Polycam
Polycam turns phone LiDAR, photos and drone footage into 3D models, floor plans and point clouds for AEC and real estate teams.
Budget for Business from day one — $400/year per user is where floor plans, advanced measurements, point cloud exports and the shared team library actually live, and Basic is object scans and splats. Buy a scanner instead if your numbers have to hold up in court. If you just need a listing floor plan before the open house, this is the fastest phone-first path we know.
Verified 1h ago · liveness 87/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/polycam
- AEC teams needing editable 2D/3D floor plans and floor area before leaving the site
- Real estate agents producing listing floor plans and virtual tours from a roughly one-hour house scan
- Forensics and claims investigators documenting scenes and generating AI reports
- Facilities and structural teams replacing manual area records with scan-based measurements
- Projects requiring survey-grade or millimetric accuracy — FARO and Leica-class hardware own that
- Teams needing floor plans, point cloud exports or advanced measurements without moving up to Business at $400/year per user
- Code-compliant stair dimensions from a scan alone — Polycam's own guidance says tape-measure those
We scan live Reddit threads, YouTube comments, X posts, G2 reviews and other communities — and hand you an honest verdict in under a minute.
- Honest verdict, not marketing
- Real pros & cons from real users
- Attributed quotes with receipts
3 free scans · no card needed
Skip Polycam if you need millimetric survey-grade tolerance (FARO and Leica-class hardware cover that) or if your budget only stretches to Basic and the job depends on floor plans, point cloud exports, or automated measurements — those all start at Business.
Floor plans, advanced measurements, point cloud exports, and the shared team library are all locked to Business at $400/year per user, so a Basic subscriber on a documentation job has to upgrade or go without.
Basic at $150/year ($12.50/month billed yearly) fits a solo freelancer or creator doing object scans and splats; Business at $400/year per user ($33/month per user billed yearly) is the entry point for any team that needs floor plans, measurements, point clouds, or a shared library. Against Matterport, Polycam is the cheaper mobile-first option; against specialist floor-plan tools like magicplan or RoomSketcher, the comparison depends on whether you also want the 3D capture and point cloud
In short
Polycam — Polycam turns phone LiDAR, photos and drone footage into 3D models, floor plans and point clouds for AEC and real estate teams. Best for AEC teams needing editable 2D/3D floor plans and floor area before leaving the site, Real estate agents producing listing floor plans and virtual tours from a roughly one-hour house scan, Forensics and claims investigators documenting scenes and generating AI reports. Free to start; paid plans from $150/mo.
What's new in Polycam
Checked 7 days agoAcross the latest 10 updates: 10 community discussions.
Polycam guide covers measuring wall height with a phone
Tutorial explains how to measure wall height accurately using a phone. Aimed at capture and measurement workflows.
Polycam posts how-to for 3D scanning real estate listings
Guide describes scanning a house in about an hour versus sixteen hours of hand measuring, then checking the floor plan and publishing the listing.
Polycam publishes real estate virtual tour app comparison
Post compares apps for real estate virtual tours, citing Zillow data that listings with a tour or floor plan got twice the views and sold 10% faster.
Polycam guide covers floor plans for commercial leases and offices
Tutorial walks through producing a floor plan for a commercial lease or office space using 3D capture.
Polycam publishes low-light 3D scanning app comparison
Blog post compares which 3D scanning apps handle low-light interiors best. Advises users on capture in poorly lit spaces.
Polycam guide covers creating a 3D floor plan for VR walkthroughs
Post outlines three routes for getting a scanned room onto a headset for a VR walkthrough.
Polycam posts house scanning guide for renovation plans
Guide says walking each room with a LiDAR phone builds a floor plan in an afternoon for a typical house; usable output depends on subscription tier.
Polycam guide covers measuring rooms for furniture layout
Tutorial focuses on inscribed dimensions and the narrowest opening on a route when checking whether furniture fits.
Polycam publishes paint quantity calculator comparison
Post argues room scanning gives wall area with openings subtracted, versus guessing or taping measurements for paint estimates.
Polycam compares real estate floor plan apps for 2026
Comparison of CubiCasa, Polycam and Matterport for listing floor plans, focused on publishable output and square footage accuracy.
What people actually say about Polycam — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
28 mentions across 5 sources (Reddit, Hacker News, YouTube, Product Hunt, App Store), 36 more we could not attribute · researched Oct 14, 2026.
Weighted by the 64 posts each of 5 sources contributed.
