Video and footage · Drone, aerial and 3D survey data · Updated 30 Oct 2026
Who buys drone and aerial footage for AI training, and what does it pay?
AIData.Broker represents the companies and people that hold drone and aerial footage when they sell to AI labs: we value what they hold against public prices, describe it without their name to every buyer that takes it at the same time and help negotiate the terms. Our fee is 12% of the first $250,000 a sale pays, and nothing if no sale closes.
Drone video and stills, aerial surveys, LiDAR and 3D city models. Computer-vision, mapping and autonomy companies train on it, and little of it is public at high resolution with its flight data.
- No data upload
- About two minutes
- No email needed
- Prices on record
- 14
sales that happened, asking prices off the shelf, made to order, cost to produce
- Who holds it
- Drone service and inspection companies, Aerial survey and mapping firms, Real-estate and construction media companies
- Who has paid, offered or listed
- Datarade, JoinAI, National Academy of Marine Research (Taiwan), National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Cefas
The short answer · figures from the market's records, last reviewed 30 Oct 2026
Who buys drone and aerial footage for AI training, and what does it pay?
Computer-vision, mapping and autonomy companies, mostly from catalogues and to order. Aerometrex licensed existing 3D city data and LiDAR to two AI firms for a combined AUD $1.07 million, drone imagery sets start at $10,000 a purchase on Datarade, and government agencies pay to have drone images collected and labelled to order, such as a UK science agency's ceiling of up to £120,000 for up to 50,000 images. Footage with its flight data, from places few others fly, is worth the most; footage flown for a client is first the client's.
What buyers have paid, offered or asked for drone and aerial footage
The whole price boardEvery price in the market's records about drone and aerial footage, each with its source and the day it was read. Open a row for the source's own words.
14 public prices across all kinds of data
Aerometrex 3D city datasets and LiDAR licensed off the shelf to two AI firms (Zeromatter, Neara) for training
Two signed licences of existing catalogue data, one to train autonomous systems. The per-licence figure is the combined value split evenly; the split between the two was not given.
ImagesSales that happenedJun 2026Press report
FilingReader news wire, summary of Aerometrex's ASX announcement
$755K
combined value of two off-the-shelf licences
Published as a combined value of AUD $1.07 million for two licences
$378K per contract
Multi-View Drone Imagery & 3D Scenes, multi-country computer vision dataset
A floor price for drone imagery and 3D scenes for computer vision; the image count is not on the catalogue card, so no per-image figure.
ImagesAsking prices off the shelfOct 2026A catalogue or marketplace listing
$10K or more
one-off purchase
MOYU Solutions Drone Park Vehicle Congestion Dataset, 20,000 1080p drone images, 30 GB
$10,500 for 20,000 images is the same template price as JoinAI's drone image sets.
ImagesAsking prices off the shelfSep 2026A catalogue or marketplace listing
Opendatabay, MOYU SOLUTIONS PTE. LTD listing: Drone Park Vehicle Congestion Dataset
$10.5K
per dataset of 20,000 images
$0.53 per image
CapitalPower Aerial Video of Nigeria Cities, ~500 4K drone video files of urban landscapes with GPS metadata
Per clip only: hours are not stated and the file count is approximate ('~500', 'expandable'). The licence is shown as MIT.
Video and footageAsking prices off the shelfMar 2026A catalogue or marketplace listing
Opendatabay, CapitalPower Multimedia Ltd listing: Aerial Video of Nigeria Cities
$1,250
per dataset of ~500 video files
$2.50 per record
JoinAI Drone-Based Rooftop Leaf Detection Image Dataset, 20,000+ annotated drone photos, 4K and 1080p
Filed under the synthetic category although it is described as drone photography. The text quotes 'approximately €8,000', while the listed price is $10,500 (converted from GBP at $1 = £0.76).
