Drone Job Quote Calculator

Everything the hour must carry: insurance premiums, registration and training renewals, battery replacement (packs are consumables on a cycle count), gear depreciation, software subscriptions, vehicle costs, and the unbillable hours — quoting, admin, weather cancellations. Divide annual business costs by realistic billable field hours and add your wage; rates derived that way (typically $120-250/h for skilled commercial work) look high only to businesses that are quietly dying.

Time yourself, then keep a ratio: mapping jobs commonly run 1-2 processing hours per field hour (ingest, stitch, QC, exports, report); video work runs higher with editing. Three timed jobs give you YOUR ratio, which beats any industry figure. Underestimated processing is the silent margin killer because it's invisible to the client and unbounded by the site visit — the separate line in this calculator exists to make it visible to YOU.

Fixed price wins where you control the variables (standard listing shoot, defined mapping block — use this calculator as your internal cost floor and quote the package); hourly protects you where scope is discovery-driven (search, incident response, 'we'll know when we see it' inspections). Hybrid is professional standard: fixed for the defined deliverable, hourly rate stated for additions. Never quote fixed without running this skeleton first.

Clearing site data deletes locally stored entries — that's the price of a genuinely private, server-free design. Protect yourself with the one-click CSV download before any cleanup, OS reinstall or device change: re-importing history later beats reconstructing it from memory.

Use the Export CSV button below the table: it downloads your full quote worksheet as a spreadsheet-ready file. From there you can print a clean copy, archive it with your records folder, or import it into any other system. Exporting monthly is a good habit since the working data lives only in your browser.