- +Fast one-visit site capture with phone LiDAR — no dedicated scanner hardware required
- +Floor plan generation with editable walls, fixtures, and room labels is genuinely useful for AEC walkthroughs
- +Wide export coverage: seven mesh formats plus six point cloud formats including LAS and Geo-LAS
- +Cross-platform (iOS, Android, web) means teams can scan on the phone they already carry
- +Product Hunt users consistently praise the room scanning feature as the app's standout capability
- −Auto-renew after the 7-day trial has produced multiple 1-star 'scam' App Store reviews
- −Support is 'slow' and 'the worst' per Reddit — no phone line, weeks of silence on billing issues
- −Measurement accuracy is inconsistent — one App Store reviewer calls results 'very inaccurate'
- −Free tier feels like adware: 3 AI captures, 150 images, features that used to be free are paywalled
- −Subscription state bugs (paid for Business, shown as Pro) leave users locked out of features they bought
- • 7-day Business trial auto-converts to a $400/yr charge per multiple App Store reviews
- • Basic tier still caps photogrammetry at 300 images — larger jobs force a Business upgrade
- • Canada pricing reportedly runs ~$30/mo, diverging from USD list pricing
In users’ own words
“I'm new to 3D scanning and using polycam. I'm most interested in scanning bird and mammal bones, skulls and skeletons. I've seen some impressive scans on the [poly.cam](http://poly.cam) website and wanted to contact the user, however I can't find any way to do that. Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but any help is appreciated. Thanks”
Real posts from independent users, linked to the source — not testimonials we collected.
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Polycam? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →Key Features
- LiDAR and non-LiDAR space capture of rooms, buildings and interiors
- 360 photosphere capture with an in-app 360 image viewer
- Object capture turning phone photos into shareable 3D models
- AI Capture generating 3D models from low photo counts
- Instant 3D and editable 2D floor plans with auto fixture and furniture detection
- Advanced measure tools: interior measure, pen measure and auto measure
- Automated measurements, floor area, blueprints, room labels and compass
- Editable wall thickness and custom color themes on floor plans
- Drone and aerial photogrammetry processed into site-scale 3D models
- Photogrammetry up to 2000 images and 30-minute videos per capture on Business and Enterprise
- Gaussian splatting with unlimited splats on Basic and up
- AI generated reports on all tiers
- Virtual walkthroughs and shared team library on Business and up
- Mesh exports: GLTF, OBJ, FBX, DAE, STL, USDZ, ESX
- Point cloud exports: PLY, LAS, Geo-LAS, PTS, XYZ, DXF
About Polycam
Polycam is a reality capture app that turns iPhone and Android LiDAR scans, ordinary photos, 360 photospheres and drone footage into 3D models, editable 2D and 3D floor plans, Gaussian splats and point clouds. It runs on iOS, Android and the web, so an AEC crew, facilities manager, claims investigator or product designer can document a site in one visit rather than booking a return trip with dedicated scanner hardware. Capture splits four ways. Space handles interiors with or without LiDAR plus 360 photospheres. Object makes shareable models of physical items. Floorplan generates 2D and 3D plans with auto fixture and furniture detection, blueprints, editable room labels and compass data before you leave the site. Aerial processes drone footage into site-scale models, and AI Capture builds a model from a low photo count. Export coverage runs wide: mesh output in GLTF, OBJ, FBX, DAE, STL, USDZ and ESX, and point clouds in PLY, LAS, Geo-LAS, PTS, XYZ and DXF. Captures are viewable on Apple Vision Pro, and Business and up add virtual walkthroughs plus a shared team library. Capture ceilings scale with tier — Free gets 3 AI captures and 150 images per photogrammetry capture; Basic lifts the object, space, splat and AI caps but holds 300 images and 5-minute videos; Business and Enterprise reach 2000 images and 30-minute videos. Pricing runs from a free personal tier to Basic at $150/year for freelancers and Business at $400/year per user, where floor plans, advanced measurements, point cloud exports and the team library switch on. Polycam undercuts Matterport on price and beats it on mobile-first flexibility; when millimetric tolerance is the requirement, FARO and Leica-class hardware still win.
