Multirotor drones are aircraft lifted by three or more independent rotors. The most common types are the quadcopter (four rotors), hexacopter (six), and octocopter (eight). More rotors generally means more payload capacity and better wind handling. It also means the aircraft can keep flying if one motor fails, at the cost of added weight, complexity, and price.
What counts as a multirotor drone?
“Multirotor” is the umbrella term for any drone lifted by multiple independent, fixed-pitch rotors. That’s different from a single main rotor like a helicopter, or forward flight through wings like a fixed-wing drone. Quadcopters, hexacopters, and octocopters are all multirotors. They differ from each other only in how many rotors they carry.
What’s the difference between a quadcopter, hexacopter, and octocopter?
The core tradeoff across all three is simplicity versus redundancy and lift capacity.
Quadcopters (four rotors) are the simplest, lightest, and cheapest configuration. That simplicity means fewer points of failure and easier maintenance. For a given battery, it also generally means longer flight time than a larger multirotor of similar size. The tradeoff is lower payload capacity and no redundancy. If one motor fails on a quadcopter, it typically can’t maintain controlled flight.
Hexacopters (six rotors) add meaningful lift capacity and handle wind and heavier sensor payloads better than a quadcopter. A hexacopter with the right motor-mixing setup can often continue flying long enough to land safely if a single motor fails. That’s a real margin of safety around towers, structures, or in coastal wind conditions. DJI’s own Matrice 30T is a hexacopter built around exactly that kind of redundancy.
Octocopters (eight rotors) push both lift capacity and redundancy further. They’re built for the heaviest and most sensitive payloads: professional cinema cameras, LiDAR units, or other equipment where a crash isn’t an acceptable risk. Many octocopter designs use coaxial rotor arms, two rotors stacked per arm, to keep the airframe’s footprint manageable despite the extra rotors.
Which configuration should you actually choose?
Quadcopters make sense for lighter sensors and shorter jobs where cost and simplicity matter most. Most consumer and prosumer drones, including DJI’s Mavic and Air lines, are quadcopters for exactly this reason. Hexacopters are worth the added cost and weight when you’re flying heavier payloads. They’re also worth it when a single motor failure landing you safely, instead of crashing, actually matters. Octocopters are a specialized choice. They’re justified mainly when the payload itself, a cinema camera or survey-grade LiDAR unit, costs enough that the redundancy is cheap insurance by comparison.
Sources: B&H eXplora on multirotor drones.
