A US residential installer puts Scanifly on the truck because the satellite roof model is two feet off on a complex hip-and-valley, and a $40,000 system that re-engineers in the field costs more than a drone subscription. By month four the math gets uncomfortable. The Scanifly per-user fee is the visible line. The pilot labor, the FAA Part 107 compliance, the weather cancellations, and the equipment depreciation are all real costs that never show up in the side-by-side software comparison. On a 220-system year, the field overhead alone runs between $11,000 and $43,000 above the per-seat fee. The pitch deck promised better-than-satellite accuracy. The invoice told a different story.

Direct answer. Scanifly pricing in 2026 is between $150 and $450 per user per month depending on the tier (some pricing motions are per-project rather than per-user). The real all-in cost adds drone pilot labor (an FAA Part 107 pilot at roughly $65 per hour fully loaded, 45 minutes to 3 hours per project, totaling 165 to 660 hours per year for a 220-system installer, which is $11,000 to $43,000), drone equipment depreciation (a Mavic 3 Enterprise class drone runs $3,000 to $5,000 per year amortized), weather cancellation losses, and the second design platform that Scanifly does not replace. For installers running above 80 projects per year, a satellite-based design platform like SurgePV at $1,299 per user per year handles the same roof modeling job at roughly one-tenth of the all-in Scanifly stack.

This guide is for the US installer running 60 to 500 systems per year who currently uses Scanifly or is shopping a replacement for a satellite-based design tool. It is written by the Heaven Designs engineering bench, which audits installer tool stacks across 38 US states during permit design intake.

Why Scanifly’s Sticker Is Not the Real Number

Scanifly does one job extremely well. It turns a drone flight over a roof into a measured 3D model accurate to better than 1 percent on slope, azimuth, and obstruction. For a complex residential roof or a difficult commercial array, that accuracy matters. The sticker price is the part of the comparison that gets the most attention. The drone operation is the part that gets the least.

The pricing model has two motions. A per-user-per-month subscription that gates feature access and processing volume. And a per-project cost on lower tiers (or on usage above the subscription cap). Both are real. Both are published only after the sales call.

The published sticker

Public reporting and installer chatter put the Scanifly subscription between $150 and $450 per user per month depending on tier and team size. The lower tier is a per-project pricing motion where the subscription includes a smaller monthly allowance and additional projects are billed per use. The higher tier is a full enterprise subscription with bulk processing and integration features.

Per-project pricing on lower tiers

The per-project add-on cost on the lower subscription tier runs between $30 and $60 per processed roof model depending on volume commitment. For a residential installer running 220 projects per year, the per-project add-ons alone can total between $6,600 and $13,200 above the base subscription, which is what pushes most growing teams toward the higher per-user subscription.

The number Scanifly does not advertise

The fundamental cost of Scanifly is not the subscription. It is the drone operation that the subscription enables. A platform that requires a drone visit to produce its output is not comparable to a satellite-based platform at the same software price. The pilot labor, the equipment, and the field time are the real expense.

Watch out. The fair comparison is not Scanifly subscription versus SurgePV subscription. It is the full Scanifly stack (subscription plus pilot plus drone plus weather risk) versus the satellite-based alternative. The two are an order of magnitude apart on an installer running over 80 projects per year.

Scanifly Pricing Tiers, Broken Down

There are three motions to understand. The per-user subscription that gates feature access. The per-project pricing that applies on lower tiers or in overage. The enterprise tier with bulk processing.

$150–$450

Scanifly per user, per month

Subscription tier range, 2026

$11K–$43K

Annual drone pilot labor

220 projects, $65 per hour fully loaded

165–660

Hours of pilot time, per year

45 min to 3 hr per project, 220 jobs

$1,299

SurgePV per user, per year

5-seat team tier, satellite-based

Per-user subscription, lower tier

The lower subscription tier targets small residential installers running under 50 projects per year. The monthly fee is at the low end of the $150 to $200 range. Project processing is capped, and overage is billed per use. The feature set excludes some of the integration and bulk-export features that larger teams need.

Per-user subscription, growth tier

The growth tier targets mid-volume residential and small C&I installers running between 50 and 250 projects per year. The monthly fee is in the $250 to $350 range. Project processing is uncapped within fair-use limits. The feature set includes CAD export, integration with common design tools, and a richer obstruction library.

Per-user subscription, enterprise tier

The enterprise tier targets installers running above 250 projects per year and developers running C&I. The monthly fee is in the $350 to $450 range and is typically negotiated on annual commitment. The feature set includes API access, custom reporting, and dedicated processing capacity.

The Drone-Overhead Stack

The per-user subscription is the visible cost. The drone operation is the invisible cost. The Drone-Overhead Stack names the four hidden costs that turn a $300 per month subscription into a $50,000 per year line item.

1

FAA Part 107 pilot labor

A certified commercial drone pilot under FAA Part 107 at $65 per hour fully loaded (wage plus burden plus benefits) spending 45 minutes to 3 hours per site (drive plus flight plus pre-flight) totals 165 to 660 hours per year on a 220-system book. That is between $11,000 and $43,000 of annual labor that the per-user subscription does not include.