Behind the Verdict
The reason to pick Polycam over a handheld scanner is speed of documentation, not precision. Walk a house with a LiDAR phone and you have a floor plan in an afternoon; the company's own real estate guide contrasts roughly an hour of scanning against sixteen hours of hand measuring. That trade is worth it for listing plans, facilities area records, renovation planning and product prototypes. Where it bites is the tier wall. Free and Basic will frustrate anyone doing site documentation by week two, because editable 2D and 3D floor plans, advanced measure tools, point cloud exports and the shared team library are Business features. Budget the $400/year per user before you start, not after. The closest alternative for published virtual tours is Matterport. Matterport's managed hosting and tour polish are still ahead; Polycam is capture-first and mobile-first, cheaper, and happy to hand you raw meshes and point clouds you can take into Blender, Unreal, Maya or SketchUp. We'd reach for this on forensics and claims work too — fast scene documentation plus AI generated reports, with Xactimate in the workflow. Just don't treat a scan as a survey. Polycam's own guidance says stair dimensions should be tape-measured if they need to be code-compliant, and that is the honest boundary of the tool. Non-LiDAR phones and low-light interiors are the other practical caveat; the company publishes a low-light comparison piece precisely because results vary by device. For a small firm, the Enterprise step is steep — $1200/year per user with a three-seat minimum before SSO, SOC-2 compliance and regional cloud storage enter the picture. Teams that size usually know they need those controls; everyone else should stay on Business.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Polycam actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Walk a tenant improvement with an iPhone in Space mode, trigger instant 3D floor plan generation on site, then open the editable 2D plan to correct wall thickness, add room labels, and check floor area before leaving.
Outcome: A dimensioned plan and shared library entry the same afternoon instead of a scheduled return visit with a dedicated scanner.
Capture the loss site in LiDAR Space mode, pull virtual walkthroughs and an AI generated report, then export a point cloud in LAS or DXF for the adjuster and hand the walkthrough to a remote reviewer.
Outcome: Scene documentation and a shareable walkthrough produced in one visit, with the report attached to the claim file.
Photograph a physical prototype in Object or AI Capture mode, generate a textured mesh, and export OBJ, FBX, or STL into Blender, Rhino, or Maya for review.
Outcome: A textured model ready for CAD or remote design feedback without shipping the prototype.
Use Cases
- Capture a room and generate a dimensioned 2D floor plan with furniture detection before leaving the site.
- Scan a construction site in Space or Drone mode for progress monitoring and digital twin records.
- Photograph a product and export a textured 3D model for e-commerce or downstream CAD work.
- Document a scene with LiDAR and produce virtual walkthroughs for insurance and forensic claims.
- Process drone footage in the cloud into an aerial 3D model of a roof or full site.
- Use AI Capture to prototype 3D models from a minimal set of phone photos.
- Tag room assets and export point clouds to a facilities or BIM workflow for handoff.
- Scan sets, props, and locations for media and VFX without dedicated scanning gear.
Limitations
- The free tier is explicitly capped at "limited space, object, and AI captures" with GLTF-only exports and public link sharing.
- Floor plans (2D & 3D), advanced measure tools, shared team library, point cloud exports, virtual walkthroughs, and AI generated reports all begin at Business ($400/year per user, or $33/month per user billed yearly).
- Basic is $150/year ($12.50/month billed yearly), and Enterprise is $1200/year per user with a 3-user minimum, where SSO, regional cloud storage, custom billing, and dedicated success/support are listed as paid add-ons via contact sales.
- Beyond the Free and Basic tiers, Business and Enterprise plans require a paid subscription, and the site markets "free 7-day Business Trial" as the entry to professional floor plans and measurements.
as of 2026-09-30
Verification history
We have re-verified Polycam 105 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 105 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Polycam tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free
$0
Ideal for
Beginners discovering 3D scanning and anyone testing Polycam on personal projects before any paid commitment.
What this tier adds
Starting tier: limited Space, Object, and AI captures, 150 images per photogrammetry capture, 3-minute videos, GLTF exports, public link sharing, and watermarked embeds.
Basic
$150/year ($12.50/mo billed yearly; $30/mo billed monthly)
Ideal for
Freelancers, creators, or individuals producing small-scale capture work who don't need floor plans or point clouds.
What this tier adds
Adds unlimited object captures and Gaussian splats, unlimited Space captures with and without LiDAR, unlimited AI generated captures, private link sharing, and six mesh export formats at 300 images and 5-minute videos per capture.
Business
$400/year per user ($33/mo per user billed yearly)
Ideal for
Teams and professionals doing site documentation — AEC crews, claims investigators, interior designers, and facilities teams.
What this tier adds
Adds 2D and 3D floor plans with auto fixture and furniture detection, advanced measure tools, point cloud exports in PLY, LAS, Geo-LAS, PTS, XYZ, and DXF, virtual walkthroughs, a shared team library, AI generated reports, and 2000 images and 30-minute videos per capture.
Enterprise
$1200/year per user (3 users minimum, billed yearly)
Ideal for
Organizations operating at scale that need admin control, data privacy, branding, and role-based content management across multiple users.
