Cost
How much does a face recognition API cost? (with worked examples)
Real numbers, worked scenarios, and the costs vendors leave out of the sticker price.
TL;DR
Hosted face recognition is priced per photo processed. On SightRadar (rates verified 2026-07-17): real-time index $0.00093/photo, batch index $0.00062/photo, search $0.00062/search, and storage $6 per million stored faces per month — pegged below AWS Rekognition's $0.00125/image Group-1 reference. Indexing one million photos costs about $930 real-time or $620 in batch; one million searches costs about $620. These are API costs only — your own image storage, bandwidth, and engineering are separate.
Face recognition pricing looks simple — a few cents per thousand images — but the sticker price hides how you're billed (per photo vs per face), what counts as a billable call, and the operational costs around the API. Here's the whole picture.
The unit rates
| Operation | Price | vs AWS Rekognition Group-1 |
|---|---|---|
| Real-time index | $0.00093 / photo | ~75% of $0.00125 |
| Batch index | $0.00062 / photo | ~50% of $0.00125 |
| Search by face id | $0.00062 / search | ~50% of $0.00125 |
| Storage | $6 / million faces / month | vs $10/M/mo ($0.01/1k faces) |
Note: You're billed per photo processed, not per face. A group photo with 20 faces is one billable index call; a photo with zero faces is also one valid, charged call. Budget by counting photos, not faces.
Worked scenario: a one-million-photo event archive
- Index 1,000,000 photos in batch: 1,000,000 × $0.00062 = about $620.
- The same in real-time: 1,000,000 × $0.00093 = about $930. Batch is the right choice for a backfill.
- 1,000,000 selfie searches: 1,000,000 × $0.00062 = about $620.
- Storing 1,000,000 faces for a month: $6.
- For comparison, indexing the same million on Rekognition's Group-1 reference is about $1250.
At SightRadar's rates published 2026-07-17, indexing one million event photos in batch costs about $620, versus about $1250 at AWS Rekognition's Group-1 reference — before counting the quota tickets and transcoding a hyperscaler adds.
Costs the sticker price hides
- Image transcoding — if your API only accepts JPEG/PNG, you pay compute to convert WebP and iPhone HEIC first. SightRadar decodes both natively, so that line is $0.
- Quota-increase overhead — engineering time spent raising per-operation TPS limits by support ticket is a real, if hidden, cost on hyperscalers.
- Failed-call charges — check whether failed or zero-face calls bill. On SightRadar a quality-failed search isn't charged for the engine call; a zero-face index is a valid billed result.
- Your own infrastructure — object storage, bandwidth, and the database that maps face ids to your records are yours regardless of API.
Prepaid credits vs a postpaid cloud bill
SightRadar is prepaid: you buy credits, spend down per call, and there's no subscription or auto-renewal. That makes cost forecasting a multiplication problem and prevents a surprise end-of-month bill. Optional auto-recharge tops up before a batch drains your balance, and every billable call returns an X-Credits-Remaining header so you can track spend inline.
Plug your own photo and search volumes into the calculator.
Open the pricing calculatorFrequently asked questions
How much does a face recognition API cost?
Hosted face recognition is billed per photo processed. On SightRadar, verified 2026-07-17: real-time index $0.00093 per photo, batch index $0.00062 per photo, search $0.00062 per search, and storage $6 per million stored faces per month. It is pegged below AWS Rekognition's Group-1 reference of $0.00125 per image. Your own image storage, bandwidth, and engineering are separate from the API cost.
Is face recognition billed per face or per photo?
On SightRadar it is per photo processed, not per face. A photo containing many faces is a single billable index call, and a photo with zero faces is still a valid, charged result. Budget by counting photos rather than faces.
What does it cost to index a million photos?
At SightRadar's batch rate of $0.00062 per photo (verified 2026-07-17), indexing one million photos is about $620. In real-time mode at $0.00093 per photo it is about $930, so batch is the right mode for a large backfill. Check the pricing page for current rates.
How does prepaid credit pricing compare to AWS Rekognition?
SightRadar sells prepaid credits with no subscription or auto-renewal, so cost is a simple multiplication of your call volume by the per-operation rate and there's no surprise postpaid bill. Its per-photo rates are pegged below AWS Rekognition's Group-1 reference. AWS bills postpaid through your cloud account.