Mineral exploration software and services compared: choosing the right tools for your next program

Sources reviewed on 26 September 2026.

An exploration manager can receive three proposals for the same licence and still have three different purchases in front of them. One offers alteration maps. Another offers a prospectivity model. The third proposes a geophysical survey. All promise to help with targeting, but they leave very different amounts of work for the geological team.

That is where a useful comparison should start. What do you need to know before committing the next part of the budget? And who will do the work needed to answer it?

This guide looks at TerraEye, VRIFY, Marigold by EarthDaily, PhotoSat, Fleet Space and Expert Geophysics. We have included both software and services because exploration teams often buy them together. The boundaries overlap: software vendors employ geologists, mapping companies offer interpretation, and survey providers build analytical platforms.

We write this from TerraEye’s perspective. The descriptions below draw on the providers’ linked product pages, rather than a controlled comparison of their performance. The judgments about where each fits are ours.

What are you actually buying?

Sources: TerraEye, VRIFY, Marigold, PhotoSat, Fleet Space and Expert Geophysics.

The table is a starting point. Ask each shortlisted provider to work through the same area, data inventory and geological question. A demonstration built around your project will tell you more than a longer feature list.

TerraEye: work through the exploration question with your own team

TerraEye brings satellite, geophysical and geochemical evidence into a shared analytical workspace. Your geologists can work directly in it, involve our geologists where useful, or commission a defined targeting program.

Those arrangements can change during a project. You might want help assembling the evidence for a new licence, then take over the interpretation internally. New field observations may call for another round of specialist work. The platform gives that work a common place to continue.

The current toolkit includes mineral mapping, spectral-curve inspection and Analogy Lab. A spectral reference saved in one project can be used to look for similar signatures elsewhere. Users can examine those candidates alongside other evidence and work with Ignacy, the in-app assistant. Its specialist AI team is in beta. The platform page and release notes describe these workflows.

The analytical Labs extend this work into structure, geochemistry and magnetometry. Take a candidate area identified from alteration mapping: a geologist may want to examine the structural setting, check nearby samples and see whether the magnetic interpretation supports the same hypothesis. The Labs are being developed to give users more control over those steps within TerraEye, with preview targeted for late 2026.

We are also developing greater control over evidence fusion. The underlying question is straightforward: which observations should influence the interpretation, and how much? A geologist needs to be able to examine that reasoning before using a result to allocate field time.

For clients commissioning a program, our geologists combine the agreed datasets and document why each selected area deserves further investigation. A named geologist remains involved, with revisions after fieldwork defined in the scope. The report is a deliverable; the evidence can also become the starting point for the client’s own work in TerraEye.

Domeyko: before collecting more data, find out what already exists

Consider a licence where an old geological map refers to a survey, the survey report sits in a separate archive, and its results are buried in a scanned document in another language. Finding the report is only the beginning. Someone still has to read it, work out which ground it covers and decide whether its observations matter to the current exploration model.

Domeyko is the part of TerraEye we are developing for that problem, targeting a preview by PDAC 2027.

It brings together retrieval from open databases, OCR, automatic translation and historical-map digitisation. Through Ignacy, users will be able to ask for a summary of relevant reports or request the original document for download where access terms allow. The aim is to carry useful historical evidence into the same workflow as the satellite, geophysical and geochemical analysis.

The spatial view matters as much as the document search. Domeyko’s heatmaps are intended to show where reports and datasets are available and where the accessible records document intensive exploration work. A team can use that information to decide which archives deserve closer examination and where its understanding remains thin.

Those are two related, but different, measures. Ten reports do not necessarily represent ten separate campaigns. A poorly documented area may have seen substantial work whose records were never published or digitised. The heatmaps need to make that distinction visible. They describe the available record; the probability of finding a deposit is a separate question.

A useful request to Ignacy would be:

“What work is documented in this area, what did it report, and which original documents should I read?”

That is the kind of question Domeyko is being built to answer.

Working with difficult historical records? Tell us the region and the question you are trying to answer.

Register for the TerraEye early preview

Room for methods your team has already developed

Some teams have years of useful work in scripts and notebooks. Adopting another platform should give them a reason to keep using that knowledge.

We are exploring Jupyter notebooks connected to TerraEye data, along with agent-assisted adaptation of code written for QGIS and other analytical environments. A team could bring an existing method and work on adapting it to the platform, rather than rebuilding the analysis from the beginning. The feasibility will depend on the script’s inputs and dependencies; this is a development option we want to test with interested users.

Ignacy’s development also includes Anthropic’s Claude models alongside OpenAI’s GPT models. For the user, the relevant test will be whether the assistant can help complete the task and produce an output the team can check. The model name alone says little about that.

If notebooks or code adaptation would affect your decision to use TerraEye, include an example task when registering for the preview. Concrete workflows will help us prioritise this work.

VRIFY: a prospectivity model you can revisit as evidence changes

VRIFY describes DORA as AI prospectivity software within its VRIFY Predict suite. Its workflow covers assembling and augmenting data, testing hypotheses and updating predictions. Geological and machine-learning support are part of the offering.

