| Thermal and LiDAR | Depends on the ArcGIS Reality products you add | No thermal, no LiDAR |
The short version: Site Scan is built for an agency or enterprise that runs a drone program inside ArcGIS, with flight logs, checklists and hardware records. DroneMapping is the better buy for a survey or construction firm that needs maps, volumes and client links for several people at a price it can read today.
How Site Scan licensing works
Site Scan for ArcGIS licensing and why the seat count drives the cost
Site Scan splits capability across roles and licenses. Esri's documentation lists organization roles such as Administrator and Full-Access, which both need an Access license, and an Operator privilege that sits on top of those roles and needs its own Operator license. Read-only members can view but cannot be operators.
In practice that means the bill grows with every person who flies and uploads, and again with every person who downloads or edits data. The AWS listing describes the Operator license as the right for one person to upload imagery, says processing carries no data-volume charge in that dimension, and points to a separate Access license for downloading, editing, analyzing and processing project data.
Before you sign a Site Scan renewal or a first quote, get three answers in writing: the price per Operator and per Access license, whether ArcGIS Online user types are billed on top, and what the price is for a 24 or 36 month term.
Worked example
What a 3-person site team pays for Site Scan and for DroneMapping over 3 years
Take a site development contractor with one drone pilot, a project engineer and a superintendent. The pilot flies the site every two weeks, about 3,000 photos a month. The engineer pulls cut and fill against the grading design, and the superintendent checks stockpiles and sends the owner a link.
| What the team buys | Site Scan for ArcGIS | DroneMapping Team, yearly |
|---|---|---|
| Pilot who uploads | 1 Operator license, $5,310 a year on AWS Marketplace | Included in 10 seats |
| Engineer who downloads surfaces and runs cut and fill | Access license, quoted | Included |
| Superintendent who measures stockpiles | Access license, quoted | Included |
| Owner and client who view | Read-only, included | View links, included |
| Known 3-year software total | $15,930 for the Operator license alone, Access licenses on top | $4,464 |
Only the Operator line has a public number, so the Site Scan column is a floor and not a total. Even the floor is more than three times the DroneMapping figure, and the gap widens with a second pilot. If the team needs Esri's fleet records and ArcGIS publishing, that gap may be worth paying. If it needs volumes and a cut and fill map, it usually is not.
Honest fit
When Site Scan for ArcGIS is still the better choice
Keep Site Scan, or keep it next to us, if most of these are true:
- Your drone program reports into an ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise organization, and the deliverable is a hosted layer.
- You need flight logs, hardware tracking and preflight checklists across a fleet of pilots, for an agency or a utility.
- You fly a supported enterprise platform such as a Freefly Astro Max, a DJI Matrice 300 RTK with a P1 camera or a WingtraOne Gen II, and want the flight app and processing from one vendor.
- You plan object detection or other analysis in ArcGIS Image Analyst on the outputs.
- Procurement already has an Esri enterprise agreement that covers the licenses.
The trade is cost per person. Each pilot is an Operator license and each analyst an Access license, so a small firm where everyone does a bit of everything pays for the same person twice.
Outside the GIS department
A Site Scan alternative for crews that do not run ArcGIS
Most site teams never asked for a GIS platform. The superintendent wants this week's stockpile number. The engineer wants contours in DXF and a cut and fill map against the design TIN. The owner wants to compare this month with last month. None of that needs an ArcGIS organization.
In DroneMapping the pilot uploads the geotagged JPEGs from a browser, and processing takes about 20 to 55 minutes for 100 photos or 1.5 to 3.6 hours for 500. The engineer downloads contours as DXF or SHP, the superintendent measures stockpiles on the same surface, and the client opens a link. If a GIS team does sit downstream, the orthomosaic and surfaces export as GeoTIFF and the point cloud as LAS or LAZ, in a projected coordinate system you pick by EPSG code, so they open in ArcGIS Pro like any other layer. Our cut and fill software page shows what the design comparison reports, and stockpile inventory software covers month-end counts.
