How can I tell a 3D scan from a 360 tour when I look at one?

Try to rise above the floor. If the tour lets you tip back and see every room at once like a model, it was scanned; if you can only turn on the spot and hop forward, it is panoramas.

Does a venue need a digital twin?

Only when building works are planned. The survey accuracy adds cost that a guest never sees, so for selling the space the money goes further on how the rooms look.

Which one is cheapest?

The panoramic kind, as a rule. It needs one camera, a shorter visit and little editing, while survey grade work needs laser kit and a trained operator on site for longer.

Choose between a 360 tour, a 3D scan and a digital twin

29 September 20263 minute readBy Zac FoxLast checked 29 September 2026

A 360 tour, a 3D scan and a digital twin are three different things, although suppliers often use the words as if they were the same. Each answers a different question, so the right one depends on what you want people to do with it.

A 360 tour

A 360 tour is a set of panoramic photographs, each taken from one fixed point. The visitor looks all the way round from that point, then clicks an arrow to jump to the next one. The camera never records the shape of the room, only what it looks like from where it stood.

It is the cheapest of the three and the quickest to shoot. A Google Street View photographer charges £245 to £1,500, depending on how many panoramas the shoot needs, and Google hosts the tour on your Maps listing for free.

A 360 tour suits a shop, a cafe or a gym that wants to be seen on Google. It suits a large venue less well, because the jumps make it hard to judge how far one room is from the next.

A 3D scan

A 3D scan records the shape of the room as well as how it looks. The scanner measures depth as it goes, and the software stretches the photographs over that shape. That gives you the dollhouse view from above, a floor plan and measurements between walls.

The well-known version is Matterport, and several of the UK studios in our research shoot on it. Biztour charges from £550 for a Matterport tour, and Scene3D charges £300 to £600 for a home. Because the photographs sit over a rough shape, fine detail such as foliage or glass can blur at the edges.

A 3D scan suits an estate agent, a lettings team or anyone who needs the floor plan as much as the pictures.

A digital twin

A digital twin is a measured model of a building, accurate enough to plan works, manage a site or check what has changed. Surveyors and architects build them with laser scanners, and the model feeds their design and facilities software.

Museum and gallery scanning costs £3,000 to £20,000 a project, according to reviews of V21 Artspace rather than a price page. For general building survey work we do not have that number yet.

A digital twin suits a facilities team, a heritage site planning conservation work or a developer who needs exact dimensions. A wedding venue or a hotel rarely needs that level of accuracy.

Which one your space needs

Ask what a visitor should do after they have seen it.

To be found on Google Maps, a 360 tour does the job.
To show a floor plan with a listing, a 3D scan does it better.
To plan building works, you need a digital twin.

For a venue that wants couples, guests or event planners to walk the rooms before they enquire, Walkspace records the space as a Gaussian splat, millions of points of light, so the visitor walks the floor and sees the detail hold as they move.

The glossary explains each term in a line. For how a walkthrough compares with a gallery of stills, read a virtual tour against photographs.

Sources

UK virtual tour price index

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