What this tier adds
Adds the Content management API, admin-controlled feature and capture-mode restrictions, enhanced data privacy, custom branding, and folders with role-based management; SSO, regional cloud storage, custom billing, and dedicated success are paid add-ons.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Polycam's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Basic at $150/year ($12.50/month billed yearly) fits a solo freelancer or creator doing object scans and splats; Business at $400/year per user ($33/month per user billed yearly) is the entry point for any team that needs floor plans, measurements, point clouds, or a shared library. Against Matterport, Polycam is the cheaper mobile-first option; against specialist floor-plan tools like magicplan or RoomSketcher, the comparison depends on whether you also want the 3D capture and point cloud
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Polycam — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Free and Basic: an iPhone or Android install and a first object scan in under 15 minutes; exports land in GLTF immediately. Business: budget 30-60 minutes for the first floor plan and measurement pass, plus extra time to set up the shared team library and capture-mode conventions for a crew. Enterprise adds admin configuration of capture-mode restrictions, role-based folders, and any add-on
Switching to or from Polycam
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Matterport: export your existing 3D tours for reference, then re-capture core spaces with Polycam Space mode to get editable 2D floor plans and point cloud exports in the same app.
- →From magicplan or RoomSketcher: re-scan rooms on Business with auto fixture and furniture detection, then reconcile wall thickness and room labels against your existing drawings.
- →From phone photos and manual measurement: replace the tape-and-notebook pass with a LiDAR Space capture, then use pen measure and auto measure to check the dimensions you already recorded.
- →From DroneDeploy or PIX4Dcapture Pro: upload your existing drone imagery to Polycam's aerial photogrammetry on a Business or Enterprise seat to produce the site model.
- ↗To FARO or Leica-class scanners: re-survey the areas where code-compliant or millimetric dimensions are required, keeping Polycam outputs as reference geometry.
- ↗To Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, Rhino, or SketchUp: export OBJ, FBX, DAE, or GLTF and continue modeling in your desktop pipeline.
- ↗To Unity, Unreal Engine, or Three.js: export GLTF or FBX for real-time and web viewers.
- ↗To Xactimate: export the scene data and floor plan outputs into the claims estimating workflow.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Polycam”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Polycam” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Polycam.
Official links
Tools that pair well with Polycam
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Polycam, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Lovspark
Lovspark turns room photos, white models and floor plans into photoreal interior and architecture renders with pick-a-skill tools, not
Looq AI
Looq AI turns handheld images into survey-grade point clouds, CAD linework, and engineering-ready 3D pole models.
Floor Plan & AI Home
CamPlan turns an iPhone LiDAR scan or video walkthrough into an editable 2D/3D floor plan, branded PDF report, and estimate.
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Airtable vs Polycam
Don't cross-shop these. Polycam is a capture tool that turns the physical world — rooms, prototypes, job sites — into 3D models, floor plans, and point clouds you export to SketchUp, Blender, or Unity. Airtable is a software platform for organizing business data and building internal apps, and its 2026 trajectory (Omni GA, HyperDB at 100M+ records, a pending Bending Spoons acquisition) is entirely about enterprise workflows. If your problem involves measuring a site, pick Polycam; if it involves managing records, pick Airtable. Buying either to solve the other's problem wastes money.
Notion vs Polycam
These are not competitors and you should never be choosing between them — Polycam is a capture tool that turns a phone, drone, or LiDAR scan into a 3D model, floor plan, or point cloud, and Notion is a workspace that stores and automates written knowledge. Polycam replaces a site visit with a scan; Notion replaces scattered docs and Slack threads with one system of record plus agents. The only sensible overlap is stack composition: if you run an AEC, forensics, or design operation, Polycam produces the site data and Notion can host the project documentation around it. Budget one seat of Notion per person and one Polycam tier sized to your capture and export volume.
Miro vs Polycam
These two don't compete — a buyer almost never chooses between them. Polycam is a capture tool: you point a phone, drone or LiDAR at a physical space and get floor plans, meshes and point clouds you can hand to SketchUp, Unreal or Xactimate. Miro is a thinking-and-alignment tool: a canvas where product, design and engineering teams plan sprints, run design reviews, and now push Claude Code screens onto boards via MCP. If your problem is documenting a building, a prototype part or a crash scene, buy Polycam. If your problem is getting a distributed team from idea to shipped design, buy Miro. The only overlap is 'AI features' as a category, and that's not a purchasing decision.
