How much does hiring a drone operator cost in 2023?

Have you ever asked yourself, how much does it cost to hire a professional drone pilot and make drone video?

The answer is probably no, unless you’re thinking of doing some kind of corporate video promotion or aerial photography for use on the website, social media or TV ads for your business.

But in this blog I’m going to give you some examples so you can get a good idea about how much it costs to capture stunning drone-based promotional video — at least, that is, if you choose Upshot Photos, because I can’t speak for everyone else’s drone-video fee rates.

Examples of overhead costs for drone operators

Before we talk about what this high-quality drone footage is going to cost you — I’ll give you a glimpse of what it costs us as drone video producers…

• Our initial training and ‘Operational Authorisations’ have to be kept up to date with the annual license renewals via the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and depending on how you do this, it can cost a minimum of about £300 per year
• Then there’s the high-quality drones – even for basic entry level gear a drone operator will be looking at splashing about £1,000, with pro models starting from around £2,000, but most professionals, including Upshot Photos, will have spent a lot more than that and have a fleet of different types of drones available for various purposes
• Decent photo/video editing software will cost anything from £50 per month on a rolling subscription, and professionals may have multiple digital tools at their disposal — yet another drone photography cost
• Insurance — if you’re a car or home owner I don’t need to explain this in much detail — suffice to say that drone pilots and drone operators need to mitigate risk by being insured in case of accidents and for public liability.

So, should you hire a professional drone operator?

So many people have drones these days and access to the licensing is becoming more achievable. Knowledge of where you can and can’t fly is also becoming more well known, but does all this make your average drone owner into a drone service photo/videographer?

Here at Upshot Photos we make sure your drone-video budget is spent wisely because we came into this from a photo/video/graphic and web design background — it’s what we do and what we love — and having a flying camera just means we can do it better — so what are the costs involved?

Here’s a selection of case studies for drone video costs…

Domestic drone roof inspection cost

Starting from £99*

Drone photo shoot pricing for business promotion or outdoor event

Starting from £200*

Drone video shoot pricing for business promotion or outdoor event

Starting from £250*

Fully-edited drone-video shoot costs including music, captions, logos, effects + more

Starting from £400*