Purpose This paper aims to describe the characteristics and modeling of the variable pitch quadrotor. In a variable pitch quadrotor, unlike ordinary quadrotors that the force is generated by the rotors, the speed of the rotors is constant, and the force is generated by varying the pitch angle of blades. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, a sliding mode controller and an adaptive sliding mode controller are used to control the variable pitch quadrotor to have better performance. Findings The variable pitch mechanism has a wider control bandwidth, and it is able to produce a negative thrust that facilitates trajectory tracking and aggressive maneuvers. The simulation results indicate high performance of the proposed control scheme in presence of disturbance and changes in mass of the quadrotor. Originality/value The performance of the controllers for the variable pitch quadrotor is investigated through computer simulation with MATLAB software.