ImagesAsking prices off the shelfOct 2025A catalogue or marketplace listing
Opendatabay, JoinAI listing: Drone-Based Rooftop Leaf Detection Image Dataset
$10.5K
per dataset of 20,000+ images
$0.53 per image
Rough-sea follow-up dataset for finding people overboard: at least 1,800 annotated 4K drone images (150 or more per class) shot in Beaufort force 4 to 7 sea exercises, with the raw video (Taiwan National Academy of Marine Research)
Same buyer and winner as the 2025 overboard dataset, at the full budget. The price includes ships, a support vessel and safety crew for rough-sea exercises and the raw footage, so the per-image figure is all-in for collection plus annotation; the count is a minimum, so the per-image figure is a ceiling.
ImagesMade to orderMay 2026The payer's own page
$47.2K
per contract (at least 1,800 annotated images)
$26 per image
AI image dataset for finding people overboard: at least 1,500 new 4K images shot at sea from boats and drones and annotated in COCO format, plus annotation of 15,000 images the buyer supplies (Taiwan National Academy of Marine Research)
A public research body paid National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, the only bidder, at the full budget. The price also pays for sea exercises (12 or more scenario combinations, two sea states, insurance) and a panel of at least 10 rescue experts, so the per-image figure is all-in and mixes 1,500 images made from scratch with 15,000 annotated only.
ImagesMade to orderSep 2025The payer's own page
$47.1K
per contract (16,500 images: 1,500 shot and annotated, 15,000 annotated)
$2.85 per image
Marine-litter annotation of drone survey images for partner countries, to train a litter-detection model, plus training for in-country partners (Cefas, UK government, OCPP programme)
The third Cefas annotation buy in the series (after CEFAS21-99 and CEFAS23-100); it also pays for training partners to run annotation themselves.
ImagesMade to orderMar 2025The payer's own page
$63.9K
per contract (Dec 2024 to Mar 2025)
Published as £47,933
Annotation of seals and sea lions in aerial photographs to train computer-vision counting models (NOAA Fisheries, US Department of Commerce)
A federal science buyer paying a labelling vendor a fixed price; the record states no image count, so no per-image figure.
ImagesMade to orderSep 2024The payer's own page
USAspending.gov award record (official API), purchase order 1333MF24P0244
$28K
per contract, firm fixed price (Sep 2024 to Sep 2025)
Tender ceiling for annotating up to 50,000 drone images of beaches for marine-litter classes across Ocean Country Partnership countries, to train a detection model (Cefas, UK government, ITT CEFAS24-111)
A UK government science agency stating its ceiling for a made-to-order annotation contract before award; Cefas says it cannot guarantee the volume or value within the maximum. The contract was later awarded to Envision at £47,933 with no image count stated, so the price actually paid per image is not recorded. Earlier Cefas annotation orders of 5,000 to 7,000 images cost about £6 to £6.64 an image, so a 50,000-image order is budgeted at well under half of that unit price.
ImagesMade to orderAug 2024The payer's own page
$157K
per contract, maximum value (annotation of up to 50,000 images, demand-led)
Published as up to £120,000 for up to 50,000 images
About 7,000 drone images of Ghanaian beaches annotated for 89 marine-litter classes to train a detection model (Cefas, UK government, OCPP programme)
A UK government science agency buying training data for its own model from a Ghana-based annotation firm; the price also covers three inter-rater assessments, so the per-image figure is all-in.
ImagesMade to orderSep 2023The payer's own page
$62K
per contract (about 7,000 images, Sep 2023 to Mar 2024)
Published as £46,500
$8.86 per image
Collection, processing and annotation of 2D images and 3D point clouds from nuclear decommissioning sites to train object detection and segmentation models (UK Atomic Energy Authority, LongOps project)
A public research body buying a made-to-order training set from an engineering firm with access to nuclear-related sites, about 8 months of work. The notice states no count of images or point clouds, so no per-image figure.
ImagesMade to orderAug 2022The payer's own page
$308K
per contract (Aug 2022 to Apr 2023)
Published as £254,958
Pixelwise segmentation of at least 5,000 high-resolution drone images of UK beaches into at least 50 marine-litter classes, for a machine-learning model (Cefas, UK government)
The notice sets a minimum scope, so the per-image figure is a ceiling; the supplier, HITL EOOD, is a Bulgarian human-in-the-loop annotation firm.
