Hire a Drone Pilot Anywhere in the UK

Drone Assisted operates a UK wide network rather than a single base, so assignments are matched by location rather than by how far a fixed office happens to be from your site. If you are searching for a drone pilot near you, submit the job location and we will identify suitable capability through the Drone Assisted network.

Each match is assessed against:

• the customer location and the site itself
• pilot location and travel to site
• the service required and the outputs expected
• aircraft and sensor equipment
• pilot competency and relevant experience
• regulatory requirements, including authorisations where the operation needs them
• availability against your timescale

Customers often use the terms drone pilot and drone operator interchangeably, although the regulatory roles can differ depending on how an operation is set up. Whichever term you use, submit the brief and we will confirm which commercial drone pilot or operator capability fits the job.

Traditional drone hire means posting a brief on directories, chasing three to five quotes, checking registration and insurance yourself, and hoping the pilot you pick turns up. Drone Assisted replaces that with a single managed brief:

• Submit once, location, service, timescale, documents. Takes about 3 minutes.
• We check availability, we confirm a pilot with the right capability and permissions for that assignment. You see their credentials before they fly.
• We manage, briefing, dispatch, quality control and delivery are handled by our team, with one point of contact end to end.
• You approve, imagery and reports land in your portal, typically within 48 hours of flight. Nothing is shared externally without your permission.

You never handle pilot checks or job management overhead. If a pilot cancels, we look to re-match. If quality falls short of the agreed brief, we reshoot at our cost.

If your requirement depends on qualifications or authorisations, our page on UK commercial drone pilot requirements and verification explains how those are assessed.

Commercial drone pilots on the network cover the mainstream specialisms:

• Roof surveys and inspections, residential, commercial and industrial. Detailed visual evidence captured from the air.
• Thermal surveys, temperature anomalies across roofs, envelopes, solar arrays and electrical assets.
• Site and land surveys, orthomosaics, 3D models, volumetric measurement and topographic outputs.
• Mapping and photogrammetry, site models and measurable aerial data capture.
• Solar PV inspections, module level thermal and visual fault indication across arrays of any size.
• Commercial building inspection for aerial inspection of façades, cladding, roofs and external building structures.
• Infrastructure inspection and power line inspection for asset owners and contractors.
• Aerial photography, property, hotel, land and commercial marketing imagery.
• Construction progress monitoring, recurring site captures with side by side comparison.
• Agricultural drone services, crop spraying, seeding, NDVI crop health mapping and multispectral monitoring across UK farmland.
• Emergency support, rapid post event situational awareness for insurers and loss adjusters.

If your job needs a specialist skill or piece of equipment we have not listed, submit the brief anyway and we will tell you within one working day whether we can cover it.

Prices are driven by three things: how long the flight takes, how specialist the equipment is, and how much post processing the deliverables need.

• Single property jobs (roof, inspection, media): £150 to £600
• Commercial inspections (buildings, towers, industrial): £400 to £1,200
• Thermal, LiDAR, mapping: £500 to £2,500 plus, depending on site size
• Day rates (generalist media or inspection): £400 to £800
• Specialist day rates (thermal, LiDAR, industrial): £1,000 to £2,500

Per job quotes are usually cheaper than day rates for single site work. Registered business accounts lock in 10% off every flight for the life of the account. Read the full UK drone pilot pricing guide for a breakdown by specialism and region.