Airhub Drone App Review: Compliance, Plans & Pricing

We bought a small drone a few summers ago for video shots around our village on the Baltic coast — the kind of casual purchase you make thinking you’ll use it constantly and end up using maybe four times a year. The honest truth is that flying a drone is harder than it looks. Taking off is easy enough, but landing without clipping a branch takes practice, and we nearly killed ours more than once trying to thread it through trees near the shoreline.

The footage we did capture was beautiful — the kind of overhead shots of grey Baltic water and pine forest that you can’t get any other way. But every time we lifted off, the question lingered in the back of my mind: am I actually allowed to fly this here?

That question matters a lot more in 2026 than it did when we bought the drone. Drones have become deeply associated with warfare — Ukraine reportedly uses around 9,000 drones per day in the ongoing conflict with Russia, and concerns about consumer drones being used for surveillance, smuggling, or attacks have rippled out from active conflict zones into general policy debates everywhere.

Countries across the EU, the Middle East including the UAE, and parts of Asia have tightened restrictions on personal drone use, expanded no-fly zones around airports, government buildings, ports, military sites, and borders, and made compliance the responsibility of the individual pilot regardless of whether you’re a hobbyist or a commercial operator.

The EU launched its 2026 European Drone Defence Initiative in response to growing threats, and the European Commission’s 2026 Action Plan on Drone and Counter-Drone Security has pushed member states to invest billions in detection and counter-drone capabilities. For ordinary people flying small drones for personal video, this means it’s never been more important to actually know where you can legally fly — and an app that handles airspace compliance is no longer a nice-to-have.

This Locals Insider review covers Airhub, one of the most established airspace compliance and drone operations platforms in Europe, including its features, pricing, alternatives, and our honest take on whether casual drone owners really need it.

What is Airhub

AirHub is a Dutch drone operations software company co-founded in 2017 by Thomas Brinkman and Stephan van Vuren, both of whom continue to serve as Co-CEOs. The company is headquartered in Groningen, Netherlands. The platform provides a complete drone operations toolkit.

The company closed a €4.4 million Series A funding round in April 2026, led by Keen Venture Partners and Runway FBU (backed by Norway’s Aker Group), with continued participation from existing investors Lumaux and LUMO Labs.

The funding is being used to expand AirHub’s portfolio into two new specialized products: MilHub, targeting defense-related operational environments, and SecHub, which is designed for broader security operations and includes counter-drone capabilities for detecting, managing, and responding to drone-related threats. This direction reflects how dramatically the drone industry has shifted since AirHub’s early days as a simpler compliance tool.

For everyday users, the platform still works as it always has: a flight planning and compliance app you can use to make sure your drone mission is legal, safe, and properly documented. It’s available as a web platform, desktop app, and mobile apps for iOS, Android, and DJI Smart Controllers, with native DJI drone integration on paid tiers.

Note on naming: There’s a separate product called “AirHub® Portal” run by Airspace Link, a US-based FAA-approved UAS Service Supplier that integrates LAANC and B4UFLY services for American drone pilots. The two products share a similar name but are different companies serving different markets. This review covers the Dutch Airhub platform (airhub.app), which is primarily focused on European airspace and EASA compliance.

How Does Airhub Work?

Airhub is an all-in-one drone mission management platform. You can download it for free on the App Store and Google Play Store, or sign up directly on the airhub.app website. Once registered, you can use it to check local airspace rules, prepare a flight plan, fly your drone, and create a logbook of completed missions.

There’s a free tier and three paid tiers, with features scaling up as you go. All users can access airspace regulations, receive NOTAMs (Notices to Airmen — official aviation alerts about temporary flight restrictions, hazards, or airspace changes), check weather advisories, and plan routes based on flight geography. The free tier stores your logbook for 90 days; paid tiers have unlimited storage.

Specifically, Airhub helps with four main parts of the drone mission lifecycle:

Plan your flight. Use flight geography to map out where your drone will fly, activate automated waypoint missions, create 3D route visualizations, add annotations to specific map locations, set waypoint actions (hold, take pictures, record video, focus on a target), and save common routes as templates for future use. The pre-flight risk analysis weighs the variables of each planned mission against airspace rules, weather, and ground risk factors.

Receive notifications and approvals. Get real-time alerts about NOTAMs, no-fly zones, and changing airspace conditions. For commercial or team operations, request mission approval from supervisors, clients, or other stakeholders before takeoff.

