Scanifly Review 2026: Best As-Built Capture, Scored 32/50

Most solar design software starts from a satellite photo and infers a roof. Scanifly starts from a drone flight and measures one. That single difference is the whole review. If you have ever sent a crew to a roof and discovered a vent stack that was not in the design, or a parapet 300 mm taller than the survey said, you already understand why installers pay a premium for a measured as-built model. Scanifly has been building that product since 2015, it is now the reference tool in the category, and it earns 32 of 50 on our review bench. It also has a genuine ceiling: it captures geometry, it does not run the physics. This review covers what Scanifly is worth, what it costs, and the specific reader for whom it is the correct purchase over anything else on the market, including our own sister product.

Direct answer. Scanifly is a drone photogrammetry platform that turns a 10 to 15 minute flight into a 3D as-built model accurate to within 1 to 3 inches of hand measurement. It scores 32 of 50 on our bench: excellent capture, weak proposal and financial output. Pricing is not publicly listed, with third-party listings suggesting roughly $150 to $450 per user per month. Buy it if install-day change orders are your biggest cost.

This is a review, not a switching guide. If you have already decided to leave, our Scanifly alternative comparison ranks the replacements, and the Scanifly pricing breakdown models the true stacked cost across a five-seat team. What follows is the evaluation you run before either of those.

What Scanifly Is

Scanifly is a solar-specific photogrammetry and site-capture platform founded in 2015, originally in Brooklyn and now headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photogrammetry is the technique of reconstructing 3D geometry from overlapping 2D photographs. You fly a grid pattern over a roof, the camera captures a few hundred geo-tagged images, and the software solves for the position of every surface, obstruction and edge in the scene.

The product is now four modules rather than one, which matters because reviews written before 2024 describe a narrower tool:

1. DroneDesign. The core product. Drone imagery in, measured 3D model out, with every obstruction placed at its real height.
2. PrelimDesign. A remote-only mode built on satellite, LiDAR and Nearmap imagery, for the sales stage before a truck rolls.
3. Field Ops. An iOS and Android app that replaces the paper site-survey checklist and captures electrical data, panel photos and attic notes.
4. Design Services. A human team that produces permit-ready plan sets from your captured model.

Scanifly does not sell drones. Any aircraft that produces geo-tagged images with GPS and a high-resolution camera works, according to Scanifly’s own product documentation, which is a genuine advantage over closed hardware systems. Most installer teams fly a DJI Mavic-class aircraft.

The claim the whole product rests on is stated plainly by the vendor: drone-derived designs are accurate to within 1 to 3 inches of hand measurements, and the shading analysis output matches a Solmetric SunEye reading. In our own experience benching design tools across the projects we build at Heaven Green Energy, that claim holds. It is also the honest headline of this review, so it deserves the strong version: nothing modelled from satellite imagery matches a measured as-built. Satellite-derived roof models, including the AI models we use daily, infer obstruction height from shadow and parallax. Photogrammetry measures it. On a clean gable roof the two converge. On a 1970s commercial roof with 40 HVAC penetrations, they do not.

The 5-Axis Review Bench

Every tool we review is scored on the same five axes, out of 10 each, for a total out of 50. The axes are published so you can disagree with the score and still use the method. This is the Heaven Green 5-Axis Review Bench, and it is the framework we run before any tool goes into production on our own projects.

Axis	What it measures	Scanifly	Notes
Design and simulation depth	Geometry accuracy plus hour-by-hour yield physics, P50/P90 output, temperature and soiling models	6 / 10	Best geometry in the category. No bankable 8,760-hour engine.
Compliance and documentation output	Plan sets, SLD, BOQ, CAD export, stamped drawings	7 / 10	Design Services delivers permit-ready sets. SLD and BOQ are not native self-serve.
Proposal and sales workflow	Branded customer proposal, financing, e-signature, CRM	4 / 10	Integrates outward to proposal tools rather than generating them.
Price against value	Cost per finished project including hardware, pilots and second licences	6 / 10	Strong value if it kills change orders. Poor value on simple high-volume work.
Support and onboarding	Implementation, drone program setup, responsiveness	9 / 10	Consistently the strongest praise in public reviews.
Total		32 / 50

Two things to read from that table. Scanifly scores highest of any tool we have benched on support, and it scores lowest of any serious platform on proposal workflow. That is not an accident or a gap they forgot to fill. It is a deliberate product decision to be the capture layer and integrate outward.

