In Singapore, do-it-yourself 3D laser scanning costs S$1,200 to S$3,500 per week in equipment rental, excluding GST, plus a one-time onboarding fee of S$250 (pickup) or S$400 (delivered). A typical project — one week with the XGRIDS Lixel K2 handheld LiDAR scanner, onboarding delivered to site — comes to S$2,700 before GST, and every file captured is yours to keep. Hiring a full-service scanning firm instead is priced per project and commonly lands at a multiple of that for the same scope, because you are also paying for crew time and processing labour.
Most cost guides you will find for this question are written for the US market, quote in US dollars, and assume you are buying a scanning service. Singapore has a third option that changes the maths: renting professional capture hardware by the week and scanning the site yourself. This guide lays out what that actually costs in 2026, using the published rates of our own rental fleet, and is honest about where a full-service firm is still the better call.
Weekly rental rates in Singapore (2026)
These are Volumet’s current weekly rates for professional 3D capture equipment, rented in Singapore. All prices exclude GST; the minimum rental period is 2 days.
| Device | Type | Weekly rate (excl. GST) |
|---|---|---|
| XGRIDS PortalCam | 3DGS capture camera | S$1,200 |
| Matterport Pro3 | Tripod LiDAR camera | S$2,000 |
| XGRIDS Lixel K1 | Handheld SLAM LiDAR | S$2,200 |
| XGRIDS Lixel K2 | Handheld SLAM LiDAR with RTK | S$2,300 |
| Leica BLK360 G2 | Terrestrial laser scanner | S$2,800 |
| XGRIDS Lixel L2 Pro | Long-range handheld SLAM LiDAR | S$3,500 |
On top of the weekly rate there is a one-time onboarding session — S$250 if you collect the kit, S$400 if we deliver and run the session at your site — plus a refundable security deposit and 9% GST on the invoice. There are no per-scan, per-export or per-square-metre charges: the renter keeps all data.
What a week’s rental actually delivers
A week is not a small window. With a handheld SLAM scanner like the Lixel K2 — roughly 1.2 kg, capturing 200,000 points per second at around 1 cm relative accuracy — a walking capture of an occupied office floor takes an afternoon, not a week. In five working days a single operator can realistically cover several buildings, or scan one site multiple times, or capture, process and re-capture the areas that need another pass. The deliverables are standard files your downstream tools already read: point clouds in .las/.laz or .e57, and, for the 3DGS devices, photoreal splat scenes. Because you keep the raw data, one week of capture can feed as-built drawings, BIM reference, renovation measurement and a marketing walkthrough at no extra capture cost.
What drives the cost up or down
- Site size and count. Rental pricing is per week, not per square metre — so a larger site mostly costs more time, not more money. The cost driver is whether the work fits one rental week or needs two.
- Accuracy tolerance. If ~1 cm relative accuracy is enough (most as-built and renovation work), a handheld SLAM scanner is the economical choice. Survey-tolerance deliverables push you toward a terrestrial scanner like the BLK360 G2 at S$2,800 per week, plus control points and more careful — slower — capture.
- Georeferencing. If the point cloud must sit in Singapore’s SVY21 coordinate frame, choose a device with built-in RTK such as the Lixel K2; the alternative is paying a surveyor to establish control, which can cost more than the rental itself.
- Deliverable format. Raw point clouds are included. If the end product is a BIM model or 2D drawings, budget separately for modelling time — yours or a drafting firm’s — because scan-to-BIM labour, not capture, is usually the largest line in those projects.
A worked example
Say you need an as-built point cloud of a 3-storey commercial interior for a renovation. One week with the Lixel K2 is S$2,300. Onboarding delivered to your site is S$400. Total: S$2,700 before GST (S$2,943 with 9% GST), plus a refundable deposit. Capture itself takes a day or two of walking; the rest of the week is slack for processing in LixelStudio and re-scanning anything you missed. If you collect the kit yourself instead, onboarding drops to S$250 and the total is S$2,550 before GST. A second project in the same week costs nothing extra — the rate is for the device, not the site.
Budgeting for longer or repeat projects
The weekly rate is the unit almost everyone books in, but two other shapes come up often. Short jobs can use the 2-day minimum: a single small site that one operator can walk in a morning does not need a full week on the invoice. Longer programmes run the other way — construction teams scanning progress monthly, or a renovation that needs a capture before, during and after works — and for those the onboarding fee is the part that amortises fastest, because it is charged once, not per rental. A team that rents the K2 three separate weeks across a year pays S$6,900 in rental plus one S$250–S$400 onboarding, still well under what three separately commissioned capture projects would typically cost, and with the same trained operators getting faster each round. If the cadence ever becomes near-continuous, the maths changes again — that is the point where the rent-or-buy question is worth running properly.
When a full-service scanning firm makes more sense
Sometimes buying the service, not the tool, is right. Full-service firms in the market typically quote per project — commonly a four-figure sum for a single small site and five figures for large or complex scopes, depending on area, accuracy specification and deliverables. Those are market-typical shapes rather than fixed prices; every firm quotes its own way. The premium buys real things: an experienced operator, registration and QA done for you, professional indemnity behind the deliverable, and — where you engage a registered surveyor — certified survey output that a rental can never give you. If the deliverable must be certified, if nobody on your team can be freed up to scan, or if it is a genuine one-off with no follow-up capture, hire the firm.
Rent or hire: the short decision
- Rent when your team can walk the site, ~1–3 cm accuracy serves the purpose, you want to keep and re-use the raw data, or you expect to scan more than once — repeat capture is where rental economics run away from per-project quotes.
- Hire when you need certified survey deliverables, a contractual accuracy guarantee, or simply have no hands available — the premium is buying labour and liability, and sometimes that is exactly what the project needs.
GST, deposit and insurance notes
Three practical points for budgeting. First, all rates here exclude GST; add 9% to the invoice total. Second, a refundable security deposit is required on every rental and is returned when the kit comes back complete and undamaged. Third, check whether your company’s equipment or project insurance extends to rented hardware on site — many contractors’ all-risk policies do, and confirming it before the rental is far cheaper than finding out after. Terms, deposit amounts and availability are confirmed when you request a quote.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to rent a 3D laser scanner in Singapore?
From S$1,200 per week for the XGRIDS PortalCam to S$3,500 per week for the Lixel L2 Pro, excluding GST. The most-rented device, the Lixel K2, is S$2,300 per week, plus a one-time onboarding fee of S$250 (pickup) or S$400 (delivered).
Is it cheaper to rent a scanner or hire a scanning company?
For most single-site jobs your own team can walk, renting is cheaper — S$2,450–S$2,700 before GST for a one-week handheld LiDAR rental with onboarding, and you keep all data. Full-service quotes commonly run to multiples of that for equivalent scope, which is justified when you need certification or have no capacity in-house.
What is the minimum rental period and what else do I pay?
Minimum 2 days; most projects book by the week. Beyond the rental rate you pay the one-time onboarding fee, a refundable deposit, and 9% GST. There are no per-scan or per-export fees.
What accuracy do I get for the price?
The Lixel K2 delivers around 1 cm relative accuracy and roughly 3 cm RMSE absolute with RTK — enough for as-built documentation, renovation measurement and BIM reference. Tolerance-critical survey work points to the Leica BLK360 G2 plus control.