In-flight features. On higher tiers, watch live video streams from one or more drones, access real-time telemetry, see live airspace information, and take over an automated mission manually if conditions change. Live operation features let you remotely monitor or control flights through the app.

Log your flight. Track every mission in the logbook, replay completed missions with full data, generate flight reports, and maintain documentation for regulatory compliance or insurance purposes.

How to Use Airhub App

Here’s how a typical flight works in practice — let’s say you’re planning to film coastal footage near your home.

1. Open the Airhub app or web portal and search for your intended flight location. The map immediately overlays airspace zones, restricted areas, controlled airspace boundaries, and any active NOTAMs in the area. If the location is in a no-fly zone (near an airport, military area, or restricted government site), you’ll see a clear warning.
2. Check the weather advisory and pre-flight risk analysis. Airhub evaluates wind, visibility, temperature, and other factors against your drone’s specifications and flags anything that could make the mission unsafe.
3. Plan your flight path. Draw the route on the map, add waypoints with specific actions (hover for 5 seconds, take a photo, rotate the camera), and set the altitude limits. For most EU hobby pilots, this needs to stay under 120 meters and within visual line of sight.
4. Once airborne, monitor the flight through the app’s telemetry view. The dashboard shows altitude, battery, GPS signal, distance from the takeoff point, and any new NOTAMs that have appeared since you started. On Professional and higher tiers with DJI drones, you can fly directly through the Airhub Ground Control app or via DJI Pilot 2.
5. After landing, the mission auto-saves to your logbook with the route, duration, equipment used, weather conditions, and any photos or videos captured. You can replay the mission, export a flight report, or share it with stakeholders if needed.

The workflow is genuinely useful if you’re flying regularly. For someone like me who flies four times a year, the basic compliance check before takeoff is the most valuable feature — knowing within 30 seconds whether the area is legal for drone flight is worth the effort of opening the app.

Airhub Pricing & Plans: How Much Does Airhub Cost?

The basic Airhub tier is free for individual users. Paid plans add more advanced pre-flight planning, in-flight features, and post-flight reporting tools, with pricing starting at €15 per month for Professional. The current tier structure looks like this:

Basic — Free. Access to airspace regulations, NOTAMs, weather advisories, flight geography for route planning, real-time telemetry, fleet management tools, and the logbook (stored for 90 days). Suitable for hobby pilots who just need to check airspace compliance before flights.

Professional — €15 (around $17.45) per month. Everything in Basic, plus checklists, risk analysis, waypoint missions, custom flight templates, native DJI drone integration via the Ground Control app, and unlimited logbook storage. Suitable for serious hobbyists, freelance drone pilots, and small commercial operators.

Business — €30 (around $34.90) per month. Everything in Professional, plus expanded team features and customization. Suitable for small to medium teams running multiple drone operators or fleet management.

Enterprise — Custom pricing on request. Everything in Business, plus live video streaming, live chat support, snapshots, shareable mission links, custom map layers, personal account manager, team training, single sign-on (SSO), and secure data mode with full data sovereignty. This tier is what organizations like Dubai Police and Dutch Customs use.

The free tier is genuinely useful and not just a token offering — it includes core airspace compliance tools that many casual drone owners actually need. Pricing on paid tiers is competitive for the segment, particularly for the Enterprise tier which competes with more expensive enterprise drone software platforms.

Airhub Reviews: What People Say?

Airhub doesn’t have significant ratings on the Google Play Store or App Store, partly because the platform’s larger user base accesses it through the web portal rather than mobile apps. On Trustpilot, the platform holds a rating of 4.1/5.0 from a small but consistent set of verified reviews, with most positive feedback focused on the platform’s depth of features, the team’s responsiveness to feedback, and the regular addition of new functionality.

A representative Trustpilot review reads: “Good software for my drone needs. It has a wide range of functionality. It could be a little better in a few places, but they listen to feedback, so there are often fixes and new functions. That is why I give 5 stars” — Jappiesikkeman.

The clearest validation, though, comes from the customer roster. When Dubai Police, Belgian Federal Police, Dutch Customs, and security companies like Securitas choose your platform for daily operations, that’s a stronger trust signal than a thousand app store ratings. For individual users, the platform inherits the credibility of being used by professional operators in high-stakes contexts.

