so ive been using Litchi for probably 3 years now mostly for waypoint stuff with my Mini 3 Pro and it works fine but ive been hearing a lot about Dronelink lately and genuinely cant figure out if its worth the subscription or not. Litchi is a one time purchase which obviously feels better but some guys at my local club swear by Dronelink for the more complex stuff.

main thing i do is survey work on farms, nothing crazy, just orthomosaic stuff mostly. does Dronelink handle terrain following better than Litchi? i feel like Litchi's terrain mode is okay but sometimes on rolling fields it feels like it just kinda guesses. also not sure if the DJI SDK limitations changed anything recently with the newer firmware on the Mini 3

any experience comparing the two would be genuinely useful, especially if youve used both for actual work not just messing around

switched from Litchi to Dronelink about 8 months ago and honestly havent looked back for the survey work. the terrain following in Dronelink pulls from actual elevation data which makes a noticeable difference on uneven ground, Litchi always felt a bit rough to me on anything with more than maybe 30-40ft of relief across the field. the subscription stings a little but if youre billing clients for the orthomosaics its basically nothing.

that said the interface takes a bit to get used to, its not as immediately intuitive as Litchi. and yeah the SDK stuff has been a whole thing ? after the last couple Mini 3 firmware updates some features were briefly broken but they patched it pretty fast. id say try the free tier first and just run a simple mission to see how it feels before committing

i still use litchi tbh, mostly because i already paid for it and it does what i need. for farm surveys i havent had major issues but i mostly fly flat land in the midwest so terrain following isnt really a concern for me. cant really compare dronelink since ive never used it