Verdict. Scanifly is the best as-built capture product in solar and is not trying to be a design suite. Score it as a survey instrument that happens to ship software, not as a competitor to a full design platform, and the 32 makes sense.

Pricing

Scanifly does not publish pricing. There is no pricing page, no plan table, and no per-seat number on the vendor site as of August 2026. Every figure in circulation is second-hand, and this review will not invent one.

What is publicly observable: third-party software directories place Scanifly in the range of $150 to $450 per user per month, with the spread driven by tier and project volume. Treat that as an industry-observed estimate, not a vendor-confirmed price. Several resellers and installer accounts also describe a per-project processing component on top of the subscription. We could not confirm a current per-project figure from the vendor, so we do not quote one here.

The costs that are not in the software line item are real and quantifiable:

In India the pilot side is a regulated process, not paperwork you can skip. Remote pilot certification and drone registration run through the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) and the Digital Sky platform, and every airframe above the nano category needs a unique identification number before it flies commercially. Budget four to six weeks for a first pilot, not four days.

What Scanifly Does Best

A measured as-built beats an inferred model, and it is not close. This is the sentence the whole product deserves. On a roof with parapets, curbs, skylights, HVAC units and a satellite dish, a photogrammetric model places every one of those obstructions at its true height in the model. That height is what drives near-object shading, and near-object shading is what drives the summer afternoon production your customer will actually see. A satellite model that guesses a 600 mm parapet is 300 mm will misprice the bottom row of every array on that roof.

Shading analysis at instrument grade. Because the obstruction geometry is measured rather than inferred, the shading output stands up against a handheld Solmetric SunEye reading. If your yield numbers have ever been challenged by a customer, a lender or an O&M contractor, the ability to say “this came off a measured model” ends the argument. Our solar shading analysis software guide covers why the geometry input matters more than the sky model in most disputes.

Install-day accuracy, which is where the money is. The commercial case for Scanifly is not the software. It is the change order that does not happen, the second truck roll that does not happen, and the racking order that does not get revised. On a retrofit-heavy pipeline, one avoided re-design a week pays for the licence.

Field Ops replaces the clipboard. The mobile survey app captures the main service panel, the meter, the attic, the roof condition and the electrical data in a structured form that lands next to the model. This is unglamorous and it is the module installers report saving the most hours on.

Onboarding and support. Standing up a drone program is the hard part of buying Scanifly, and the company clearly knows it. Implementation help, drone procurement guidance and pilot workflow setup come as part of the relationship. This is why the support axis scores 9.

Where Scanifly Falls Short

It captures, it does not simulate. This is the honest limitation and it is structural, not a missing feature. Photogrammetry produces geometry. Bankable yield production requires an hour-by-hour engine that models 8,760 hours of irradiance, module temperature, spectral response, soiling, inverter clipping and mismatch, and reports P50, P75 and P90 confidence bands. Scanifly’s shading output is excellent as a shading output. It is not a substitute for a simulation engine, and every serious Scanifly user exports into one. Plan for a second licence.

You need a licensed pilot, and that is a hiring decision. Not a training module. A person, certified, insured, scheduled, and available on the day the customer is available. In the United States that is an FAA Part 107 certificate. In India it is DGCA remote pilot certification plus Digital Sky registration. In most of Europe it is an EASA category rating. This is the single most underestimated line in the Scanifly business case.

Airspace permission is a real scheduling constraint. Controlled airspace around airports, defence installations and, in India, a long list of restricted zones means some sites cannot be flown at all without prior clearance, and clearance takes days. In a dense urban pipeline, a meaningful fraction of your addresses will sit inside a red or yellow zone on the Digital Sky airspace map. Those jobs fall back to a satellite workflow anyway, which means you are running two processes.

Weather owns your schedule. Rain, wind above roughly 20 knots and low light all ground the flight. Across our own Gujarat operations, the June to September monsoon costs 30 to 40 working days a year in which a rooftop drone survey is not practical. A satellite workflow has no such window.

No native proposal or financial output. As of August 2026 the vendor’s published module list covers capture, design and design services, with no branded customer proposal builder, financing calculator or e-signature flow. Scanifly integrates with proposal and financing platforms rather than replacing them. If your bottleneck is closing deals rather than building them correctly, this tool does not address your bottleneck.

