Kenya · benchmarks

AI API cost guide for Kenyan teams

Wallet maths for monthly AI budgets at KES 133 = $1.

Direct answer

Benchmark on accepted-task cost for your workload, including payment friction. A declined card or FX margin can erase a 10% token-price advantage.

How to run your own benchmark

Pull the live route list at /v1/models and pin the route IDs you plan to test.
Use your own prompts. Public leaderboards do not reflect your workload.
Log request ID, route, tokens, cache hits, cost and wall time for every call.
Score accepted tasks per dollar from your own network, not from a data-centre vantage point.
Publish the full distribution to your team. One screenshot of one win is not a benchmark.

What the platform publishes

Route-level request counts, cache-hit rates and platform uptime are published at fikraapi.co.ke/stats and /status. These numbers show volume and reliability; they do not prove any specific route wins your workload.

No per-route latency percentile is published anywhere by Fikra. Any third-party page that quotes p50 or p99 for a Fikra route is inventing it.

Payment friction belongs in the denominator for Kenya teams

At the Kenya checkout, the cost is exact and published: KES 136.99 charged for KES 133 credited at KES 133 = $1.

A declined 3-D Secure attempt costs you the round-trip time regardless of token price. Card-decline rate and FX margin both belong in your total cost of inference, not just the token sticker price.

How to get started in Kenya

Create an account at fikraapi.co.ke/account/signup and confirm your email.
Copy your fk_live_ key from the dashboard. It is shown once; store it safely.
Open the dashboard and choose M-Pesa, Airtel Money or card. Enter $5 or more. The screen shows the KES charge before you approve: KES 136.99 is charged, KES 133 credits to your USD wallet. M-Pesa and Airtel Money send a prompt to your phone; approve it and the wallet credits within seconds.
In any OpenAI-compatible client, set base_url to https://api.fikraapi.co.ke/v1 and model to deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017.
Run your first call. The dashboard shows your balance and each request's token cost.
Set a budget cap on the key before sharing it with teammates or deploying to production.

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."}]}'

Common questions

Can I pay from Kenya without a foreign credit card?

Yes. The Kenya checkout offers M-Pesa, Airtel Money and card. M-Pesa and Airtel Money send an STK prompt to your Safaricom or Airtel phone; approve it and the USD wallet credits. Minimum top-up is $5, charged as KES 136.99 (KES 133 credited at the KES 133 = $1 checkout rate). Mobile money is only available on the Kenya checkout.

How much do I need to start?

Minimum top-up is $5. Plans are prepaid per 30 days: Lite $10, Pro $25, Max $60. All plans include 3,000 requests per minute and 250,000 per day. The wallet balance is a hard cap — you cannot overspend it.

Which model should I use first?

Start with deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017 for text, code and summaries. It is the most-used route on the platform. Confirm it is listed at /v1/models, then compare against qwen3.8-27b (structured output) and glm-5.3-flash (high-volume code) on your own prompts before committing budget.

Does Fikra offer an SLA?

No. Self-serve plans are prepaid with no contractual SLA. Uptime is published at fikraapi.co.ke/status. If your project requires a committed uptime guarantee, contact support before you sign up.

Where do I see my usage and spend?

The dashboard shows your balance and per-key usage. Platform-wide stats are at fikraapi.co.ke/stats. Keep the request ID from each call if you need to reconcile a charge.

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