Pricing
Published ranges, in shillings, so you can work out whether to keep reading. Every engagement is quoted as a fixed number before any work starts — if we scope it wrong, that is our problem, not your invoice.
How much does AI consulting cost in Kenya?
In Kenya, an AI opportunity audit typically starts from around KES 75,000, a first working automation or AI agent from around KES 250,000, a team training day from around KES 120,000, and an ongoing retainer from around KES 150,000 per month. Costs rise with the number of systems to integrate, the state of the underlying data, and regulatory requirements. Running costs — model usage, WhatsApp conversation fees and hosting — are separate and should be budgeted at roughly 15 to 25 per cent of the build cost per year.
Find out what is worth doing before you spend on building it.
FROM
KES 75,000
1–2 weeks
Best if you have budget but no clear first target.
One automation or AI agent, live in production.
FROM
KES 250,000
2–6 weeks
Best if you already know what hurts.
Up to 20 people, hands-on, using your real work.
FROM
KES 120,000
1 day
Best value per shilling for most organisations.
We stay, monitor, tune and build the next thing.
FROM
KES 150,000
Monthly
Best once you have two or more systems running.
All figures are indicative starting points in Kenyan shillings, exclusive of VAT and third-party running costs. Your quote will be a fixed number, given in writing, before any work begins.
The full picture
A build price is only half the conversation. Here is the whole thing, including the parts that arrive later.
| Cost | Who charges it | Typical scale | When it starts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build / consulting | Us | KES 75,000 – 250,000+ per project | Once, at project start |
| AI model usage | Model provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google) | Cents to a few shillings per interaction | From go-live, scales with volume |
| WhatsApp conversations | Meta, via a Business Solution Provider | Per 24-hour conversation window, category-dependent | From go-live, scales with volume |
| Platform / BSP fee | WhatsApp BSP | Monthly subscription | From setup |
| Hosting & database | Cloud provider | Modest for most Kenyan mid-market workloads | From build |
| Maintenance | Us or your team | ~15–25% of build cost per year | From month three onwards |
| Your team’s time | You | 2–4 hours/week during build | Throughout — and it is real |
The one that catches people out
Internal time. Every failed project we have been asked to rescue was under-resourced on the client side, not the vendor side. If nobody in your organisation has four hours a week for this, the honest thing is to delay the project rather than start it.
Working it out
You do not need a consultant for this arithmetic. Do it before you call anyone — including us.
How many hours a week does this process take, across everyone who touches it? Ask the people who do it, not their manager — the answer is usually higher.
Fully loaded cost per hour: salary plus employer costs, divided by actual working hours. Not the headline salary.
What do mistakes cost annually — write-offs, rework, lost customers, penalties? Be conservative; you only need a defensible figure.
What decisions are made late or badly because the information arrives late? This is often the biggest number and the hardest to estimate. Estimate it anyway.
Annual cost of the problem versus build cost plus a year of running cost. If payback is under twelve months, it is worth a serious conversation.
A worked illustration
Two finance staff spend six hours each per week on reconciliation.
| Hours per year | 624 |
| Fully loaded cost per hour | KES 900 |
| Annual labour cost | KES 561,600 |
| Error and rework, estimated | KES 150,000 |
| Annual cost of the problem | KES 711,600 |
| Build + first year running | KES 320,000 |
| Payback | ~5.4 months |
Illustrative arithmetic with made-up inputs, shown so you can follow the method. We will run this with your real numbers on the first call — and if it does not work, we will say so.
Questions
Because the first question every Kenyan business owner has is “can we even afford this?”, and making people sit through a discovery call to find out is a waste of their time and ours. The ranges below are honest starting points. Your actual quote depends on how many systems are involved, how clean your data is, and how much of the work your own team can carry.
Four things, in order of impact. Number of systems to integrate — each one adds discovery, testing and failure handling. Data quality — if we have to clean before we can build, that is real work. Regulatory requirements — auditability and approval workflows add engineering. And organisational complexity: three approvers in two departments will cost more than one decision-maker, every time.
The ones most quotes omit. Model and inference costs, usually a few shillings per interaction but worth modelling at your volume. WhatsApp Business Platform conversation fees charged by Meta, plus a Business Solution Provider platform fee. Hosting and database costs. And maintenance, because model providers deprecate versions and your business changes. Budget roughly 15–25% of the build cost annually for a system you intend to keep. We model all of this before you commit.
Either. Kenyan clients are normally invoiced in KES, which removes exchange-rate risk from your side. Regional and diaspora clients often prefer USD. Third-party costs that we pass through — cloud, model APIs, WhatsApp fees — are billed in the currency the provider charges, at cost, with the invoices attached.
Yes. Fixed-price projects are normally 50% to start and 50% on delivery. For larger builds we split against milestones. For SMEs and NGOs we can stage payments monthly across the project. We accept M-Pesa, bank transfer and card.
Yes, and we would rather you asked than assumed not. We hold a reduced rate for registered NGOs, educational institutions and early-stage Kenyan startups, and we keep a small amount of capacity each quarter for pro bono work with organisations doing something genuinely useful with limited means.
Honestly? A single half-day training session for the team plus a written AI acceptable-use policy. It costs a fraction of a build, it makes people measurably more productive within a week, and it stops the confidential-data leakage that is probably already happening. Several clients have started there and only built something six months later.
Want more detail? Read our full guide to AI automation costs in Kenya.
Start here
Book a free 30-minute call. We will map one process end to end, tell you honestly whether AI is the right answer, and put a number on what fixing it is worth. No slide deck, no jargon.
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