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Agriculture · head to head

CeresAI vs Lely Horizon

CeresAI logo

CeresAI

Agriculture

Aerial and satellite crop imagery with per-acre pricing for permanent crops and irrigation

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Lely Horizon logo

Lely Horizon

Agriculture

Dairy herd management software billed per lactating cow that only runs a Lely robot barn

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: CeresAI per-acre pricing only pencils on high-value crops; on low-margin broadacre cereals the fee is hard to justify against free public satellite imagery.; Lely Horizon billing is per lactating cow, so the software cost grows with the herd indefinitely and a farm that expands from 120 to 200 cows takes a permanent software cost increase it did not budget when it bought the robots.
  • They diverge on capability: CeresAI covers Aerial multispectral capture, Lely Horizon covers Per-cow milking data.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which CeresAI and Lely Horizon actually diverge.

Attributes where CeresAI and Lely Horizon differ
AttributeCeresAILely Horizon
Pricing modelPer acre per seasonquote
PlatformsWeb, iOS, AndroidWeb, iOS, Android, Windows

Identical on both: starting price (On request), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Agriculture).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in CeresAI

  • Aerial multispectral capture
  • Thermal water stress
  • Irrigation fault detection
  • Nitrogen and chlorophyll
  • Pest and disease hotspots
  • Yield variability
  • Third-party integrations

Only in Lely Horizon

  • Per-cow milking data
  • Health and fertility alerts
  • Work list generation
  • Feed management
  • Farm Management Support
  • Multi-site view
  • Mobile alerts
  • Reporting and benchmarking

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

CeresAI

  • An almond grower finding blocked emitters across thousands of trees without walking every rownot Lely Horizon
  • A wine estate managing deficit irrigation block by block to hit a target fruit compositionnot Lely Horizon
  • A farmland investment manager verifying tenant irrigation practice on ground it ownsnot Lely Horizon
  • A citrus operation targeting nitrogen applications to the parts of a block that actually need itnot Lely Horizon

Lely Horizon

  • A 180-cow dairy running four Astronaut robots that needs the attention list to replace walking the barn twice a daynot CeresAI
  • A farm adding Vector automatic feeding that wants ration delivery driven by the same cow data as milkingnot CeresAI
  • A dairy manager tracking transition cow health across two sites from one accountnot CeresAI
  • A Lely advisor benchmarking a client's robot utilisation against comparable farms before recommending a fourth boxnot CeresAI

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

CeresAI

  • Per-acre pricing only pencils on high-value crops; on low-margin broadacre cereals the fee is hard to justify against free public satellite imagery.
  • Aerial capture runs on a scheduled cadence and is weather dependent, so it will not answer a question you need settled tomorrow and gaps happen in bad seasons.
  • Geographic coverage follows where the aircraft fly, which concentrates the service in California and a handful of other regions and leaves growers elsewhere on satellite-only products.
  • The company rebranded from Ceres Imaging to CeresAI, so older contracts, integrations and search results use the previous name and buyers checking references need to know both.
  • It flags problems but does not fix them; without an agronomist or manager committed to acting on every alert, the imagery becomes an expensive subscription nobody opens.

Lely Horizon

  • Billing is per lactating cow, so the software cost grows with the herd indefinitely and a farm that expands from 120 to 200 cows takes a permanent software cost increase it did not budget when it bought the robots.
  • Horizon is not optional: the barn equipment depends on it, so the subscription cannot be cancelled in a difficult year the way a discretionary analytics tool can, which removes any negotiating position at renewal.
  • It manages Lely equipment and effectively nothing else, so a farm running a Lely robot alongside a conventional parlour or another manufacturer's feeder ends up with two systems and no combined cow record.
  • The migration from the older T4C system was compulsory and rebuilt the interface and reporting, and farms that had years of T4C reports and custom lists found the equivalents either missing or shaped differently, costing retraining time.
  • Everything is bought and supported through the local Lely Center, so pricing, response time and the quality of advice vary by dealer with no published rate card, and a farm with a weak local centre has no practical alternative supplier.

Pricing, plan by plan

CeresAI

On request
  • CeresAI$undefined/year
    • Priced per acre for a defined season of flights
    • Flight cadence and imagery types set the rate
    • Minimum acreage applies in most regions

Lely Horizon

On request
  • Horizon Basic$undefined/month
    • Core robot operation and monitoring
    • Per lactating cow subscription
    • Invoiced digitally by the local Lely Center
  • Horizon Control$undefined/month
    • Adds herd management and fertility tooling
    • Per lactating cow subscription
  • Horizon Advance$undefined/month
    • Adds analysis, benchmarking and advisor tooling
    • Per lactating cow subscription

Which should you pick?

Choose CeresAI if

  • You need aerial multispectral capture.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android.
  • You also want thermal water stress.
CeresAI review

Choose Lely Horizon if

  • You need per-cow milking data.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android, Windows.
  • You also want health and fertility alerts.
Lely Horizon review

Questions people ask

Is CeresAI or Lely Horizon better?
Neither clearly leads. CeresAI starts at On request and Lely Horizon at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, CeresAI or Lely Horizon?
CeresAI starts at On request and Lely Horizon at On request.
Does CeresAI or Lely Horizon run on more platforms?
CeresAI runs on Web, iOS, Android. Lely Horizon runs on Web, iOS, Android, Windows.
What is CeresAI best used for?
CeresAI is most often used for an almond grower finding blocked emitters across thousands of trees without walking every row, a wine estate managing deficit irrigation block by block to hit a target fruit composition, a farmland investment manager verifying tenant irrigation practice on ground it owns, a citrus operation targeting nitrogen applications to the parts of a block that actually need it. Of those, an almond grower finding blocked emitters across thousands of trees without walking every row and a wine estate managing deficit irrigation block by block to hit a target fruit composition are not what Lely Horizon is typically brought in for.
What can CeresAI do that Lely Horizon cannot?
CeresAI covers Aerial multispectral capture, Thermal water stress, Irrigation fault detection, Nitrogen and chlorophyll. Lely Horizon covers Per-cow milking data, Health and fertility alerts, Work list generation, Feed management.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

CeresAI: Is Ceres Imaging still trading?

Yes, under the name CeresAI following a rebrand in 2024. The aerial imagery service continues and the company has taken further funding since.

Lely Horizon: How is Lely Horizon priced?

As a subscription per lactating cow milked by the Astronaut robots, in Basic, Control and Advance tiers. Lely does not publish rates; the local Lely Center quotes them.

CeresAI: How is it priced?

By the acre for a season of imagery. The rate depends on crop, region and how many flights the programme includes.

Lely Horizon: Can I run Horizon without Lely robots?

No. It is the control and management layer for Lely equipment and has no meaningful function without it.

CeresAI: Why pay for aircraft when satellites are free?

Resolution and thermal. Public satellite imagery cannot resolve individual trees or reliably detect a single blocked emitter; aerial thermal capture can.

Lely Horizon: What happened to T4C?

Horizon replaced it. Migration was required rather than optional, and reporting was rebuilt rather than ported.

CeresAI: Does it work on broadacre cereals?

Technically yes, commercially rarely. The per-acre fee is designed against permanent crop and irrigated margins.

Lely Horizon: Does the subscription end when the robot is paid off?

No. It continues for as long as the robots are milking, which is the cost most robot business cases understate.

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