2

Drone equipment depreciation and insurance

A Mavic 3 Enterprise class drone runs $3,500 to $7,500 capital cost amortized over a three-year life, or $1,200 to $2,500 per year. Add commercial UAS liability insurance at $600 to $1,200 per year, batteries and spare parts at $400 per year, and the total is $2,200 to $4,100 per year per drone in the fleet.

3

Weather cancellations and re-flights

Wind, rain, and low ceilings cancel between 8 and 15 percent of scheduled flights in most US markets. A canceled flight costs roughly half the pilot labor of a successful one (drive plus reschedule). On 220 scheduled flights with a 12 percent cancel rate at the midpoint, that is roughly $3,200 to $5,000 per year of dead-time labor that produces nothing.

4

Second platform for proposal and permit

Scanifly produces a roof model and a shading visual. It does not produce a customer-facing interactive proposal, a NEC 2023 single-line diagram, or a stamped permit packet. Most Scanifly installers also pay for Aurora, OpenSolar, or Solargraf for proposal, plus a permit design service for SLD and structural. That second platform runs $6,000 to $15,000 per year on top of the Scanifly stack.

Add the four together and the all-in Scanifly stack for a 220-system installer with a single pilot runs between $30,000 and $80,000 per year. The headline subscription was $300 per month. The fully-loaded number is six to twenty times that. For a satellite-based AI 3D roof design platform that ships address-to-model output without a field visit, the same workload runs $6,495 per year at the five-seat SurgePV team tier.

The 220-System Worked Example

The installer closes 220 residential systems per year. Each project requires a roof measurement. On Scanifly that means a drone flight. On a satellite platform that means an address.

Pilot time per project averages 90 minutes (15 minutes drive each way, 30 minutes pre-flight and setup, 30 minutes in-air flight). At 220 projects, total pilot time is 330 hours per year. A Part 107 pilot at $65 per hour fully loaded is $21,450 in labor. On the high end at 3 hours per project that climbs to $42,900. On the low end at 45 minutes per project (urban dense routing) it falls to $10,725.

The subscription at the growth-tier midpoint of $300 per month for one user is $3,600 per year. The drone amortization plus insurance is $3,100 per year. Weather re-fly dead time at 12 percent cancellation is $3,800 per year.

The total Scanifly-stack cost at the midpoint is roughly $32,000 per year for a single-pilot operation. At the high end with two pilots, longer flights, and the enterprise subscription, it climbs over $80,000. The same 220-system roof measurement workload on a satellite platform like SurgePV’s AI 3D roof design takes seconds per project from an address with no pilot, no drone, and no weather risk.

Field tip. The accuracy gap between satellite-based AI 3D modeling and drone-based photogrammetry has closed since 2023. On standard pitched residential roofs, modern satellite imagery plus AI segmentation hits slope and azimuth within 1.5 percent. The drone remains genuinely better on complex hip-and-valley, on detached carports, and on partially-occluded commercial sites. For the other 85 percent of jobs, satellite is now within the tolerance the design needs.

What Scanifly Does Well

Scanifly is a legitimately strong tool on the jobs it targets. A fair pricing comparison names the strengths before naming the gaps.

PROS

  • Best-in-class measurement accuracy on complex roofs (better than 1 percent slope)
  • 3D obstruction library is dense and useful for shading on tight residential sites
  • CAD export quality is genuinely production-ready for downstream design
  • The site report doubles as a sales artifact for higher-end residential markets
  • Strong fit for commercial sites where a roof visit was already happening

CONS

  • Requires a Part 107 pilot, a drone, and a field visit on every project
  • Weather cancellations create scheduling drag that satellite tools do not have
  • Per-user subscription stacks with the field-overhead cost, both growing with volume
  • Does not produce customer-facing proposals or permit packets, needs a second tool
  • The accuracy advantage over modern satellite AI has narrowed on standard roofs

For a deeper feature-by-feature view, the published Scanifly vs SurgePV comparison covers accuracy, workflow, and all-in cost side by side.

Where Scanifly Falls Short on the Full Workflow

The roof model is one job in a four-job workflow. Scanifly does the first job extremely well. The other three are either gaps or require a second platform.

The shadow analysis output that Scanifly produces is a static daily-curve visual, not a full 8,760-hour simulation with module-level mismatch in a format a financing engineer accepts. For sub-50 kW residential that gap rarely matters. For 100 kW C&I that requires a P50 production estimate it always matters.

The proposal motion is not a Scanifly product. The site model exports cleanly to Aurora, OpenSolar, or Solargraf for the customer-facing proposal, but that means a second per-user license at $159 to $259 per month layered on top of the Scanifly $300. For an installer running both, the stack is $450 to $700 per user per month before counting the drone overhead.

The permit packet is the largest gap. A NEC 2023 single-line diagram, an ASCE 7-22 structural calculation, and a stamped plan set are not Scanifly outputs. That work routes to an in-house designer or to an external bench. The NREL 2024 PV benchmark puts the permit and design labor for a residential install at 8 to 12 hours per project, which is the bottleneck that determines weekly install volume.

