Satellite or aircraft remote sensing data can be a valuable tool for land use statistics when area frames or multiple frames are used. At the design level, remote sensing typically helps in the stratification, but can also be exploited to optimise the sample allocation and the size of sampling units. At the estimator level, classified satellite images are generally used as auxiliary variables in a regression estimator or for estimators based on confusion matrixes. In this paper, we make a critical overview of the use of remote sensing data when producing land use statistics. Cost effectiveness is also taken into account.