The expense of purchasing GPS equipment traditionally falls into two categories: the GPS hardware itself and the software that you use to process the GPS data that are collected. Consumer-grade (i.e., recreational grade) GPS units cost from about $100 to $500 and above, depending on what features you'd like to have.
Mapping-grade GPS units cost from about $3,000 and up, again depending on what features you're looking for.
Finally, high-accuracy GPS units start at about $10,000 and go up from there. Traditionally vendors of mapping-grade and high-accuracy GPS units do not publish their prices online, so you'll need to contact individual vendors for more refined pricing information.
Price estimates provided above are approximate as of December 2007.
