Counting characters in Azure Translate and having hybrid pricing tier

Question

Regarding the Azure Translator service,

1. The Frequently Asked Questions page says:

For scripts based on graphic symbols, such as written Chinese and Japanese Kanji, the Translator service counts the number of Unicode code points. One character per symbol. Exception: Unicode surrogate pairs count as two characters.

Am I correct to say that "驚くばかり" would count as 5 characters , even though it's 15 bytes, but the emoji "" would count as 7 characters , because of the surrogate pairs?

2. It appears that I can either choose to have "2M free chars" or "pay as I go", but not both: "first 2M chars free, then pay as I go".
   However, is it OK/allowed to create two Translate resources, where one would be on the "Free tier", and the other "Pay as you go", and have the application point to the second one when I exceed the 2M free quota?

Answer 1

Not sure about emoji because each emoji can be counted as different character counts. But yes, each foreign character will be counted single.

And when it comes to pricing, there isn't any option for hybrid pricing. Therefore, you either choose a free F0 or Pay as you go S1 pricing tier based on your requirement.