Yes. If DroneDeploy is mostly your ground 360 walkthrough tool rather than your drone mapping tool, there are alternatives: Swyvl puts 360 walks on a site map by GPS alongside your other files and shares each job by link, OpenSpace is built for floor-plan-based construction progress capture, and Matterport is built around measurable 3D twins of a space. DroneDeploy is still the better choice when drone flight planning and photogrammetry processing are the center of your work, because none of those three do that.
This is for teams who bought DroneDeploy for the drone side and now mostly use it for 360 walks. Competitor details come from each vendor’s own website. Comparison as of November 2026.
What does DroneDeploy 360 Walkthrough actually do?
DroneDeploy’s 360 Walkthrough now lives inside a product called DroneDeploy Ground. You walk the site with the Ground mobile app and a 360 camera, and the photos are mapped to floor plans or site drawings by location and date.
- Capture app. The DroneDeploy Ground app is an iOS app (iPhone and iPad). The App Store listing names the Insta360 X5, X4 and RS 1-inch and the Ricoh Theta X and Z1 as supported cameras, and says the app is meant for enterprise users with an active DroneDeploy license. Ground also accepts .INSV and .MP4 video files from a wide range of other 360 cameras.
- Placement. Walks are tied to a floor plan or drawing per level, with an exterior map for outdoor work.
- Time comparison. Filter by date to compare conditions at the same spot over time.
- BIM Compare. Overlay an imported model on the field 360 imagery to compare what was built against the design.
- Sharing. Shareable links with permission-based access are built in, and owners and trade partners can view, comment on or export data “without needing a full seat.”
- Ground Pro. A higher tier that rebuilds 360 walks as 3D walks and adds iPhone and iPad 3D scanning.
If your sites are multi-level buildings with a drawing per floor, and the weekly question is what a room looked like on the 3rd versus the 17th, DroneDeploy Ground does that job.
What does DroneDeploy cost?
Partly public. As of November 2026, DroneDeploy’s pricing page lists two prices: the Flight & Analysis plan at $4,188 billed annually (one admin user, up to 3,000 images per map) and an agriculture plan at $1,908 billed annually. The two Individual Pilot plans, Flight & Analysis and the quote-only Advanced Flight & Analysis, both carry the line “Ground capture processing not included.”
The plans that include 360 walks (Ground, Ground Pro, and the Unified plan that combines drones, robots, 360 cameras, fixed cameras and smartphones) are all quote-only, as are the Progress AI and Safety AI add-ons. There is no number on the website to budget from; you book a discovery session.
Also worth knowing: Procore announced in July 2026 that it would acquire DroneDeploy for approximately $845 million, and press coverage reports the deal closed in September 2026. Good for Procore customers; less clear for a small survey firm that is not one. (We wrote about where Swyvl fits alongside Procore in Swyvl vs Procore.)
What is DroneDeploy better at?
Switching tools has a cost, and the alternatives are not better at everything. DroneDeploy is better than Swyvl, OpenSpace or Matterport at:
- Drone flight planning and automation. Mission planning, automated flights, docked drones and ground robots. None of the alternatives here plan flights.
- Photogrammetry processing. Upload drone images, get an orthomosaic, elevation model and 3D model back. Swyvl does not process photogrammetry; you bring finished outputs from wherever you process.
- Aerial survey analysis. Cut and fill against a design surface, GCP workflows, radiometric thermal, facade inspection. Swyvl measures distances, areas and heights but does not compute volumes or cut and fill.
- Floor-plan-first organization for indoor, multi-level construction, with BIM overlay on 360s and AI add-ons for progress and safety. OpenSpace is strong here too; Swyvl and Matterport are not built for it.
If those are why you bought DroneDeploy, keep it. The narrower question: what if you mostly use it for 360 walks?
Why do teams look for a DroneDeploy 360 alternative?
You are paying for an aerial platform to do ground work. Ground capture is excluded from the published plans, and the plans that have it are quote-only. Hard to justify for a firm doing hundreds of small 360 captures a week.
Your sites are not buildings with floor plans. Outdoor sites, corridors, quarries, civil works, pre-construction condition surveys (dilapidation surveys, in Australian and UK terms) of streets and neighboring properties. A map with GPS-placed 360s fits better than a drawing per level.
You deliver to clients outside the firm. Progress tools are built for one team who log in every week. A survey, inspection or environmental firm hands a finished job to a client who may open it twice, and who should not need an account, a seat or training.
The 360s need to sit next to the other files. DWGs, orthomosaics, point clouds, PDFs. Two systems means two logins and two links for every job.
Volume. A survey firm we work with moved its 360 site documentation off DroneDeploy this year over cost and flexibility. It now puts thousands of 360s a month on a map, numbered by job, next to its DWGs, and shares each job with one link. That is the pattern: many small jobs, each going to someone outside the firm.