The Satellite-Based Flat-Fee Alternative

For installers above the 80-project-per-year volume threshold, the all-in math favors a satellite-based platform that handles roof modeling, shading, proposal, and SLD on a single flat-fee subscription. SurgePV at $1,299 per user per year on the five-seat team tier ships the full workflow without a drone.

The standard tier includes AI 3D roof design from address, module-level shadow analysis, NEC 2023 single-line diagrams, AutoCAD DXF export, white-label solar proposals with e-signature, and Clara AI design assistant. For commercial sites that genuinely need a field visit, the satellite platform handles the 85 percent of standard residential jobs and the drone fleet is reserved for the 15 percent where it actually changes the design.

The hybrid model (satellite for standard, drone for complex) is the highest-margin operation we see in installer audits. A single-pilot operation flying only complex jobs runs 30 to 40 flights per year instead of 220, which collapses the drone-overhead stack to $5,000 to $10,000 from $30,000 to $80,000.

Compare your real permit-stage output to a stamped reference packet

Download a redacted Riverside County residential install pack: SLD, GA, structural, BOQ. NEC 2023, AHJ approved on first pass.

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How Heaven Designs Helps

The Scanifly question and the SurgePV question both point at the same downstream constraint. The roof model is solved (or solvable). The permit packet is the gate that determines weekly install volume. That is where the Heaven Designs engineering bench plugs in.

A satellite-based design tool plus the Heaven Designs permit bench removes both the Scanifly drone overhead and the in-house designer salary line at the same time. For a working quote on a state and AHJ where the team is currently running, contact us and the turnaround on a quote is under four business hours. The companion guide Scanifly alternatives for 2026 ranks the full field for installers shopping a replacement, and Aurora Solar alternatives covers the parallel decision for installers on the Aurora stack. For a category-wide pricing view, the solar design software pricing pillar and the solar design software review cover every platform in the comparison set. The commercial solar design software and AI solar design software reviews go deeper on adjacent segments. For installers comparing the wider market for sales-stage CRM, sister brand QuickEstimate covers the pipeline and lead-routing layer that no design tool fully handles.

FAQ

How much does Scanifly cost per user per month?

Public reporting puts Scanifly between $150 and $450 per user per month depending on tier. Lower tiers also carry per-project pricing on processed roof models above the included monthly allowance. The growth tier most installers land on is around $300 per month. The enterprise tier is annual-commitment and negotiated.

What is the real all-in cost of Scanifly for a 220-system installer?

The subscription is roughly $3,600 per year for one user at the growth tier. The drone pilot labor at $65 per hour fully loaded on 220 flights is between $11,000 and $43,000 depending on flight duration. The drone equipment plus insurance is $2,200 to $4,100. Weather cancellations cost roughly $3,200 to $5,000 in dead-time labor. The total all-in stack for a single-pilot operation is $20,000 to $55,000 per year. With a second proposal platform layered on top, the total reaches $30,000 to $70,000.

Do I need an FAA Part 107 license to operate Scanifly?

Yes. Any commercial drone operation in US airspace requires the pilot to hold an FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate. The certification involves a written exam, a knowledge test renewal every two years, and adherence to flight restrictions including altitude limits, controlled airspace authorization, and night operation waivers. The compliance overhead is real and is part of the fully-loaded pilot cost.

Is satellite-based AI 3D modeling accurate enough to replace Scanifly?

For the 80 to 85 percent of standard residential roofs (single pitched or simple gable) modern satellite AI hits slope and azimuth within 1.5 percent, which is inside the tolerance the design needs. For complex hip-and-valley, partially-occluded commercial sites, or detached structures, drone-based photogrammetry remains genuinely more accurate. The hybrid operating model (satellite for standard, drone for complex) is the highest-margin approach we see in installer audits.

Does Scanifly produce a permit-ready packet?

No. Scanifly produces a measured roof model and a shading visual. It does not produce a NEC 2023 single-line diagram, a structural calculation, or a stamped plan set. Those outputs come from a second design tool plus either an in-house designer or an external permit bench like Heaven Designs at 4 to 7 business day turnaround.

What about Scanifly for commercial solar?

Commercial sites where a field visit was already happening (a roof condition survey, an electrical room walkthrough, a setback measurement) are the cleanest fit for Scanifly because the drone overhead is partially absorbed by the existing visit. For commercial work that does not require a field visit (rooftop-as-a-service for a national portfolio, for example) the satellite-based commercial solar design motion is faster and cheaper.

Can I migrate off Scanifly without losing my project history?

The CAD exports and the measurement reports are portable. They are PDF and DXF files that live in the installer’s file system, not locked inside Scanifly. The practical migration approach is to finish in-flight Scanifly projects on Scanifly, route new leads to the satellite-based replacement from day one, and retire the subscription at renewal. Book a SurgePV demo to see the address-to-design motion live.

Is there a free trial for Scanifly?

The standard motion is a paid demo flight on a single project. Some tier transitions include a short free trial period after the demo, but the free trial is not a self-serve sign-up. For installers who want to evaluate a satellite-based alternative without a credit card, the SurgePV installer platform offers a self-serve free trial long enough to design two to three real projects.