Linear vs Polycam
These two products never meet in a buying decision, and treating them as rivals would mislead you. If your problem is documenting a physical site — rooms, buildings, props, a claims scene — Polycam is the tool, and its limits are real: survey-grade accuracy belongs to FARO/Leica-class hardware and stairs still need a tape. If your problem is running software development with AI agents in triage, coding and review, Linear is the tool, and its free tier caps at 250 issues and 2 teams. Buy for the problem, not the comparison.
Lm Studio vs Polycam
These tools don't compete — they solve unrelated problems, and no buyer shortlists both. If your problem is running open models locally (GLM, Kimi, DeepSeek, Qwen3.8) for private agentic work, LM Studio is the pick: it's free on your hardware, with pay-as-you-go cloud inference when local isn't enough. If your problem is turning a room, building, prototype, or set into a 3D model or floor plan from a phone or drone, Polycam is the pick. Choose based on your job, not on a head-to-head — there isn't one.
Sketch vs Polycam
You are not choosing between these. Polycam and Sketch solve different problems for different people, and no buyer with one budget and one job shortlists both. Pick Polycam if you need to digitise a physical space or object — floor plans, point clouds, mesh exports into SketchUp, Revit-adjacent AEC pipelines — and accept that survey-grade millimetric accuracy still belongs to FARO and Leica. Pick Sketch if you are a Mac-only product designer who wants offline file control, a one-time license instead of a subscription, and free developer handoff seats. If your actual question is 'which 3D capture app', compare Polycam to Matterport; if it is 'which Mac design tool', compare Sketch to Figma.
Figma vs Polycam
These are not competitors and you should not treat them as an either/or purchase. Polycam is a reality-capture tool: you point a phone, drone, or LiDAR device at a physical site and get 3D models, point clouds, and auto-detected floor plans — Unity, Unreal, Blender, and Xactimate are its neighbours. Figma is a digital product design workspace where teams design, prototype, and hand off software interfaces, with Make, Weave, Motion, and Dev Mode on the canvas. If you have a scanning problem, buy Polycam; if you have an interface-design problem, buy Figma. The only link between them is that a design team might use Polycam output as reference material inside a Figma workflow — that's a coexistence, not a choice.
Penpot vs Polycam
These are not competitors, and no buyer should be choosing between them — Polycam digitizes physical spaces and objects into meshes, point clouds, and floor plans, while Penpot builds the interfaces that run on a screen. If you are documenting a building, a scene, or a prototype for CAD and VFX, Polycam is the tool; if you are designing a responsive product UI with tokens and CSS handoff, Penpot is. The only reason to read further is if your organization happens to buy both categories, in which case evaluate them separately against their real rivals (Matterport for capture, Figma for design).
Kiri Engine vs Polycam
If you need advanced scanning of challenging surfaces (shiny/transparent) or 3DGS for real-time assets, KIRI Engine is the winner. For professional AEC workflows, automatic floor plans, or drone scanning, Polycam’s broader export list and professional support make it the better choice.
Screenmind vs Polycam
These are not competitors. Polycam is the tool you pick when you need to turn a physical space, object, or drone pass into a 3D model, floor plan, or point cloud — it competes with Matterport, magicplan, and DroneDeploy, not with anything on a Mac desktop. ScreenMind is a free macOS utility for people who want Recall-style screen memory and local meeting transcription without cloud calls or telemetry; it competes with Recall and paid meeting-notes subscriptions. If your problem is 'document this building,' buy Polycam (expect to move up to Business for exports). If your problem is 'remember what I saw on screen today,' download ScreenMind.
3d Scanner App vs Polycam
For professionals needing floor plans, drone support, and AI-powered features, Polycam is the clear choice with more export formats and cross-platform capture. Casual iOS users or those wanting a simple, on-device LiDAR scanner with quick AR sharing should pick 3D Scanner App for its ease of use and lower friction.
Agentcad vs Polycam
Polycam is the best choice for professionals needing photorealistic 3D scans and floor plans from real-world spaces. Agentcad is ideal for AI agents and developers who want to programmatically generate and iterate on 3D parts. Choose Polycam for reality capture; choose agentcad for agent-driven CAD design.
Alternatives to Polycam
View allLovspark
Lovspark turns room photos, white models and floor plans into photoreal interior and architecture renders with pick-a-skill tools, not
Looq AI
Looq AI turns handheld images into survey-grade point clouds, CAD linework, and engineering-ready 3D pole models.
Floor Plan & AI Home
CamPlan turns an iPhone LiDAR scan or video walkthrough into an editable 2D/3D floor plan, branded PDF report, and estimate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Best-of guides
Topics
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