M-Pesa Fee Calculator

Background.

Enter the amount, pick what you are doing — sending to a registered user or withdrawing at an agent — and the calculator looks up the Safaricom tariff band and shows the fee, your total debit and what the other side receives. You do not need to know which band your amount falls into; the published table is built in, and the band boundaries are exactly where the surprises live. Sending KSh 1,000 costs KSh 13, but KSh 1,001 crosses into the next band and costs KSh 23 — one extra shilling nearly doubles the charge.

Three things about M-Pesa pricing are worth knowing before you read the result. First, fees are fixed shilling amounts per band, not percentages, so the effective rate falls as you approach the top of a band. KSh 33 on a KSh 1,501 send is 2.2%, while the same KSh 33 on KSh 2,500 is 1.32% — the top of a band is always the cheapest place in it. Second, transfers of KSh 100 or less are free to registered users, which is why small repeated transfers of under a hundred shillings cost nothing while one KSh 300 transfer costs KSh 7. Third, the sender pays the fee on top of the amount: sending KSh 2,500 debits KSh 2,533 from your wallet and the recipient still receives the full KSh 2,500. Withdrawals work the same way — the cash you receive equals the amount you keyed in, and the fee comes out of your remaining balance. That is why the result shows total debit separately: your wallet needs to cover amount plus fee, not the amount alone, or M-Pesa rejects the transaction.

The tariff table in this calculator was retrieved on 8 August 2026 and cross-checked against independent published copies of Safaricom's schedule. Fees are as published and tax-inclusive; the per-transaction ceiling is KSh 250,000 and the minimum agent withdrawal is KSh 50. Two transaction types are deliberately not offered: ATM withdrawal, because published copies of that table conflict with each other, and sending to unregistered users, because no complete current table could be verified. This page shows a verified number or no number. Safaricom's own confirmation screen remains the final authority at transaction time — rates change, and the app knows about a change before any calculator does.

What is m-pesa fee calculator?

An M-Pesa fee is the charge Safaricom applies to a mobile-money transaction, set as a fixed shilling amount for each band of transaction values. The published schedule is a table: sending KSh 101–500 to a registered user costs KSh 7, KSh 501–1,000 costs KSh 13, and so on up to a cap of KSh 108 for any send above KSh 20,000. Agent withdrawals have their own table, starting at KSh 11 for the smallest cash-outs and capping at KSh 309. At most amounts withdrawing costs more than sending — the agent’s commission is inside that fee — but not at every band: withdrawing KSh 2,000 costs KSh 29 while sending it costs KSh 33.

Because each band carries one fixed fee, the price of a transaction changes only when the amount crosses a band boundary. This is different from a percentage charge: within a band, sending more costs nothing extra, and the shilling one past a boundary buys the whole next band's fee. Paying a till number (buy goods) carries no customer charge — the merchant side bears the cost — which is why the calculator reports KSh 0 for it rather than omitting it.

How to use this calculator.

1. 01Enter the amount in whole Kenyan shillings — M-Pesa does not transact cents.
2. 02Choose the transaction type: send to a registered user, agent withdrawal, or buy goods (till).
3. 03Read the fee, the total debit, and what the recipient or you (as cash) will receive.
4. 04Check total debit against your wallet balance yourself — M-Pesa rejects the transaction if the balance does not cover amount plus fee.
5. 05If the effective rate looks high, check where you sit in the band — the same fee applies up to the band's top, so a slightly larger or smaller transfer can change the percentage but not the shillings.
6. 06Confirm on your phone against Safaricom's own screen, which reflects any rate change immediately.

The formula.

The calculation is a lookup, not arithmetic on the amount. Each transaction type has an ordered table of bands — an inclusive minimum, an inclusive maximum, and a fixed fee — and the calculator finds the single band containing the amount and reads its fee. For send-to-registered the table runs from a free band (KSh 1–100) through eleven priced bands to a KSh 108 cap at 20,001–250,000; for agent withdrawal it runs from KSh 11 (50–100) to KSh 309 (50,001–250,000); buy-goods is a constant zero for the customer.

Total debit is the amount plus the fee, because the fee is charged on top rather than deducted from what the recipient gets. It is the number that actually has to fit in your wallet — M-Pesa rejects a transaction whose amount plus fee exceeds the balance. The effective rate divides the fee by the amount — interpretive only, since Safaricom sets shillings per band, not percentages.

The guards mirror M-Pesa's own rules rather than clamping silently: amounts must be whole shillings, an agent withdrawal below KSh 50 is rejected, and anything above the KSh 250,000 per-transaction ceiling is rejected instead of being priced from an extrapolated band. Band boundaries are policy decisions, not a trend a calculator may extend.

A worked example.

Frequently asked questions.

References& sources.

1. [1]Safaricom PLC. "M-PESA Rates" — the authoritative customer tariff schedule. Retrieved 2026-08-08. independence: primary; access: open.
2. [2]PaybillKE. "M-PESA Fees, Charges & Limits 2026" — full band tables used as a cross-check of the Safaricom schedule; agrees on every shipped value. Retrieved 2026-08-08. independence: secondary-check; access: open.
3. [3]PesaTrail. "M-PESA Charges 2026: Full Tariff Table" — second independent cross-check of send and withdrawal bands. Retrieved 2026-08-08. independence: secondary-check; access: open.
4. [4]Central Bank of Kenya. "National Payments System" — regulatory context for mobile-money oversight in Kenya. Retrieved 2026-08-08. independence: secondary-check; access: open.
5. [5]Safaricom PLC. "Annual Report and Financial Statements 2025" — scale of M-Pesa usage (35.82 million one-month active customers, KSh 38.29 trillion transacted FY25). Retrieved 2026-08-08. independence: primary; access: open.