If you’re farming, odds are you’ve kicked around the idea of owning your own drone sprayer. Maybe you’ve priced one out and thought, “Yeah, that’s a chunk of change.” But before you write it off, let’s run through some quick numbers.
A solid spray setup runs around $75,000. That might sound steep, until you factor in what you’re already spending and what your crops could be earning you back.
Let’s start with the basics.
If you hired a plane at $12 an acre for 6,250 acres it would cost $75,000 total. That means if you only flew your drone as a service it would take 6,250 acres to break even.
But farm and ranch operations benefit from more than just application, they benefit from the products applied.
For example in 2024 and 2025 on-farm fungicide trials showed 30–50 bushel gains per acre on corn. At $4 a bushel, that’s $120–$200 per acre in extra yield potential. Subtract the product cost, say $22 an acre, and you’re looking at a net crop benefit of $98–$178 an acre for just corn!
Now tie that back to your drone.
At $75,000, your breakeven is somewhere between 420 and 765 acres just from crop improvement alone. Add in the savings from not hiring someone else to apply products and your ROI gets even better. Combine both benefits—higher yield and lower costs—and you’re realistically looking at paying off the entire setup in under a year if you have 394-681 acres.
That’s not hype. That’s math.
And we haven’t even touched on the flexibility you gain—spraying exactly when you want, hitting trouble spots as they show up, staying out of muddy fields, and keeping ground rigs from packing soil or damaging crops.
Owning your own drone isn’t just about saving money. It’s about taking control of your timing, your application, and your results.
*Estimated startup: $40,000 drone package, $10,000 generator, $2,000 legal, $23,000 trailer = roughly $75,000. Costs can be lower or higher depending on specs and extras.
