Direct answer
African startups can go from signup to a production pilot in one afternoon: create the account at /account/signup, fund the wallet ($5 minimum; M-Pesa or Airtel Money in Kenya, USD card elsewhere), call deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017 at https://api.fikraapi.co.ke/v1, and cap the key before the first real user sees it.
Live numbers as of 2026-11-14
These figures come from the public stats snapshot generated on 2026-11-14 from backend ledgers. They show volume and reliability only; they do not prove any single route wins your workload. Run your own 50 prompts before you move budget.
| Metric | Value | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| All-time requests | 126,617 | 109 days since launch |
| All-time tokens processed | 5,460,329,009 | 2,299,586,240 served from cache |
| Requests, last 30 days | 116,189 | 5,437,162,745 tokens across 82 active routes |
| Registered developers (all time) | 424 | Self-serve accounts, prepaid |
| Live model routes | 31 | Catalogue at /models; machine list at /v1/models |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017, last 30 days | 63,202 | cache-hit rate 12.94% |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Economy (free), last 30 days | 8,741 | cache-hit rate 97.36%; free window, not an SLA |
| 30-day uptime | 98.95% | 88,390 health checks; status currently reports attention, re-check /status before production |
What the routes cost right now
Prices are USD per 1M tokens, taken from the live registry snapshot dated 2026-11-14. The KES columns use the checkout rate of KES 133 = $1; your bank or card issuer may add its own conversion margin on top.
The catalogue is authoritative at /v1/models (the OpenAI-compatible listing) and at /models (the public card with context windows and rate limits). Check both before a production commitment; prices move with provider terms.
See the live list from your terminal: curl -s https://api.fikraapi.co.ke/v1/models -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_FIKRA_KEY"
| Model ID | Input / 1M | Cached input / 1M | Output / 1M | Input KES / 1M | Output KES / 1M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017 | $0.05 | $0.0075 | $0.15 | KES 6.65 | KES 19.95 |
| deepseek-v4.1-flash | $0.05 | $0.0075 | $0.15 | KES 6.65 | KES 19.95 |
| qwen3.8-27b | $0.045 | $0.045 | $0.35 | KES 5.98 | KES 46.55 |
| glm-5.3-flash | $0.1875 | $0.0375 | $0.625 | KES 24.94 | KES 83.12 |
| glm-5.3 | $1.225 | $0.225 | $3.85 | KES 162.93 | KES 512.05 |
| kimi-k3 | $2.4375 | $0.24375 | $12.1875 | KES 324.19 | KES 1,620.94 |
The ten-minute pilot that actually de-risks launch
Most failed pilots die in procurement, not in code. The fix is a one-afternoon loop: signup, $5 top-up, one route, 50 real prompts from your own queue or corpus, one scoring pass, one budget cap.
- Hour 1: account, key, top-up. Kenya teams approve an STK prompt on a phone; everyone else completes card 3-D Secure.
- Hour 2: point the OpenAI client at https://api.fikraapi.co.ke/v1; send one chat completion to deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017.
- Hour 3: run 50 of your own prompts; log request IDs and spend; score accepted tasks.
- Hour 4: cap the key in the dashboard, write the one-page rollout note, and only then invite users.
What the bill actually looks like at startup scale
At $0.05 input and $0.15 output per 1M tokens, 100,000 support interactions at 800 input and 120 output tokens cost roughly $4 in inference. The real budget lines are retries, context bloat and failed tasks, which is why accepted-task cost, not token price, is the number to put on the board slide.
| Scenario | Rough token volume | Wallet cost at flash rates |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 support drafts | 920k tokens | under $0.10 |
| 50,000 ticket classifications | 46M tokens | about $2.50 |
| 10,000 long-document summaries | 95M tokens | about $8 |
Kenya versus the rest, honestly
Kenya is the only checkout with M-Pesa and Airtel Money, and KES 133 = $1 is published. Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Côte d'Ivoire, Morocco, Egypt and South Africa all pay by USD card, converting at the issuer's rate. Plan onboarding materials for a card-first flow outside Kenya.
How to start in ten minutes
- Create the account at /account/signup and verify the email address.
- Copy the fk_live_ key from the dashboard; it is shown once.
- Fund the wallet with M-Pesa, Airtel Money or card in Kenya; elsewhere in Africa pay by USD card. Minimum top-up is $5.
- Set base_url to https://api.fikraapi.co.ke/v1 in your OpenAI client and model to deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017.
- Run 50 prompts from your own workload, then check /stats and the dashboard before scaling spend.
- Cap the key with a budget; expand only after cost per accepted task is where you need it.
curl https://api.fikraapi.co.ke/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_FIKRA_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Summarise this ticket in two lines."}]}'
Questions buyers ask
Is there a free trial?
Free windows exist for evaluation (the economy route ran 8,741 requests with a 97.36% cache-hit rate in the last 30 days) but they are shared budgets, not production capacity. Fund $5 and pilot on the paid route.
Can two founders share one wallet?
Use separate keys per environment and per founder; Max plan allows 5 keys and 20 seats if you need a shared team wallet.
What happens when the wallet runs dry mid-request?
The balance is the hard cap; calls stop when funds are exhausted rather than overcharging. Alert before you hit zero via the dashboard.
Is this page legal or procurement advice?
No. It is operating guidance. Verify route eligibility, billing and provider terms at /v1/models and in the provider's own documentation before signing anything.
Does the catalogue list every model in the world?
No. It is a curated set of pinned routes. Availability depends on capacity, licensing and provider terms, and routes are added to the public catalogue as they clear review.