The point to examine is how that process works with your particular evidence. Which inputs influence the predictions? How is validation handled? What happens when new observations disagree with the model?

For a TerraEye-versus-VRIFY evaluation, bring the same project to both. Look at the analytical work your geologists can perform, the reasoning they can inspect and the support they will receive. Include the next round of work in the discussion: a useful initial result is only part of the purchase if the program will keep generating data.

Marigold: satellite analysis in the hands of your geologists

Marigold by EarthDaily provides a cloud workspace with bare-earth composites, hyperspectral processing, mineral indices, structural mapping, public geophysics and export tools. It belongs on the shortlist when your team wants to run remote-sensing analysis directly.

The comparison with TerraEye should reflect that both offer user-operated analytical workflows. Ask a geologist to take a representative area through the steps they actually need: prepare the data, examine an anomaly, challenge the interpretation and produce something the rest of the team can use.

TerraEye’s Labs and Domeyko development broaden that evaluation to specialist analyses and historical records. How much those matter depends on your project. A team already well served by its document archive and geophysical tools may place a different value on integration than a small team still assembling its evidence.

PhotoSat: buy the mapping product your project needs

PhotoSat produces satellite alteration maps using sources including WorldView-3 and ASTER. Its offerings also include property-scale and regional mapping, as well as elevation surveying.

This is a sensible option to examine when the missing deliverable is well defined. You may already have an exploration model and an internal team ready to interpret a new alteration map in that context.

Compare the imagery, scale, mapped products and interpretation included in the proposal. Then establish who will relate the result to the rest of the evidence. That last responsibility can sit with your team or with a provider, but it needs to sit somewhere.

Fleet Space: when the subsurface question needs more work

Fleet Space describes ExoSphere as an integrated environment connecting acquisition, processing, geological interpretation and machine learning. Existing drilling, assays, geochemistry and geophysics can contribute to an evolving 3D model, with uncertainty and model drivers available for review.

Fleet is therefore a relevant comparison when the next decision depends on improving the subsurface interpretation. Ask what will constrain the model, which measurements must be acquired and which questions will remain unresolved.

TerraEye and Fleet can be used within the same exploration program. Their roles may overlap in the interpretation of evidence. The program’s needs should determine the sequence: regional analysis can help focus a survey, while a survey can also provide the evidence needed to revisit an earlier regional interpretation.

Expert Geophysics: commissioning new airborne measurements

Expert Geophysics specialises in airborne electromagnetics, including MobileMT, with complementary measurements and services covering survey design through interpretation.

Here the buying decision begins with a physical measurement. What property do you need to investigate, over what area, and at what useful resolution? Work through that question with the provider before comparing survey configurations or quotes.

The survey output may subsequently become an input to another analytical workflow. Include that handover in the scope: which processed data, models and interpretation products will your geological team receive and be able to use?

What to ask to see before signing

Start with one area your team understands well enough to challenge the demonstration. Give the provider the available data and a decision you genuinely need to make. Then follow a single proposed target back to its evidence.

You should be able to establish why it was selected, which observations support it, what conflicts with the interpretation and what fieldwork would test it. If three layers agree, check whether they provide independent evidence or are different transformations of the same underlying measurement.

Next, ask what your geologists can change. Can they inspect the source, adjust an assumption and see what happens? How much requires another request to the provider? Neither arrangement is inherently wrong, but it affects the time and cost of every revision.

Finally, discuss the work after delivery. New samples and mapping should be able to change the priorities. Agree who performs that update, what it costs and how the reasoning is retained.

We use “defensible” at TerraEye in a narrow sense: the evidence and reasoning behind a target can be examined. A useful exploration target remains a hypothesis to test.

A few questions that come up in these comparisons

Can we use TerraEye without commissioning a targeting program?

Yes. Your geologists can work directly in the platform, with geological support available alongside it. A commissioned program is another way to use TerraEye, and can provide a starting point for continued internal work.

Will Domeyko show whether an area has been explored already?

It is being developed to show what the accessible records document. Its coverage will depend on the available sources. Report availability and documented exploration activity can inform the answer, but an empty part of the map will not prove that nobody has worked there.

Is the lowest software price the cheapest way to get a result?

Add the other work before deciding: data purchases, preparation, internal interpretation, specialist support and subsequent revisions. Compare proposals for the same deliverable and level of team involvement.

Can these tools replace field validation?

They help decide what to investigate and why. A map or model does not, by itself, establish a drill location or an economic deposit. The follow-up depends on the geological question and the evidence already available.

Planning your next program? Bring us a question to test.

We are gathering early-preview interest for TerraEye Labs and Domeyko ahead of PDAC 2027, along with use cases for notebooks and agent-assisted code adaptation.

Tell us where you work, what you need to decide and which part of the workflow you want to try. A specific question, an example report or a description of a method is more useful than a long requirements document at this stage.

Join the TerraEye early preview

Include your company, region of interest and expected evaluation date. We will use those details to identify relevant preview opportunities as workflows and coverage become available.

For work you need to start now, see the TerraEye platform.