Billing methods

Notes

• If you purchase both a subscription resource plan and subscription QPS, the offset order is as follows:

  Subscription QPS > Category-specific subscription resource plan > General-purpose subscription resource plan > Pay-as-you-go

• The order takes effect within 24 hours after payment.

• You must activate the services for all Visual Intelligence API capabilities before you can use them. Service activation is free.

  • For the pay-as-you-go billing method, you can use the service immediately after activation. Billing starts upon first use.

  • For subscription resource plans and subscription QPS, you must purchase a plan after you activate the service. If you purchase a plan but do not activate the service, you cannot use the corresponding capabilities.

Pay-as-you-go

Billing rules

Within a calendar month, you are charged based on tiered pricing that corresponds to your number of billable calls. With this method, you use the service first and pay later.

Billing examples

• Example 1:

  Assume that in January, you use the license plate recognition capability 15,000 times. The fee is calculated as follows: 10,000 × CNY 0.15 + 5,000 × CNY 0.1 = CNY 2,000

  Capability Name	Calls	Price
  License Plate Recognition	0 < Calls (per month) ≤ 10,000	CNY 0.15/call
  	10,000 < Calls (per month) ≤ 100,000	CNY 0.1/call
  	100,000 < Calls (per month) ≤ 1,000,000	CNY 0.06/call
  	Calls (per month) > 1,000,000	CNY 0.02/call

• Example 2:

  For the Video Understanding, Video Production, and Video Segmentation capabilities, billing is based on video duration.

  For example, if you use comprehensive video enhancement and the output video is 2 minutes and 20 seconds long with a frame rate of 60 fps and a resolution of 1080p, the fee is calculated as follows: 2 × CNY 16 + (20/60) × CNY 16 = CNY 37.3

  Frame Rate/Resolution	Frame rate ≤ 30 fps	30 fps < Frame rate ≤ 60 fps	60 fps < Frame rate ≤ 120 fps
  Resolution ≤ 720p	CNY 4/minute	CNY 8/minute	CNY 16/minute
  720p < Resolution ≤ 1440p	CNY 8/minute	CNY 16/minute	CNY 32/minute
  1440p < Resolution ≤ 2160p	CNY 24/minute	CNY 48/minute	CNY 96/minute

Subscription resource plans

Billing rules

With this method, you purchase resource plans for specific capabilities in advance. When fees are settled, your usage is first offset by your resource plans.

• Validity period: Resource plans are valid for 1 year. You can purchase multiple plans. After each use, resource points are deducted based on the offset factor.

• Alert notifications: When 20% of the points in your resource plan remain, the system sends an alert by text message.

• Resource plan exhaustion or expiration: After your resource plan points are used up or the plan expires, if you continue to call the API, you are charged at the pay-as-you-go rate.

• Offset order for multiple resource plans: If you purchase multiple resource plans, the offset order is as follows.

  • Resource plans are offset based on their expiration time. The plan that expires first is offset first.

  • If the expiration times are the same, plans are offset based on the order in which they were purchased. The plan purchased first is offset first.

  • If you purchase multiple resource plans of the same type in a single order, their purchase and expiration times are the same. In this case, a plan from the order is offset at random.

Subscription resource plans are divided into the following two types:

• Category-specific subscription resource plan: Supports only a single capability.

• General-purpose subscription resource plan: Supports multiple capabilities, including the Visual AI General-purpose Image Resource Plan and the General-purpose Video Duration Resource Plan. For details about the applicable capabilities, see the following table.

  General-purpose Subscription Resource Plan Type	Scope of Application
  Visual AI General-purpose Image Resource Plan	Face and Body	Face Liveness for App, Server-side Face Liveness, Image Face Fusion, Face Retouching, Character Stylization, Portrait Sketch Stylization, Face Restoration and Enhancement, Face Liveness Detection, Celebrity Recognition, Public Figure Recognition, Smart Skin Retouching SD, Smart Skin Retouching HD, Smart Face Slimming SD, Smart Face Slimming HD, 1:1 Face Comparison, 1:N Face Search, Infrared Face Liveness Detection, Masked Face 1:1 Comparison, Face Detection and Landmark, Expression Recognition, Face Information Desensitization, Human Pose Estimation, Human Counting, Action and Behavior Recognition, Video Liveness Detection
  	Segmentation and Matting	Profile Picture Segmentation, Food Segmentation, General Segmentation, Product Segmentation, Human Segmentation, High-definition Human Segmentation, General High-definition Segmentation, Sky High-definition Segmentation, Fine-grained Mask Segmentation, Apparel Segmentation, Hair Segmentation, Skin Segmentation
  	Image Production	Image Super Resolution, Image Clipping, Caption Removal, Image Retouching, Smart Composition, Image Colorization, Image Exposure Scoring, Image Color Enhancement, Human Removal from Image, Logo Removal from Image, Composition Aesthetics Scoring, Invisible Text Watermark for Images, Invisible Image Watermark for Images, Image Definition Scoring, Generative Image Super Resolution
  	Object Detection	Object Detection, White Background Detection, Vehicle Congestion Detection, IPC Image Object Detection, Entity Detection
  	Image Recognition	Scene Recognition, General Image Tagging, Ad Material Analysis, Color Recognition, Element Recognition, Garbage Classification
  	Product Understanding	Product Categorization
  General-purpose Video Duration Resource Plan	Video Understanding	Video Thumbnail, Shot Parsing, Video OCR, Video Splitting, Video Quality Assessment
  	Video Production	Video Color Correction, Video Portrait Cartoonization, Video Frame Interpolation, Video Caption Removal, Video Aspect Ratio Transformation, Video Logo Removal, General Video Production, Comprehensive Video Enhancement, Video Super Resolution, General Video Face Fusion, Template-based Video Face Fusion
  	Video Segmentation	Video Portrait Segmentation