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Who Should Buy Scanifly

There is a reader for whom Scanifly is the correct purchase over every other tool discussed on this site, including ours. Here is that reader, specifically.

You run a retrofit-heavy commercial or complex-residential pipeline in a market with settled airspace access, typically 30 to 150 projects a year. Your roofs are old, penetrated, multi-plane and obstruction-dense. Your dominant cost problem is not licence spend and it is not design speed. It is the gap between what the design said and what the crew found, measured in change orders, re-orders of racking, and second visits. You either already employ a certified pilot or you can justify one on avoided truck rolls alone.

For that reader, the arithmetic is simple. If a repeat mobilisation costs you the equivalent of ₹25,000 to ₹60,000 in crew time, crane or lift rehire and schedule slip, and a measured as-built removes even one such event a month, the subscription is not the deciding number.

Two more readers should buy it:

1. Teams doing as-built documentation for O&M or asset transfer. A measured model is a deliverable in its own right.
2. EPCs bidding work where the roof condition is contested. Photogrammetry gives you a dated, measured record of the roof as it was on survey day.

Who Should Not Buy Scanifly

High-volume residential installers on simple roofs. If your average job is a gable or hip roof with two planes and three obstructions, satellite-derived modelling is inside tolerance and drone capture is a cost with no return. Look at a full design platform instead, ranked in our best solar design software guide.

Anyone whose primary need is a proposal. Scanifly will not close a deal for you. A proposal-first tool is the right category, compared in our solar proposal software guide.

Teams that need bankable yield reports in-house. If a lender is asking for P90, you need a simulation engine, and Scanifly is upstream of that question.

Indian residential installers working at volume. Between DGCA certification, airspace clearance and the monsoon window, the drone workflow fights the Indian rooftop business model, which runs on 3 kW to 10 kW jobs at high throughput under the PM Surya Ghar scheme, tracked by MNRE and reported quarterly by Mercom India. Our solar design software India comparison covers what fits that pipeline better.

Teams with no pilot and no intention to hire one. Outsourced flights are possible but the scheduling dependency usually eats the accuracy benefit.

Scanifly vs SurgePV

Disclosure, stated plainly: SurgePV is a sister product of Heaven Green Energy, and we run it on our own EPC projects every day. That is first-party operating experience and also a commercial interest. Read the table with both facts in view.

Axis	Scanifly	SurgePV	Honest read
Roof geometry source	Drone photogrammetry, measured, 1-3 in	AI 3D from satellite in under 60 seconds	Scanifly wins on accuracy. SurgePV wins on speed and cost per model.
Obstruction height	Measured	Inferred	Scanifly, clearly.
Bankable yield simulation	Not native, export required	8,760-hour module-level, P50/P75/P90 on every paid plan	SurgePV.
SLD and BOQ	Via Design Services	Native auto-generated	SurgePV.
Branded proposals	Not native	Native, white-label, 9 languages	SurgePV.
Field capture app	Field Ops, mature	Not equivalent	Scanifly.
Structural stamping	Via design services partners	Not available in SurgePV	Neither is a stamping tool. SurgePV has no path at all.
Racking database	Direct racking-partner export	Thinner than its module and inverter libraries	Scanifly.
Brand track record	Since 2015, established name	Launched 2025, thin brand recognition	Scanifly.
Weather and airspace dependency	Real constraint	None	SurgePV.
Published price	Not publicly listed	$1,299 per user per year, 5-User Team	SurgePV, on transparency alone.

SurgePV’s named weaknesses are in that table on purpose: it launched in 2025 and carries far less brand recognition than a tool that has been in the field for a decade, it has no drone capture at all, it does not do structural stamping, and its racking database is thinner than its module and inverter libraries. We would rather you read those from us than discover them in a trial.

The useful framing is that these two products answer different questions. Scanifly answers “what is actually on this roof”. SurgePV answers “what will this array produce, what does it cost, and what does the customer sign”. A large EPC with complex assets can reasonably run both, using SurgePV’s shadow analysis and financial output downstream of a Scanifly capture. A residential installer at volume should not.

How Heaven Green Energy Uses This In Practice

We build solar across residential, commercial and industrial segments out of Gujarat, and our design team works on satellite-first modelling using SurgePV as the daily platform. Drone capture is not our default, and the reason is specific rather than ideological.