Comparison table
Comparison as of November 2026. Where a cell says not published, I could not find it on the vendor’s site; the feature may still exist.
| DroneDeploy Ground | Swyvl | OpenSpace | Matterport | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Drone mapping plus ground 360 walks for construction | Site-based record of 360s, point clouds, orthomosaics and CAD, shared by link | Construction progress capture on floor plans | Measurable 3D twins of a space |
| 360 capture | iOS Ground app with a supported 360 camera; .INSV and .MP4 uploads | 360 photos from any camera, geotagged or placed by a GPX track | 360 camera on a hard hat; iOS and Android app | Matterport cameras or a supported 360 camera, through the Capture app |
| Where 360s are placed | Floor plans by level; exterior map outdoors | Site map by GPS; connected 360s become a walkthrough with a synced minimap | Floor plans and BIM, mapped automatically without GPS | Stitched into a 3D model of the space, with a floor plan view |
| Compare over time | Filter by date at the same spot | Captures in date order per site; on orthomosaics and scans, notes show at the same spot on later captures | Timestamped captures on the floor plan | Not published |
| Notes and issues | Tag issues; BIM Compare | Notes on 360s, photos, video, point clouds and orthomosaics; lists, PDF export, walkthrough links | Two-way Procore Observations and Punch Items integration | Tags and notes on the 3D model |
| Sharing outside the team | Shareable links, permission-based; view, comment or export without a full seat | Branded share link per job, password or invite-only; invited clients reply to notes with no account | Links, JPGs, PDF reports, Shared Folders; no account needed to view | Share links to the 3D model; viewers open them in a browser |
| Other files alongside 360s | Drone maps and models, 3D scans, BIM | Point clouds, orthomosaics, 3D Tiles, DWG, IFC, PDF, video, GPX, splats, XGRIDS scans | Smartphone photos, drone and laser scanner imports | Its own 3D models; point cloud and other exports as add-ons |
| Published pricing | Partly: $4,188/yr Flight & Analysis excludes ground capture; Ground plans quote-only | Free (5 GB, 3 sites), Solo $49/mo, Team $199/mo | Not published; priced on annual construction volume | Yes: plans by number of active spaces, including a free plan |
How to do 360 site documentation well, whatever you use
Most of the value is in the capture habit. Any of these tools works better with these five:
- Number captures by job and date before upload. “2026-11-04 J4821 stage 2” is findable; “Insta360 export (3)” is not.
- Geotag or track. Outdoors, let the camera record GPS, or carry a logger and keep the GPX track. That is what places each 360 along the route by capture time.
- Walk the same route each visit. Time comparison only works if the June capture stands where the March capture stood.
- Capture more than you think you need. Storage is cheap; a return trip to site is not.
- Send one link. A cloud folder of 400 spherical JPEGs leaves the client to work out what they are looking at.
How Swyvl handles 360 site walks
Swyvl is a site record rather than a construction progress platform: every file belongs to a physical site on a map, captures sit in date order, and each job goes out as one share link.
Upload from any camera. Geotagged 360s land on the site map by GPS; without a geotag, a GPX track places each 360 along the route by capture time. Markers cluster and collections can be color-coded, which is how firms keep job numbers apart on a busy site.
Walk it in the browser. Connected 360s become a street-view-style walkthrough with a synced minimap, nothing to install.
Notes on the 360 and on the site. Notes work on 360s, photos and video as well as point clouds and orthomosaics. On an orthomosaic or a georeferenced scan, a note pinned on the March capture also shows on the June capture at the same spot, labeled with where and when it was made (on a 360, a note stays on that photo). Notes can be grouped into a list (a snag list, an inspection round), exported as a PDF, or shared as a walkthrough link. Measurements are available in the 3D and map viewers, not on 360 photos.
One share link per job. The share link carries your logo and accent color, can be password or invite-only, and can be edited after sending. People invited by email reply to notes after verifying with a code, with no account and no seat. Clients can approve or request changes from the link, and you can see when it was viewed. The DWG, orthomosaic, point cloud and PDF sit on the same site as the 360s.
Pricing is on the pricing page: Free (5 GB, 3 sites, 5 share links), Solo at $49 a month (100 GB) and Team at $199 a month (5 seats, 500 GB), with files stored in the region you choose.
What Swyvl does not do: fly drones, process photogrammetry, compute volumes or cut and fill, or overlay BIM on a 360. Several teams run both: DroneDeploy for the flights, Swyvl for the deliverable.
Other alternatives worth a look
OpenSpace is the closest like-for-like for construction. You attach a 360° camera to your hard hat and tap record, and their Spatial AI timestamps the images and maps them to your floor plans. Captures share as links, JPGs or PDF reports without an account, and there is a two-way Procore Observations and Punch Items integration. Pricing is not published; it is based on your annual construction volume.
Matterport is built around measurable 3D twins rather than walk-based progress capture. It supports its own cameras plus consumer 360 cameras (their 2026 compatible-camera post names the Insta360 X3 and X5 and the Ricoh Theta X, Z1 and A1); pricing is per active space with a free tier, with current numbers on their plans page.
Which one should you pick?
- Drone mapping is the core, 360 walks are a bonus: stay on DroneDeploy, and get the Ground or Unified quote before deciding anything.
- General contractor, indoor, drawings per level, Procore shop: DroneDeploy Ground or OpenSpace.
- One space, want a measurable 3D twin: Matterport.
- Survey, inspection, environmental or civil firm with many outdoor jobs delivered to clients by link: Swyvl. Start on the Free plan with a real job and see whether your client opens it.
For the whole platform rather than 360 walks alone, see Swyvl vs DroneDeploy.
Comparison as of November 2026. If anything here is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.