ImagesMade to orderDec 2021The payer's own page
$40K
per contract (at least 5,000 images, Dec 2021 to Mar 2022)
Published as £30,000
$8.00 per image
Autonomous drone flight video AI training data, Korea's 2020 AI training data programme (University of Ulsan consortium): 320 hours of 4K drone flight video plus 60 hours of LiDAR data over urban, forest and tourist areas
Korea's science ministry (MSIT, through NIA) funds a consortium led by the University of Ulsan to shoot, process and label drone flight video, so this prices collection to order plus labelling, with the data released free on AI-Hub. Planned amounts at selection (KRW 1.9 billion state, KRW 0.4 billion private), not final spend.
Video and footageCost to produceJun 2020Press report
$1.9M
per project of 320 hours of 4K drone flight video and 60 hours of LiDAR data
$5,973 per hour of video
Where this data comes from, and who lists it
The whole supply map100,000+ clips and stills (approx. 20 TB), 5,000+ contributors
Kled lists a non-exclusive collection of consumer drone video of streets, buildings and infrastructure: 100,000+ clips and stills (about 20 TB) from 5,000+ contributors in 100+ countries, shot at 1080p to 4K, raw and unlabelled, under a non-exclusive commercial training licence. No price on the page (sample and quote on request).
Reaches buyers: Contributors upload their own drone video in Kled's app and opt in to AI training; Kled licenses the pooled collection to developers non-exclusively
Kled datasets, Consumer Drone City Video (100,000 files), 27 Oct 2026
7 news, sports and esports holders among 16 featured data owners
Troveo's page for content owners names, among its featured data owners, a US local TV news group (Sinclair Broadcast Group), a South Asian news agency (Asian News International), Australia's Nine Network, the financial news site Benzinga, an NCAA Division I conference (Mountain West Conference), Barstool Sports and the esports brand 100 Thieves. It lists 'Sports & Movement' and 'Aerial/Drone' among the categories it licenses. No rate or royalty share is published.
Reaches buyers: Holders license through Troveo, which licenses to AI labs under NDA and pays a royalty on every use
Troveo, License Your Content to Top AI Companies (content owners page), 27 Oct 2026
2,200 hours drone; 2,000 hours action sports POV; 400 hours natural disaster
Kled's catalogue lists exclusive-rights raw footage collections uploaded by its contributors: a Cinematic Drone Archive of 2,200 hours, Action Sports POV Footage of 2,000 hours and a Natural Disaster Video Archive of 400 hours, all updated October 2026, under an exclusive commercial training licence. No price is shown; buyers request a sample.
Reaches buyers: Consumer contributor app aggregated into exclusive dataset licences sold by quote
over half a million hours
Enabled Intelligence added a collection of more than half a million hours of pre-labelled, validated Ukraine conflict drone full-motion video to its data library, available to approved users in the US, Ukraine and NATO states; it named neither the sources nor the buyers and stated no price.
Reaches buyers: Defence data vendor licensing labelled drone video to vetted government and defence users
- GPS, altitude and camera data with every frame
- Places and conditions few others fly
- LiDAR or 3D models with the imagery
- Labels: what each frame shows
The operator usually owns what it flew for itself; footage flown for a client may be the client's. People who can be identified in it need blurring or their agreement, and flights over private property may carry restrictions in the client's contract.
Who has bought, offered or listed drone and aerial footage
- Datarade
- JoinAI
- National Academy of Marine Research (Taiwan)
- National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology
- Cefas
- Roboflow
- Korea Ministry of Science and ICT
Datarade
RoboflowBuyers that take video, and what each publishes
13 buyers taking video and footage, largest published figure first
Hold drone and aerial footage? A valuation takes about two minutes: it says what buyers pay and whether we would run the sale. Prices last read 30 Oct 2026.
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