The seat-based option
Why construction and survey teams pick DroneMapping over Site Scan
- Seats instead of license types: Team includes 10 seats, and every seat can upload, measure and download.
- A printed price: $99, $249 or $599 a month, or $588, $1,488 and $3,588 a year, with no quote and no enterprise agreement.
- No ArcGIS organization to set up: you sign up with an email address.
- Any drone, any flight app: photos from DJI, Autel, Parrot, Skydio and others process the same way.
- Clients open a link: no ArcGIS sign-in for the owner or the GC.
- Macs work: everything runs in the browser.
What we do not do: flight planning, fleet records, thermal, LiDAR and jobs over 500 photos per flight. If those are the reason you looked at Site Scan, keep it for them and run the routine progress and volume flights through us.
Switching
How to test a Site Scan alternative on a flight you already processed
A fair test uses a flight with a known answer.
- Pick a project you trust: a surveyed stockpile, or a pad with checked elevations.
- Keep 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 exported tiles.
- Match the coordinate system: the same State Plane or UTM zone by EPSG code, and the same vertical units.
- Compare numbers: checkpoint RMSE in X, Y and Z, the stockpile volume and the cut and fill totals next to Site Scan's.
- Share it: send the view link to the superintendent and see whether anyone misses the ArcGIS layer.
Weighing Esri's desktop option too? Our Drone2Map alternative page covers the named user license and the workstation it needs.
Try it on a real surface
Measure a surface 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, with no signup.
Pricing
What DroneMapping costs next to a Site Scan 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
Site Scan for ArcGIS alternative FAQ
For a survey or construction firm that needs maps, volumes and cut and fill for several people, a cloud platform priced per company with seats, such as DroneMapping, replaces Site Scan without per-person Operator and Access licenses. For a cloud platform with its own flight app, DroneDeploy and Propeller are the other common shortlists, both priced higher or on a quote.
Esri does not print a Site Scan price on its US site. The one public figure is Esri's AWS Marketplace listing: $5,310 for a 12-month Operator license, which lets one person upload imagery. Downloading, editing and analyzing data needs a separate Access license, quoted by Esri. Ask for a written quote covering every license type you need.
An Access license lets a member download, edit, analyze and process project data. An Operator license adds the right to fly with Esri's flight app and upload imagery for processing. Esri's documentation treats Operator as an add-on privilege for Administrator or Full-Access members, so a pilot needs both.
No. Site Scan is a paid subscription. Read-only viewers are included and unlimited, but anyone who uploads flights needs an Operator license and anyone who works with the data needs an Access license. There is no free plan for commercial work.
Site Scan has its own sign-in, and Esri's product page describes publishing results to an ArcGIS organization and overlaying ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise data. Teams without an ArcGIS organization lose much of that integration, which is a common reason they look for a standalone alternative.
Esri says Site Scan processes virtually any georeferenced drone image, whichever app captured it. Its flight app supports a specific list of aircraft, with the Freefly Astro Max, DJI Matrice 300 RTK with P1 and WingtraOne Gen II highlighted. DroneMapping also takes geotagged JPEGs from any mapping flight, from DJI, Autel, Parrot, Skydio and others.
Yes. The orthomosaic, DSM and DTM export as GeoTIFF, contours as SHP and the point cloud as LAS or LAZ, in a projected coordinate system chosen by EPSG code. ArcGIS Pro reads all of those, so they sit next to your existing layers.
Related pages
More on choosing Site Scan or another option
- Drone2Map alternative for Esri's desktop processing license
- DroneDeploy alternative for a cloud plan priced per user
- Propeller alternative for earthworks teams quoted with AeroPoints
- Pix4D alternative with the full Pix4D price list for a 3-person team
- Drone progress monitoring software for weekly site timelines
- Best drone mapping software compared by job and budget
Run your next site flight with seats for the whole team
Upload a flight you already processed in Site Scan and compare the checkpoint error, the volumes and the cut and fill totals side by side.