What FieldFinders actually does

Where it operates

FieldFinders runs in two countries. The research tools are shared; the data underneath them differs, and some tools are tied to data that only exists in one place.

Part one: the research tools

Everything here works on any ground, whether the permission came from FieldFinders or from a handshake twenty years ago. Coverage differences between the two countries are in the table above.

Mapping and remote sensing

Records and heritage

In the field

After the dig

Part two: permissions

A separate service, United Kingdom only at present. It is not required in order to use any of the research tools, and the research tools are not required in order to use it.

• Permission marketplace. Landowners list ground; detectorists book it directly.
• Digital search agreement. Signed by both parties, covering finds ownership and conduct, so the terms are settled before anybody digs.
• Permission agreement templates. For arrangements made privately, away from the marketplace.
• Landowner reports. What has been found on their land, sent to the person who owns it.
• Club and rally organisation. Group digs, member management and shared finds feeds.

Pricing

Pro is £4.99 a month. It includes the full Atlas with 1m LiDAR, historic mapping and geology, Relief, every ground conditions tool, unlimited recorded digs and fifty AI tool uses a month. Pro Plus is £9.99 and Pro Unlimited is £19.99. There is a free tier.

For comparison, Detector Maps advertises its UK plan at “From £10/month”. FieldFinders Pro is £4.99, which is about half that, and the Pro tier already carries 1m LiDAR across three nations, terrain analysis and the finds tools.

What FieldFinders has that Detector Maps does not

Both products map LiDAR, historic Ordnance Survey editions, Portable Antiquities Scheme findspots, cropmarks and scheduled monuments. The differences below are drawn from Detector Maps’ own published pages, and each is checkable.

How current the data is

Recorded finds are refreshed rather than shipped once and left. Scottish coverage was recently extended by wiring the Canmore record of the National Record of the Historic Environment into the finds layer, because the Portable Antiquities Scheme stops at the border and a Scottish detectorist was otherwise looking at an empty map. That is thousands of additional findspots across Scotland that a PAS-only product cannot show.

Cropmark detection uses Sentinel-2, which revisits the same ground every few days, so the vegetation signal reflects this season rather than the date of a commercial aerial survey.

How the analysis works

Enough to judge it by, without the parts that took the longest to get right.

• Trace reads surface morphology from the 1m LiDAR rather than the picture of it: slope, curvature and how a shape sits against the ground around it. Groups of anomalies are classified into linear features, enclosures and mounds, or earthworks, and every one carries a confidence rating, because field drains, plough lines and soil patches produce false positives and a tool that hides that is lying to you.
• Cropmark detection runs the same detector over Sentinel-2 NDVI. Buried ditches and pits hold moisture and lift crop vigour; walls and foundations suppress it.
• Gold scores each stretch half on the shape of the channel and half on whether gold is recorded in that ground, then applies the rain that has actually fallen on it. It is back-tested against ground with a documented production history: seventeen places including Wanlockhead, the Mennock, Cononish, Kildonan and Gwynfynydd. The current ranking puts a spot within two kilometres of eleven of the seventeen, and within five kilometres of all seventeen. Those numbers are published here because a scoring model nobody has tested is just an opinion with a number on it.

Historic mapping

Georeferenced Ordnance Survey six-inch mapping from the National Library of Scotland, covering England, Scotland and Wales, overlaid at adjustable opacity against LiDAR and current satellite imagery. The six-inch series is the one that matters for detecting: it predates twentieth century field amalgamation, so it shows the boundaries, tracks, buildings and ponds that have since been ploughed out.

What FieldFinders does not do

Stated so that a comparison does not have to guess.

• No georeferencing of your own scanned maps.
• Field boundaries come from OpenStreetMap, which is field and land parcel geometry. There is no INSPIRE land registry boundary layer, so the map does not tell you who owns a given parcel. Ownership is handled on the permissions side, by the landowner listing the ground themselves.
• No user-contributed community map layers.
• Cropmark detection depends on Sentinel-2 revisit and cloud cover, so it is seasonal rather than on demand.
• Gold coverage is Scotland and Wales, following where the British Geological Survey assayed for gold. It is not national and it is not in the United States.
• The permissions marketplace is United Kingdom only. US users get the research tools.
• Find ID and Treasure Act guidance are United Kingdom only, because both rest on UK records and UK law.
• No detector is perfect and neither is this: Trace and cropmark detection surface candidates to investigate, not buried metal. Field drains, plough lines and soil patches all produce false positives, which is why every feature carries a confidence rating.