Roughly nine in ten of the roofs we survey are simple enough that satellite modelling lands inside our tolerance, and the ones that are not tend to be industrial sheds in Morbi and Rajkot where the constraint is purlin spacing and sheet condition, which a drone photograph does not solve either. That needs a structural walk, not an aerial one. Where we do want measured geometry on a complex commercial roof, we commission it as a service rather than running an in-house drone program, because the monsoon window and DGCA scheduling make a permanent pilot hard to keep utilised.

The pattern we recommend to installer partners who ask: keep drone capture for the 5% to 10% of jobs where it changes a decision, run everything else from satellite, and never let the capture tool and the simulation tool be two disconnected files. Where an outsourced measured model or a stamped structural package is the right answer, our engineering sister company handles it directly through 3D pre-design and satellite roof modelling and post-design and as-built services.

For homeowners and businesses reading this from the buying side rather than the building side:

• Residential Solar: 1 to 10 kW rooftop systems with PM Surya Ghar subsidy handled start to finish.
• Commercial Solar: 10 to 100 kW with ROI modelling and accelerated depreciation planning.
• Industrial Solar EPC: 100 kW+ turnkey, where the roof survey question actually matters.
• Solar Calculator: subsidy and 25-year savings in 60 seconds.

Related evaluations in this series: Aurora Solar review, OpenSolar review, PVsyst review and PVsyst review. The category overview lives in our solar design software pillar.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Scanifly worth the money in 2026?

It is worth it if install-day surprises are costing you real money. Scanifly scores 32 of 50 on our bench, with a 9 for support and a 4 for proposal workflow, which tells you exactly what you are buying. On a retrofit commercial pipeline where one avoided change order can be worth ₹25,000 to ₹60,000 in crew and equipment time, the subscription pays back quickly. On simple high-volume residential work, it does not.

How accurate is Scanifly compared to satellite modelling?

Scanifly states drone-derived designs are accurate to within 1 to 3 inches of hand measurement, and its shading output matches a Solmetric SunEye reading. Satellite-derived AI models infer obstruction height rather than measuring it, so they converge with photogrammetry on simple roofs and diverge on obstruction-dense ones. For parapets, curbs and HVAC arrays, a measured as-built is materially more accurate.

Does Scanifly run bankable yield simulation?

No. Scanifly produces geometry and shading analysis, not a full 8,760-hour production model with P50, P75 and P90 confidence bands. Users export the model into a simulation engine such as PVsyst, HelioScope or SurgePV to produce the probabilistic yield report a lender’s reviewer typically asks for. Budget for that second licence when you cost the tool, because it is not optional for financed projects.

What drone do I need for Scanifly?

Scanifly does not sell drones and works with any aircraft that produces geo-tagged images with GPS and a high-resolution camera. Most installer teams fly a DJI Mavic-class aircraft. A survey-capable airframe in India typically runs ₹1.5 lakh to ₹5 lakh depending on the sensor, before batteries, spares and insurance.

Do I need a drone licence to use Scanifly in India?

Yes. Commercial drone operation in India requires a DGCA remote pilot certificate and drone registration through the Digital Sky platform, with a unique identification number for the airframe. You also need to check the Digital Sky airspace map before every flight, because green, yellow and red zones determine whether you can fly at all. Allow four to six weeks to certify a first pilot.

How much does Scanifly cost per user?

Scanifly does not publish pricing and requires a sales conversation. Third-party software directories place it in the region of $150 to $450 per user per month, which we report as an industry-observed estimate rather than a confirmed vendor figure. Several accounts also describe a per-project processing charge on top, which we could not confirm from the vendor.

Is Scanifly better than SurgePV?

They answer different questions. Scanifly is better at establishing what is physically on a roof. SurgePV is better at simulation, SLD, BOQ and branded proposals, and publishes its price at $1,299 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan. SurgePV has no drone capture, no structural stamping and a thinner racking library, and it launched in 2025 so it carries less brand history. Complex commercial teams sometimes run both.

Can Scanifly replace a physical site survey?

Partly. The drone flight replaces the roof measurement portion, and Field Ops digitises the electrical and attic checklist. It does not replace a structural assessment of the roof deck, purlins or foundation, and it does not replace an electrical inspection of the service panel by a qualified person. Treat it as a better survey, not the removal of one.