Why the price per hectare is the wrong question, what really makes a job expensive — and when you are better off taking the drill.
"So what does it cost per hectare?" is the first question in almost every phone call. It is understandable — and it reliably leads astray. Because two farms that both want "ten hectares of cover crop" can receive quotes from us that differ by more than a factor of two. Not because we roll dice, but because "ten hectares" says almost nothing about how much work is behind it.
This article opens up the calculation: which four factors determine the price, which costs on your side are usually forgotten — and in which cases the drone job simply does not pay off. You get concrete figures for your case at the end in two minutes; they are deliberately not given here, because any flat figure would be wrong for half of all farms.
| Factor | Why it counts |
|---|---|
| Area and shape | A rectangular 12-hectare field flies differently from four scattered two-hectare parcels with hedges and power lines. It is not the sum of hectares that decides but how many take-offs, relocations and edge zones are involved. |
| Application rate per hectare | The limiting factor is the tank or hopper. At 10 kg/ha the drone flies considerably longer before it has to reload than at 40 kg/ha. The rate determines the number of reloads — and thus the time. |
| Travel | Driving time, kilometres, setup and teardown. Incurred once, regardless of how large the area is. For small jobs, travel is regularly the largest single item in the quote. |
| Material | If you supply seed, fertilizer or preparation yourself, the material block drops out completely and you pay only for the service. Farms with their own supply contracts almost always come out cheaper this way. |
Some jobs also carry a planning share: flight planning in protected areas, coordination with neighbours, permits. That is office work before the first rotor turns, and with us it appears as a separate line item in the quote — not hidden in the price per hectare.
A drone job consists of two cost blocks: what is incurred once, and what grows with every hectare.
Once per job: travel, setup and teardown, flight planning, aviation-law check, briefing on site, documentation.
Per hectare: flight time, battery consumption, reloading, wear.
The first block is spread across the area. On one hectare, that one hectare carries the entire travel cost; on twenty hectares it carries a twentieth of it. That is why the calculated price per hectare falls with every additional area — and why the question of the price per hectare cannot be answered without stating the size of the area.
The most effective lever is on your side, not ours. If three farms in the same municipality have us fly on the same day, the travel cost is incurred once for all three instead of three times. We combine such jobs into tours and pass the saving on proportionally. So ask your neighbours before you enquire — that pushes the price down more than any negotiation over the hectare rate.
Comparing a drone quote with "I'll drive that myself" is only fair if all items appear on your own side. In practice, three of them are almost always left out:
Setting up, driving, seeding, cleaning. An hour of the farm manager's time at the peak of harvest is the most expensive hour of the year — it is missing somewhere else. Anyone who counts it as zero makes every bit of own mechanisation look good on paper.
Depreciation, interest, repairs and housing keep running no matter how often you drive. For reliable comparative figures per operation and machine there are the KTBL calculation data — they are more serious than any gut feeling and rarely match what you would have estimated yourself.
The most expensive item appears in no machinery cost calculation: the operation that happens too late or not at all. A cover crop that goes into the ground two weeks later is a different stand. A foliar fertilization that is cancelled because of wet conditions is a yield issue. Against this item, the cost of a flight is often a rounding error — it just never shows up in any calculation, because it is booked as bad luck with the weather.
Soil compaction and wheel tracks are real disadvantages of driving, but they cannot be seriously converted into euros per hectare — they depend too much on soil type, moisture, tyre pressure and axle load. We therefore list them as an argument, not as a figure. Anyone who presents you with an exact euro figure for avoided compaction is selling you something.
We are a contractor for drone jobs, and still: there are cases in which we will advise you against us.
Conversely, the flight plays to its strengths where driving would be impossible, too late or too expensive: on soil that will not carry, at the peak of harvest, for pre-harvest seeding into the standing crop, in small-scale or sloping terrain — and whenever you do not want to buy the machinery in the first place.
We deliberately do not publish a price list. Not out of secrecy, but because a list with "from X € per hectare" would be too high for half our readers and too low for the other half — and both annoy.
Instead, our order portal calculates your case directly: draw your field or upload a field file from FIONA, iBALIS or as a shapefile, choose service and rate, state your preferred date. You see a no-obligation guide price with the line items — service, travel, material where applicable — before you even submit. It takes about two minutes and costs nothing.
There is no meaningful flat rate. Area and shape, application rate, travel and the question of material determine it — one hectare on the edge of the village and one hectare a hundred kilometres away do not cost the same. You see the guide price for your case in the portal in two minutes.
Because travel, setup, flight planning and documentation are incurred once per job and are spread across the hectares. The first hectare carries them alone.
On large, dry, trafficable fields with your own machinery and time. There the seed drill wins.
It is a separate line item and is calculated according to the actual distance. With several farms in one region we combine the jobs into a tour and spread the travel proportionally — which lowers it for everyone.
No, but you can. If you supply the material yourself, the material block drops out and you pay only for the service.
Do not ask for the price per hectare, ask for the quote for your field — and do the honest sums on your own side. How drone seeding works agronomically and when which date makes sense is explained in the article Seeding cover crops. What we specifically offer is at Cover crops by drone and Fertilization by drone.
Draw your field or upload a field file, see a guide price with all line items — in two minutes, no obligation.
Calculate a guide price nowStuck in the portal? Just give us a call: +49 173 3706561 · WhatsApp
