How Does Amazon Rekognition Face Liveness Work?

Face Liveness analyzes a short selfie video to detect spoofs like printed photos, digital videos, deepfakes, and 3D masks. It works on React web, native iOS, and Android apps with a front-facing camera.

What Is the Difference Between Group 1 and Group 2 Image APIs?

Group 1 includes face-related APIs like IndexFaces, CompareFaces, and SearchFaces. Group 2 covers detection APIs like DetectLabels, DetectText, and RecognizeCelebrities. Each group has separate tiered pricing.

Can Amazon Rekognition Process Real-Time Streaming Video?

Yes, Rekognition supports streaming video events through Amazon Kinesis Video Streams. It can analyze up to 120 seconds of video per event and charges $0.00817 per minute processed.

How Many Images Are Needed to Train a Custom Labels Model?

Amazon Rekognition Custom Labels can train a model with as few as 10 images using AutoML. Most models complete training in under 24 hours, and models exceeding 72 hours are automatically terminated at no charge.

Does Amazon Rekognition Support Custom Content Moderation?

Yes, Custom Moderation lets you train an adapter with as few as 20 annotated images to enhance the base moderation model for your specific use case, priced at $5/hr for training and tiered per-image inference costs.

Listed · Reviewed May 2026 · 7-criteria rubric

AI Development Tools

Amazon Rekognition

Name: Amazon Rekognition
Availability: InStock
Author: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

ML-Powered Image and Video Analysis at Scale

by Amazon Web Services (AWS) · Seattle, WA, USA · Founded 2006

Visit Amazon Rekognition →

Pricing

From $0.001/image

What is Amazon Rekognition?

Amazon Rekognition is Amazon Web Services' cloud image and video analysis API that turns visual content into searchable data for developers, security teams, and media workflows.

It offers pre-trained detection models plus Custom Labels to train domain-specific classifiers, and exposes REST/SDK APIs for face detection and face search, object and scene detection, OCR text extraction, celebrity recognition, content moderation, and video segmenting/face tracking including real-time ingest via Kinesis.

Designed for teams without deep ML expertise, it integrates with S3, Lambda and other AWS services and uses a freemium pricing model with a 12-month free tier and pay-as-you-go billing.

In 2026 the service is mature and scalable, but one honest trade-off is that facial-recognition accuracy can vary across demographic groups and carries privacy and regulatory risks, so you should not rely on Rekognition alone for high-stakes identity decisions.

Amazon Rekognition — ML-Powered Image and Video Analysis at Scale Whether you're evaluating Amazon Rekognition for your team or comparing it to alternatives in the AI Development Tools category, this in-depth review covers everything: features, pricing, real user reviews, pros and cons, integrations, and direct comparisons against competitors.

Key Features 8

AI-powered image and video analysis with no ML expertise required

Face liveness detection to verify real users and prevent spoofing

Face detection, comparison, and search across private image collections

Automated content moderation for unsafe or inappropriate image and video

Real-time streaming video events detecting people, pets, and packages

Text extraction from images and videos including skewed or distorted text

Custom Labels with AutoML to detect brand-specific objects and logos

Celebrity recognition and video segment detection for media workflows

Who Is Amazon Rekognition For

1 Security and Surveillance Engineers

2 Identity Verification Product Teams

3 Media and Content Moderation Teams

4 Smart Home Device Developers

5 E-Commerce Visual Search Developers

6 Digital Marketing Analysts

Pros & Cons

Pros 4 benefits

High Facial Recognition Accuracy
No ML Expertise Required
Generous 12-Month Free Tier
Scales Automatically With Demand

Cons 3 limitations

Complex Pay-Per-Use Pricing Structure
CLI Output in Raw JSON
Limited Non-AWS Ecosystem Integration

Frequently Asked Questions

5 questions

Who is Amazon Rekognition for?

Amazon Rekognition is most useful for Security and Surveillance Engineers, Identity Verification Product Teams, Media and Content Moderation Teams and Smart Home Device Developers.

Amazon Rekognition pricing

Amazon Rekognition uses a freemium model: a usable free tier with optional paid upgrades. Headline pricing: From $0.001/image. For the current tier breakdown and any limits, see the pricing section above or check the vendor's pricing page directly — limits and prices change.

What's New

AWS Free Tier Credit Update

New AWS customers receive up to $200 in Free Tier credits applicable to Amazon Rekognition and other eligible services.

Jul 15

Custom Moderation Adapters

Launched Custom Moderation allowing users to train adapters with as few as 20 annotated images for enhanced content moderation accuracy.

Dec 1

View all updates

Security & Privacy

US, EU, Asia-Pacific, Global (multi-region)

SOC 2 Type II GDPR Compliant ISO 27001:2022 ISO 27017:2015 ISO 27018:2019 HIPAA Eligible CCPA Compliant

End-to-end encryption (AES-256) AWS IAM role-based access control VPC endpoint support for private connectivity AWS CloudTrail audit logging Data encryption at rest and in transit

Collaboration & Teams

Team Workspaces Multi-User Access Role Permissions Shared Projects Activity Log

Learning & Support

Resources

Documentation Video Tutorials Blog

Community

Forum

Support Channels

Email Live Chat Phone Priority Dedicated Manager Onboarding

Localization

UI Languages

50+

Content Languages

Multi-Language UI

All Features of Amazon Rekognition