Farmonaut Pricing vs FieldView Plus: What Satellite Monitoring Costs

Farmonaut's listed plans work out at about $1 per hectare per month on its smallest plans, falling to about $0.63 on its largest, so roughly $7.60 to $12 per hectare per year. FieldView Plus starts at $649 a year with no acreage tiers on its page. Its AI advisory comes with every Farmonaut plan.

The catch is that the two are priced on different principles. Farmonaut charges for the area you monitor each month; FieldView Plus is a yearly platform subscription with satellite imagery among many other features. Neither price tells you what a hectare costs until you put your own acreage in, and on Farmonaut the plan you are forced to buy can make your real rate two or three times the headline one.

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One limit before the numbers: neither vendor's accuracy claims have been independently checked here, and I have not tested either service on a farm. Treat any "detects problems X days earlier" statement as a marketing claim until your own fields show it; a one-season test on two or three fields is the cheapest way to find out.

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Farmonaut plans, converted to a yearly figure

Farmonaut's satellite site lists five monthly plans, priced by the area included. As of November 2026 the page says annual billing is available at a lower price but gives no figures, so every yearly number below is simply twelve times the monthly price. Your real yearly cost may be lower on annual billing, so ask.

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To convert hectares to acres, multiply by 2.471; to convert a per-hectare cost to per acre, divide by 2.471. The per-hectare figures above assume you use the whole allowance. That is the point most people miss: a farm of 100 hectares cannot buy "100 hectares" of Farmonaut. It must buy the next plan up, which is Premium at 300 hectares, and pay for 200 hectares it does not use. On that plan the effective cost is $2,699.88 a year divided by 100 hectares, or $27 per hectare. Unless the vendor lets you stack plans, the plan ladder, not the headline rate, sets your cost.

The page also states that every plan runs the same satellite engine and includes AI farm advisory; the footer credits the advisory to JEEVN AI. It lists no per-plan difference in advisory quality, so you are paying for area, not for a better advisor.

FieldView Plus: what the page says

FieldView's pricing page lists a Basic plan at $0 and a Plus plan that starts at $649 a year, billed annually. It gives no acreage tiers on that page, and it says the content may change. Plus adds, per the plan table, seed scripting and enhanced scripting, field health imagery, image-enhanced scouting, field weather history and forecast, yield analysis, region reports, data manager, split-view comparison and a digital map book, as well as on-farm support. Basic includes account sharing, a data inbox, cab app connectivity and support, and the page is inconsistent about which reporting tools Basic includes, so check that with FieldView before relying on either reading.

Because the price is "from" and there are no tiers on the page, I cannot honestly give you one number for your acreage. What I can do is show the cost per hectare if $649 is what you pay, and tell you to ask for a written quote for your area before comparing. If the quote is higher, use the quote.

The pattern is the reverse of Farmonaut's. A flat yearly fee is expensive per hectare on a very small farm and cheap on a large one, while Farmonaut's cost per hectare barely changes with size. The crossing point depends entirely on whether the starting price is the real price for your acreage.

Side by side for five farm sizes

Here are five illustrative farms, each shown with the cheapest Farmonaut plan that covers the area and the FieldView Plus starting price. All yearly figures use twelve months at the monthly list price for Farmonaut.

Reading it plainly: below about 30 hectares, Farmonaut is cheaper in cash terms. At about 75 hectares the two are close, with FieldView ahead if $649 holds. Above that, a flat-fee platform wins on price per hectare by a wide margin, again only if the starting price is what you are quoted. Price is not the whole decision, though. FieldView Plus is built around a grower who uses planting, scripting and yield tools in one platform, and many of its features have nothing to do with satellite scouting. If you only want to see which field looks stressed, you may be paying for features you will not open.

A worked decision: the 75-hectare mixed farm

Say the 75-hectare farm grows 45 hectares of wheat and 30 of grassland, and the owner walks every field weekly in season, a 3-hour round at a labour value of $25 an hour. That is $75 a week; over a 26-week season, about $1,950. Satellite monitoring will not replace the walk, but suppose it lets the owner skip one walk in three on fields flagged as uniform. That saves roughly $650 a season (illustrative): about FieldView's $649 starting price, and short of the $779.88 a year that Farmonaut Standard costs at monthly rates, so even the best case only just covers one of them, and only if every skipped walk was safe. The point of the sum is the shape of the test: put a value on one visit, count how many the tool could really replace, and compare that with the yearly price. If the saving cannot beat the price in the best case, do not buy.

