Why this guide exists
Industrial drones are sold by enthusiasts and bought by businesses. The marketing language conflates hobbyist toys with serious commercial inspection tools, and the reviews available on consumer forums rarely address what matters for trade-licensed operators flying CASA-registered aircraft for paid work.
This guide focuses exclusively on drones in the two to nine kilogram weight class certified or certifiable for commercial Aerial Work in Australia under CASA part 101. We tested nine units across four brands, all flown by CASA Remote Pilot Licence holders running paid inspection work for roofing, solar, building defect and infrastructure clients.
For real-world context on what commercial drone inspection looks like on the ground in South East Queensland, SEQ Drone Inspections have been running paid roof and solar surveys around the southside Brisbane market and provided practical operator feedback that fed into how we structured the test.
What we tested
Nine units, four brands. Six were quadcopters in the four to seven kg class. Three were hexacopters in the eight to nine kg class. All were tested across the same six job types over a twelve month period.
Payload capacity is the wrong question
The marketing fixates on maximum payload. For trade inspection, payload capacity rarely matters. What matters is endurance with the payload you actually fly. Most commercial inspection work does not need a four kilo payload. It needs a 600 to 800 gram thermal-plus-RGB gimbal flying for forty minutes per battery cycle, swapped at the truck.
The sweet spot in our test was the four to five kg class with a 30 to 40 minute realistic endurance carrying a thermal gimbal. Anything heavier added permitting overhead without proportional capability. Anything lighter ran into wind-stability issues on coastal jobs.
Thermal capability that actually works
Thermal is where most trade flyers get burnt. The marketing throws around resolution numbers (640 by 512, 320 by 240) without context for what they mean for the trade. Roof inspection and solar survey work needs thermal sensitivity better than 50 mK, full radiometric data export, and dealer-supported software that exports temperature data in formats your insurance and engineering clients actually accept.
Three of the nine units we tested had thermal sensors that were technically present but produced data the engineering clients refused to accept. That meant flying the job twice. That sort of failure mode does not show up in spec sheets.
A drone that cannot deliver thermal data your client accepts is not a thermal drone. It is a marketing photo.
CASA compliance and the operator certificate question
If you are flying paid commercial work in Australia you need a Remote Pilot Licence and either a Certified Operator certificate from CASA or operate under a sub-2kg or excluded category exemption. Several of the drones we tested cross the 2 kg threshold once you fit a thermal gimbal, which moves you into RPL territory whether you wanted to be there or not.
If you are buying for a one-pilot operator certificate, factor in a year of training time and certification overhead. If you are buying for a hobbyist sub-2kg operation that is moonlighting paid work, do not. CASA do follow up on commercial operators flying without RPL coverage and the consequences include grounded aircraft and personal fines.
Dealer and parts
Australian commercial drone support is concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne. Brisbane has two reliable dealers as of early 2026, both of whom service the SE Queensland trade market well. We rated dealer experience explicitly in our scorecard and one of the four brands we tested scored consistently poorly on dealer turnaround.
If your inspection business depends on the drone being flyable on the day of the job, dealer location matters as much as drone spec. A two-week wait for a replacement gimbal is a two-week revenue gap.
Recommendation matrix
We are not naming brands publicly for the same reasons we did not name them in the mowers guide. The recommendation matrix lists the brand-and-model combinations we would buy ourselves at four price points: under 5 thousand (sub-2kg single-purpose RGB), 5 to 12 thousand (4kg RGB plus thermal), 12 to 25 thousand (5kg dual-payload), and 25 thousand plus (8kg hexacopter survey-grade).
The matrix is available to trade-verified buyers via the contact form. Include your operator certificate number and the kind of work you are flying.