Billing example

Assume you purchase a 5,000-point resource plan for the object detection capability for CNY 50. Each call deducts 0.2 points. The number of available calls is calculated as follows: 5,000 / 0.2 = 25,000 calls.

Purchase a resource plan

This section uses the purchase of a resource plan for the Face Detection and Landmark capability (the Visual AI General-purpose Image Resource Plan) as an example.

1. Log on to the Visual Intelligence API console. In the left-side navigation tree, choose Open Capabilities > Face and Body.

2. Activate the Face and Body service as prompted.

3. On the Service List tab, find Face Detection and Landmark and click Purchase in the Resource Plan column.

4. On the purchase page for the Visual AI General-purpose Image Resource Plan, select a Resource Plan Specification and Quantity, and then click Buy Now.

5. Confirm the order and complete the payment.

Subscription QPS

Billing rules

You can purchase a specific number of queries per second (QPS) in advance based on your business needs. QPS is the maximum number of requests that can be processed per unit of time. After you purchase QPS, fees for the number of calls are waived during the validity period.

• Upgrades and downgrades: Within the validity period, subscription QPS supports renewal, upgrades, and temporary upgrades. The platform does not limit the number of upgrades. You cannot perform a downgrade after an upgrade.

• QPS expiration: After your subscription QPS expires, calls to capabilities that support pay-as-you-go are charged at the pay-as-you-go rate. For capabilities that do not support pay-as-you-go, the QPS reverts to the default of 2. To avoid business disruptions, renew your plan before it expires.

• You can directly purchase up to 30 QPS for Segmentation and Matting and up to 50 QPS for Face and Body. If you require a higher QPS, contact us through the DingTalk group (23109592).

• QPS from different billing methods cannot be combined. The QPS from a subscription QPS plan, the default QPS for pay-as-you-go, and the default QPS for a resource plan cannot be stacked.

For more information, see QPS overview.

Billing examples

For example, if you need 40 QPS for the 1:1 face comparison capability, you can choose Pay-by-Day or Pay-by-Month. The fees are as follows:

• Purchase by day: 12.8 × 10 + 10.8 × 30 = CNY 452/day

• Purchase by month: 218 × 10 + 188 × 30 = CNY 7,820/month

Purchase QPS

This section uses the purchase of QPS for the Face Detection and Landmark capability as an example.

1. Log on to the Visual Intelligence API console. In the left-side navigation tree, choose Open Capabilities > Face and Body.

2. Activate the Face and Body service as prompted.

3. On the Service List tab, find Face Detection and Landmark and click Scale-out (Free Calls) in the QPS Scale-out column.

4. On the purchase page for Face and Body QPS, select the QPS quantity for Face Detection and Landmark and a Duration, and then click Buy Now.

5. Confirm the order and complete the payment.

Upgrade QPS

If your purchased subscription QPS cannot meet your business needs, you can temporarily or permanently upgrade your plan. Currently, the maximum QPS you can purchase or upgrade to is 50 QPS for Face and Body, 30 QPS for Segmentation and Matting, and 100 QPS for Object Detection and Video Production.

• Temporary upgrade: Allows you to increase your QPS for a short period. This change can be reverted and does not require a long-term commitment.

• Upgrade: Permanently upgrade your QPS.

In the Capability Service List, find the target service and click the Temporary Upgrade or Upgrade button in the QPS Scale-out column.

Purchase an offline SDK

After you purchase an offline software development kit (SDK), you must activate it in the console to obtain a usage license. The license validity period starts on the day of activation. Activate the license promptly after purchase.

This section uses the purchase of the Body Keypoints offline SDK as an example.

1. Log on to the Visual Intelligence API console. In the left-side navigation tree, choose Offline SDK > Offline SDK Capability Management.

2. Click Buy Now below Body Keypoints, or click Buy Now on the right.

3. On the purchase page for the Visual Intelligence API Offline SDK, select an Applicable Terminal and Duration, check Body Keypoints, and then click Buy Now.

4. Confirm the order and complete the payment.

5. Return to the console. On the Offline SDK > Offline SDK Capability Management page, find the purchased SDK instance in the Order List area and click Activate on the right. After the instance is activated, you can obtain the license and start using the SDK.

Billing methods supported by each capability

Face and Body

OCR

Product Understanding

Content Moderation

Image Recognition

Image Production

Segmentation and Matting

Object Detection

Image Analysis and Processing

Visual Search

Video Understanding

Video Production

Video Segmentation