Why We Made Terrain Follow Free (When Competitors Charge $18/Month)
If you have priced out drone mission planning software recently, you have probably noticed a pattern. The base plan gets you waypoints and a basic grid. Want airspace data? That is the next tier. Want terrain follow? Add $18/month. Want to export to your drone? Another tier.
By the time you have assembled the features you actually need for a standard commercial job, you are looking at $200 to $500 per month. For software. To plan a flight.
We built Dronelytics because we think the pricing model in this industry is broken. And terrain follow is the clearest example of why.
What Terrain Follow Actually Does
Terrain follow - also called AGL (Above Ground Level) mode - adjusts your drone's altitude during a mission to maintain a constant height above the ground, not above the takeoff point.
Without terrain follow, your drone flies at a fixed altitude above where it launched (MSL - Mean Sea Level reference). If you take off from a valley floor and fly over a ridge, the drone does not climb. It keeps the same MSL altitude. Over the ridge, you might be 30 feet above the ground instead of 200. Over a depression on the other side, you might be 400 feet up.
This causes two problems.
Safety
On the upslope, the drone is closer to the ground - and to trees, structures, and power lines - than the pilot expects. Terrain collisions during automated missions happen because the pilot set a safe altitude at the takeoff point and assumed it would stay safe across the survey area. It does not.
Data quality
Ground sampling distance (GSD) depends on altitude. If your altitude above ground varies from 80 feet to 350 feet across a survey, your photo resolution varies by a factor of four. The photogrammetry software can stitch it, but the output quality is inconsistent. Volumetric measurements become unreliable.
Terrain follow solves both problems. The drone adjusts altitude continuously based on elevation data, maintaining a consistent AGL height. Consistent altitude means consistent GSD, which means consistent deliverable quality. And no surprises on the upslope.
To see how terrain follow fits into a complete mission workflow, read our grid survey tutorial where it is Step 5 of 6.
Why Competitors Charge for It
The short answer: because they can.
Terrain follow has high perceived value. Pilots understand immediately why they need it. The before-and-after is obvious - inconsistent data versus consistent data, collision risk versus no collision risk. That makes it easy to justify as an upsell.
The pricing model in drone software borrowed heavily from enterprise SaaS. Start with a free or cheap tier that handles the basics, then gate the features that professionals actually need behind progressively expensive plans. Terrain follow sits in that sweet spot - too important to skip, too valuable to give away.
This works well for DroneDeploy and similar platforms because their customers are enterprise operations with procurement budgets. A $329/month plan is a rounding error for a construction company running 20 drones across 8 sites.
But most commercial drone operators are not enterprise. They are a two-person crew with a truck, a Mavic 3, and a Part 107 certificate. They are doing roof inspections, real estate aerials, and agricultural surveys. Their monthly software budget is closer to $0 than $329. See how the options stack up in our comparison of free mission planning tools.
When these operators hit the terrain follow paywall, they do the rational thing: they skip it. They fly without terrain follow and hope the site is flat enough. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is not.
The Problem with Charging for Safety Features
Terrain follow is not an analytics dashboard. It is not a reporting feature. It is not fleet management or AI-powered inspection detection.
Terrain follow prevents your drone from flying into a hillside during an automated mission. It keeps your altitude consistent so your data is usable. It is a safety and quality baseline.
Charging $18/month for it is like charging extra for seatbelts. Yes, the feature costs something to build. Yes, it requires elevation data and real-time altitude adjustment logic. But gating it behind a paywall means some percentage of pilots will fly without it. And some of those pilots will lose a drone on a slope, or deliver unusable survey data, or both.
We do not think safety features should be premium features. We think they should be included.
Monitor Terrain Follow in Real Time
Flying ArduPilot or PX4? Use MAVLink Telemetry to watch your drone's AGL altitude, GPS position, battery, and attitude indicators live on your iPhone during terrain-following missions. Free companion app - no subscription.
MAVLink Telemetry
What We Think Should Be Free vs. Paid
We are not running a charity. Dronelytics is free, but we will charge for advanced features as we grow. Here is how we think about the split.
Should be free
- Mission planning (all grid types, waypoints, orbits, corridors)
- Airspace awareness (all 12 FAA layers)
- Terrain follow (AGL mode)
- Mission templates
- Basic mission library
These are the tools every operator needs to plan a safe, compliant flight.
Worth charging for
- Advanced analytics and reporting
- Fleet management for larger teams
- Data processing and photogrammetry
- Advanced export formats
- Priority support
- Team collaboration features
Productivity and scale features - if you skip these, nobody crashes.
Try Terrain Follow for Free
Dronelytics includes terrain follow in every account. No upsell, no add-on, no "upgrade to Pro." Draw your survey area, enable terrain follow with one toggle, and fly with consistent AGL altitude across the entire mission.
Check out the airspace map to see the planning environment, or sign up and plan your first mission.
Free — no credit card required.
Try Terrain Follow Free