Cognitive Services Pricing - Computer Vision API

Computer Vision API

• What are the different operations that you can accomplish with Computer Vision API?

  Please refer to documentation for a more detailed description of these operations.

  • Tag: Computer Vision API returns tags based on more than 2,000 recognizable objects, living beings, scenery, and actions. In cases where tags may be ambiguous or not common knowledge, the API response provides “hints” to clarify the meaning of the tag.
  • Face: Detects human faces within a picture.
  • GetThumbnail: After uploading an image, a high-quality thumbnail GetTumbnail generates a high-quality thumbnail. The Computer Vision API algorithm analyzes the objects within the image, then crops the image to fit the requirements of the “region of interest” (ROI).
  • Color: The Computer Vision algorithm extracts colors from an image. The colors are analyzed in three different contexts, foreground, background, and whole. The colors are grouped into twelve 12 dominant accent colors.
  • Image Type: Computer Vision API can set a Boolean flag to indicate whether an image is black and white or color as well as use the same method to indicate whether an image is a line drawing or not. Image Type also indicates whether an image is clipart or not and the quality.
  • OCR: Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology detects text content in an image. The identified text is extracted into a machine-readable character stream for search and numerous other purposes, ranging from medical records to security and banking. It automatically detects the language. OCR saves time and provides convenience for users by allowing them to simply take photos of text instead of transcribing text. Please refer to Documentation for supported languages.
  • Adult: Apply the adult/racy settings to enable automated restriction of adult content in images.
  • Celebrity: Azure’s celebrity recognition model recognizes 200K celebrities from business, politics, sports, and entertainment around the world

General

• How does billing for Cognitive Services APIs work?

  The Emotion API, Face API, Language Understanding Intelligent Service API, Bing Speech-to-Text API, and Bing Text-to-Speech API are billed per 1,000 API transaction calls when a production API call is being actively executed. Billing is prorated for production API transaction call quantities.

  The Bing Long Form Speech API service is billed per hour of speech that is analyzed. The billing is prorated on a per-minute basis.

  The Recommendations API and Text Analytics API can be purchased in units of the standard tiers at a fixed price. Each unit of a tier comes with included quantities of API transactions. If the user exceeds the included quantities, overages are charged at the rate specified in the pricing table above. These overages are prorated, and the service is billed on a monthly basis. The included quantities in a tier are reset each month.

• What happens if I exceed the transaction limit on my free tier for Text Analytics?

  Usage is throttled if the transaction limit is reached on the free tier. Customers cannot accrue overages on the free tier.

• What happens if I exceed the transaction limit on a standard tier?

  If the usage on a standard tier is exceeded, the account starts to accrue overages. These overages are billed on a monthly basis, and are calculated at the rate specified for each tier.

• What constitutes a transaction in the Recommendations API?

  Any API call (with the exception of batch scoring calls) counts as a transaction. Batch scoring calls will count based on the number of items that need to be scored in that transaction.

• What happens if I exceed the transaction limit on my free tier for Recommendations API?

  Usage is throttled if the transaction limit is reached on the free tier. Customers cannot accrue overages on the free tier. Batch scoring is not supported on the free tier.

• How does billing for Recommendations API work?

  The Recommendations API can be purchased in units of the standard tiers at a fixed price. Each unit of a tier comes with included quantities of API transactions. If the user exceeds the included quantities, overages are charged at the rate specified in the pricing table above. These overages are prorated, and the service is billed on a monthly basis. The included quantities in a tier are reset each month.

• How does billing work for Bing Search, Bing Autosuggest, and Bing Speller?

  The Bing Search APIs, Bing Autosuggest API, and Bing Speller API are billed on a monthly basis. Depending on the tier purchased, there will be included quantities of transactions defined as API calls. Included quantities will always be tied to the calendar month regardless of the start of usage. If the user exceeds the included quantities, overages are charged at the rate specified in the pricing table. These overages are not prorated, and the service is billed on a monthly basis. The included quantities for each tier are reset each month.

• Is there a free trial offer for Bing services?

  Please visit the Cognitive Services subscription page to request free trials.

• Can I change the tier of service I subscribed to?

  You may upgrade to a higher tier at any time. Billing rate and included quantities corresponding to the higher tier will begin immediately.