A system and method of billing for scanning service costs is provided to examine content of a page and apply a cost function to approximate the cost of scanning the page. Examining the page includes detecting an object in the page, determining a type of the detected object, determining an approximate file size of the page, and determining an approximate area of coverage of the detected object within the page. A usage profile of each type of detected object is calculated and stored. The cost function uses the detected object, the approximate file size, the approximate area of coverage, and a weight value associated with the type of detected object to approximate the cost of the page. When costs are calculated over a period of time, the weight value of each type of detected object may be adjusted based on the usage profile for each type of detected object.