The editorial take from the Locals Insider team:

if you fly a drone occasionally for casual video — like we do — the free Basic tier of Airhub is plenty. The most valuable thing the app gives you is the airspace check before takeoff, which can save you from accidentally flying somewhere illegal (and the fines that follow).

The 2026 regulatory landscape across Europe, the Middle East, and most of Asia has gotten strict enough that “I didn’t know” isn’t really a defense anymore. For €0, having an app that tells you immediately whether you can fly in a given spot is the bare minimum any drone owner should set up. The paid features genuinely matter for commercial pilots, organizations running fleets, or anyone doing waypoint missions and BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) operations — but for the rest of us, the free tier earns its keep without requiring a subscription.

Locals Insider tip: Before flying anywhere new in Europe, check whether you need an EU drone license (A1/A3 certificate at minimum for most hobby drones over 250 grams), whether your drone needs to be registered with your national civil aviation authority, and whether it has Remote ID enabled.

The EASA framework applies across all EU member states with mutual recognition, but individual countries can add their own no-fly zones and restrictions on top — and these have been expanding throughout 2025 and 2026 due to security concerns. Apps like Airhub show you the most up-to-date map of where flying is actually allowed.

Airhub’s Pros and Cons

The strengths:

• comprehensive feature set covering planning, flight, and logging in one platform;
• free tier with genuinely useful airspace compliance tools;
• native DJI drone integration on paid tiers;
• trusted by major professional users including Dubai Police and Dutch Customs;
• regular updates and responsiveness to user feedback; multi-platform availability (web, desktop, iOS, Android, DJI controllers);
• strong European airspace coverage with EASA-aligned compliance;
• secure data mode for organizations with sovereignty requirements;
• competitive pricing on Professional and Business tiers;
• backing from a serious European defense and security venture fund.

The trade-offs:

• primarily Europe-focused, with weaker coverage of US-specific systems like LAANC (where the separately-branded AirHub® Portal by Airspace Link is the better US option);
• limited mobile app ratings make it harder to gauge user sentiment at scale;
• some advanced features (live streaming, custom map layers, SSO) are gated behind the Enterprise tier with custom pricing rather than published rates;
• the platform is built for power users and serious operators, which can feel like overkill for very casual hobby pilots who only fly a few times a year;
• the rapid expansion into defense (MilHub) and counter-drone (SecHub) products may shift the company’s product focus over time,
• though there’s no current indication this affects the consumer-facing platform.

Alternatives to Airhub for Airspace Compliance? Consider Drone Buddy

Drone Buddy is one of the most widely used Airhub alternatives, especially popular among hobbyists and individual pro pilots who want airspace compliance tools without the complexity of an enterprise platform.

Airhub is the better choice for businesses, teams, and serious operators who need the depth and customization of the Business or Enterprise tier — including custom map layers, dedicated account management, team training, SSO, and the full fleet management capabilities. It also has the advantage of being trusted by major professional users, which signals enterprise-grade reliability.

Drone Buddy, on the other hand, takes a more streamlined approach focused on the casual-to-pro hobbyist segment. Paid plans start from around $34.99 per year — roughly the cost of two months of Airhub’s Professional plan — which makes it a more accessible option for individual drone owners who want compliance tools without a monthly subscription. The feature set is more limited but covers the essentials: airspace maps, no-fly zones, NOTAMs, basic flight planning, and a logbook.

For US-based pilots specifically, the AirHub® Portal by Airspace Link (the different product mentioned earlier) is worth considering because it integrates directly with LAANC and B4UFLY — the FAA’s official systems for airspace authorization in the United States. It’s free for individual pilots and well-suited for American drone owners flying under FAA rules.

The right choice depends on how you fly. For occasional hobby video like our Baltic Sea coastal shots, Airhub’s free tier or Drone Buddy’s affordable annual plan are both reasonable starting points. For serious professional work, Airhub’s higher tiers offer better depth. For US-focused pilots, Airspace Link’s portal is the more natural fit.

If you are in the UK, use Drone Assist that we reviewed here.

For more on travel tools and gear, you might find our 12 best travel gadgets guide, our best travel apps roundup, and our guide to boutique hotels on Bornholm (great Baltic Sea hiking destinations where drone footage genuinely captures the landscape) useful starting points.