What Farmonaut's AI advisory adds

The Farmonaut page says its advisory is included on every plan and is powered by JEEVN AI. I could not confirm from the pricing page what the advisory consists of, how it uses your field data or how it was validated, so treat it as unverified until you have seen output on your own fields. A free way to judge it is to ask for a sample report on a field where you already know the answer, such as one with a known drainage problem or a patch that was resown last year.

Ask the vendor these questions, and write down the replies:

• What exactly does the advisory tell me: alerts, recommendations, or a score I interpret myself?
• Which satellite sources feed it, and how often will I get a usable image in cloudy weeks?
• Is the recommendation specific to my crop and growth stage, or generic?
• Can I export the data if I leave?

A sample check on an advisory message

Suppose the advisory sends this (illustrative): "Field 3 shows reduced vigour in the north-east corner compared with last week; inspect for water stress or pest pressure." Before acting, cross-check it against three things you already hold: the last rainfall total, the previous season's yield map for that corner, and your own walk notes. If all three show nothing, you have a flag worth a ten-minute look, not a spray order. An alert gives you a place to go and look. The decision stays with you, and with your agronomist where you have one.

Costs the monthly price leaves out

• Your time. Drawing field boundaries, naming fields and checking alerts takes a few hours in the first month and perhaps an hour a week in season. At $25 an hour, 30 hours across a season adds $750, which exceeds the subscription on a small farm.
• Ground-truthing. Any alert needs a person in the field. The money saved is the walks you skip, not the walks the app creates.
• Unused area. On Farmonaut, a farm sitting just above a plan limit pays for the next plan up.
• Overlap. If your agronomist or machinery dealer already supplies imagery, a second subscription duplicates it.
• Add-on and support costs. FieldView's page lists local on-farm support as a Plus feature; whether that is included in the starting price or arranged by a dealer is worth asking.

A one-season test that gives you an answer

1. Pick one or two fields with a known problem and one trouble-free comparison field.
2. Start with a free route. FieldView Basic costs $0 and Farmonaut's Mini plan is $4.99 a month, so trying either is cheap. Check the trial or cancellation terms first.
3. Write down the decision each alert changes, in a simple log with columns for date, alert, what you did, and what you found.
4. At the end of the season, count: alerts that found a real problem, alerts that were false, walks skipped safely, and problems found only by your own eyes.
5. Divide the subscription by the count of useful alerts. If $779.88 bought four useful catches, each cost $195; ask whether any one of them saved more than that.

Also see AI crop monitoring on a small farm without drones, which explains what satellite-only monitoring can and cannot see, and what a small farm gets from free AI tools for the zero-cost options. A farm-wide view of the apps is in Herdwatch, AgriWebb and Farmonaut compared.

Build the cost sheet yourself in ten minutes

Do not rely on anyone's table, including mine, because the prices move and your area is your own. A small spreadsheet does the conversion and keeps the quote you receive next to the list price. Set up four columns: area in hectares, yearly price, cost per hectare (price divided by area) and cost per acre (cost per hectare divided by 2.471). One row per option, plus a row for each quote.

A2: 75          (your area in hectares)
B2: 779.88      (yearly price: monthly list price x 12)
C2: =B2/A2      (cost per hectare)
D2: =C2/2.471   (cost per acre)
E2: =B2/(A2*2.471)  (check: should equal D2)

If you would rather have a chat assistant check your sums, give it numbers only (no farm name, no field maps) and ask it to show its working. A sample prompt and a realistic reply (illustrative):

Farmonaut Premium is $224.99 a month for up to 300 ha. My farm is 100 ha. Work out the yearly cost, the cost per hectare actually monitored, and the cost per hectare if the plan were fully used. Show each step.

A good answer gives $2,699.88 a year, $27.00 per hectare on 100 ha and $9.00 per hectare on 300 ha. If the assistant returns $0.75 per hectare per month for your farm and stops there, it has repeated the plan's headline rate and missed the unused area. That slip is exactly the one the plan ladder invites, and it is why you check the sum by hand once.

What changes if you pay annually or by quote

Farmonaut's page says annual billing exists at a lower price but gives no figures, so ask for the annual price in writing and enter it in your sheet. A discount of, say, 20 percent on Standard would reduce $779.88 to $623.90 (illustrative), which would put it under FieldView's $649 starting price. That one change flips the ranking for a 75-hectare farm, which is why the answer to "which is cheaper" is always "for which quote".

