Direct answer
An African AI gateway owes its buyers four things: a published price list, a published route catalogue, public telemetry, and a support path that answers. On those four, Fikra publishes /pricing, /v1/models, /stats and /status; judge every other gateway you evaluate on the same checklist.
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 transparency checklist, applied
| Claim a gateway should make | Where Fikra publishes it | What to demand elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| A route catalogue with IDs and prices | /models and /v1/models | A machine-readable list, not a screenshot |
| Usage and reliability telemetry | /stats and /status (98.95% 30-day uptime) | Dated numbers, not adjectives |
| A checkout that works where you live | M-Pesa, Airtel Money, card in Kenya; card elsewhere | Written availability per country |
| A support path with a human outcome | /support, published response expectations | Named channel and response target |
| A stated SLA or its absence | Self-serve: no SLA, stated plainly | SLA in writing or don't plan for it |
Reading the fine print on any gateway
- Route names: pinned IDs let you reproduce an eval; floating names invalidate it silently.
- Data terms: ask whether prompts are retained, logged or used for training, and where.
- Billing mechanics: minimum top-ups, expiry of credits, and what happens to the balance on account closure.
- Exit path: one base_url change should port your app; if it would not, the gateway is a trap.
Where Fikra is honest about limits
No SLA on self-serve. No mobile money outside Kenya. Free windows are shared budgets. Status currently reports attention rather than a clean bill of health. If any of these is disqualifying, the enterprise conversation at /support is the right channel, not the self-serve checkout.
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 this checklist vendor-neutral?
Yes; apply the same five questions to every gateway, including Fikra, and keep the answers that hold up under re-checking a month later.
What if a gateway refuses to publish stats?
Treat volume and uptime claims as unverifiable and size the pilot accordingly; do not commit production budget on unpublished telemetry.
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.