The Drone Show Cost Record
The public record of what an outdoor drone light show actually costs — council minutes, procurement documents, and news coverage of the vote, assembled in one place.
"What does a drone show cost?" is one of the highest-volume questions a producer, venue, or municipality asks before ever picking up the phone — and until now it has been answered nowhere with primary sources. Every row below is a real, publicly disclosed figure: a council-approved contract, a procurement tender, or (clearly labeled) a reported estimate. No operator's private pricing appears here.
Browse
| Browse the data | Every row, with a link to its public source. Filter by contract type or search by buyer/vendor. |
| Methodology | Sourcing rules, what counts as a row, how per-drone cost is computed. |
Reading the numbers
Per-drone economics narrow as fleet size grows, but the spread is wide even within similarly sized shows — a 200-drone show ranges from about $120 to $400 per drone across this record's rows, driven by contract structure (multi-year vs. one-off, competitive bid vs. sole-source) at least as much as by fleet size. See methodology for the full sourcing and computation rules, and Westerly, RI's row for the record's only disclosed side-by-side competing bids.
Outdoor shows only
This record covers outdoor drone light shows. Indoor operated aerial effects are priced differently and are not represented here — see Sitara Skies' operated aerial effects page and its cost guide, which cites this record for outdoor context.