FieldView's page shows a starting price and no tiers. The practical route is to ask for a quote with your hectares or acres, the crops you grow and the hardware you use, and to ask what is included in the quoted number: imagery, scripting, support, and any extra seats for staff or an adviser. If the quote includes items you do not need, ask whether there is a plan without them. The free Basic plan costs nothing, so you can also test what the platform does with your field boundaries before you pay for Plus.

Clouds, revisit rates and what you actually see

Optical satellite imagery depends on weather. In a wet spring, a field may have only a handful of clear images in a month, and an alert based on a ten-day-old image is a different thing from an alert based on yesterday's. Neither vendor's pricing page gives a guaranteed number of usable images, so ask. A fair question is: "In my growing season, over my fields, how many clear images did your customers typically get last year?" If the answer is a general revisit rate for the satellite rather than a count of clear images, you have learnt something about how carefully the claim is made.

Three field conditions that make satellite monitoring less useful

1. Small, irregular fields. A field of one or two hectares may be only a few image pixels across, so the edge of the field blurs into hedge and track.
2. Mixed cropping or understorey. Orchards with grass between the rows, or strips of different crops, give averaged readings.
3. Protected crops. A satellite cannot see inside a polytunnel or glasshouse in any useful way. See AI for hydroponic farming if your growing is indoors.

A second worked case: a vegetable grower with split plots

Take a grower with 28 hectares in fourteen plots of 2 hectares across two sites, rotating crops each year. Farmonaut's Basic plan covers 30 hectares at $29.99 a month, so about $360 a year. The fields are small, so the grower tests it on four plots with known problems: one waterlogged corner, one patch of poor emergence and two controls. After a season, the log shows that two alerts led to a useful look, one was a shadow from a hedge, and the waterlogged corner was flagged late because of three cloudy weeks. The cost per useful alert was $180. Whether that is worth it depends on what the catches saved: if the poor-emergence patch was resown a week earlier than it would have been, the saving may be several hundred dollars of lost yield, and the grower renews; if not, the grower stops at one season and has lost $360 learning something. Either outcome is a decision made from evidence.

Which to choose by farm type

• Under about 30 hectares, mainly want a look from above: Farmonaut Mini or Basic, month to month, with a one-season trial.
• Medium farm, wants planting, scripting and yield tools as well: ask FieldView for a written Plus quote, since the $649 starting price may not apply to your acreage.
• Large arable farm: price Farmonaut's Premium or Elite against FieldView's quote; use the quote, not the starting price.
• Livestock-led farm: satellite crop monitoring is a minor tool for you; a chat assistant or farm records app may give more per dollar.

Prices on both pages change, so confirm each figure on the live page, and ask Farmonaut for its annual price, before you pay. Do the sum with your own acreage, and let a season of your own results decide whether the subscription continues.

Questions about satellite monitoring prices

Is satellite crop monitoring worth paying for on a small farm?

It can be if it saves scouting trips or flags a problem field early, but the figure to test is the cost of one avoided trip or one caught problem, not the subscription alone. Start with a free tier or one season on one farm, and keep a log of decisions it changed.

Why do the two prices not compare directly?

Farmonaut prices by area monitored each month; FieldView Plus quotes a starting price per year and its page gives no acreage tiers. You convert both to a cost per hectare for your own area, then check what is actually included at that size.

Does cloud cover affect satellite monitoring?

Yes. Optical satellites cannot see through cloud, so in cloudy seasons the images are fewer and older. Ask each vendor how often you will get a usable image over your fields in your growing season, and treat any promised revisit rate as a best case.

Can I use both?

You can, but you would pay twice for overlapping imagery. A sensible test is to run one for a season on the same fields as a free tier of the other, and compare what each changed in your decisions.

Further reads

• AI Chatbot for Agriculture: A Farm Supply Business's Setup and Cost — Setup and running cost of an agriculture chatbot.
• AI for Agronomists: Crop Walk Write-Ups and Grower Advice Letters — Turning crop-walk notes into advice letters.
• AI Chatbot for Farmers: Answers From Your Own Farm Notes and SOPs — Answers drawn from your own farm notes.
• Livestock Record Keeping App: Herdwatch vs AgriWebb AI Voice Notes — Livestock records by voice note.
• Farm Accounting Software: QuickBooks, Xero or a Farm App With AI? — Cost each subscription against farm accounts.
• Greenhouse Management Software: What AI Climate Alerts Cost and Add — What sensor-alert greenhouse software costs against a spreadsheet and chat-assistant routine, with a break-even sum for a small growing operation.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Farmonaut plan prices on sat.farmonaut.com and the FieldView pricing page on climate.com (both checked 5 November 2026). Prices are list prices in dollars and change.