okay so this might be a dumb question but i keep going back and forth on this. i fly recreationally, never sold a photo or video in my life and dont really plan to but i kind of want the option open i guess. my buddy said i should just get the certification anyway because it lets you fly in more places and deal with airspace authorizations easier. but then someone else told me if youre purely recreational you dont actually need it and LAANC works fine without it. i honestly dont even fully understand what the legal difference is between recreational and commercial under the current rules. like what counts as commercial anyway, if i post a video on youtube with monetization does that make me commercial? ive been going in circles on this and the FAA website is not exactly easy to read

the youtube monetization thing is actually a gray area that people have debated forever and i dont think theres a clean official answer on it yet. but yeah technically if theres any commercial benefit, even indirect, the FAA's position has generally been that it could be considered commercial. that said enforcement is basically zero for small stuff like that. as for whether its worth getting 107 just for fun flying, i'd say yeah probably. LAANC works for rec flyers but having 107 opens up waiver requests and you just generally have more flexibility. the test isnt that hard if you put in a few weeks of studying and it never expires as long as you do the recurrent online thing every two years

im kind of in the same boat as you honestly, started studying for it and then kept asking myself why. eventually just decided to do it because the knowledge is useful regardless and it felt weird flying a drone that costs over a grand without actually knowing airspace rules properly. the test was like $175 at the testing center near me which isnt nothing but its not terrible either. and yeah your buddy is right that it makes airspace stuff smoother, i fly near a class D sometimes and having 107 made that whole process less annoying