#AppArrives asBehind the top
1InstaremKES 51,361.53Most arrivesBest regular price this week. No visible fee, and the exchange rate is under 1 percent below the real market rate.
2WiseKES 50,848.00KES 513.53Real market rate, visible fee, arrives in seconds. About 514 shillings behind Instarem.
3Remitly (regular)KES 50,814.00KES 547.53No visible fee. The exchange rate takes about 1.75 percent.
4SkrillKES 50,267.12KES 1,094.41No visible fee. The exchange rate takes nearly 3 percent.
5Western UnionKES 50,169.44KES 1,192.09Sample is Tuesday's number in the Wise price comparison. Small visible fee, plus about 2 percent more in the rate.
6Xoom (PayPal)KES 48,823.60KES 2,537.93The least money arrived. Small visible fee, plus more than 4.5 percent in the exchange rate.
7Remitly (first send only)KES 51,069.00KES 292.53Promotional rate. Only on your first transfer, up to £600.
Checked Friday morning, 24 July: £300 from the UK to Kenya, sent through six apps. Between the best regular price this week and the worst named one, the gap came to 2,538 shillings. That is about £14.72.
Here is what each one delivered.
Rates checked Friday 24 July 2026, morning UK time. Wise's number is from Wise's live rate feed at around 5am UK time, alongside its own price comparison. Instarem, Skrill and Xoom are from that same comparison, all sampled around 04:30 this morning (between 04:26 and 04:31 UK time).
Western Union's number was last sampled by that comparison on Tuesday 21 July at 16:40 UK time, so treat it as a Tuesday snapshot, not this morning's. Remitly does not have a fresh sample there today, so both Remitly numbers are taken directly from the Remitly UK site this morning.
To sanity-check the exchange rate, we cross-referenced open.er-api.com, an independent source: it puts the rate at 173.15 shillings to the pound, within 0.5 percent of Wise's. The rate matches. The comparison does not split M-Pesa wallet delivery from bank deposit; you pick which one inside the app when you send.
LemFi, Taptap Send, Sendwave and WorldRemit do not show a fresh price on this route in the comparison today, so they are not in the table this week.
What to actually open
If you already have Instarem installedOr you do not mind setting up a new app, use Instarem.On £300 this week it delivered the most shillings of any regular price, with no fee. That is about £3 worth of shillings more than Wise.
If you do not want to open a new appUse Wise.On £300 this week Wise's visible fee was £5.04, and it gave 514 shillings less than Instarem, which is about £3. The exchange rate is the real market rate, and the money arrives in seconds.
Do not open Xoom for this send unless there is no other option.The visible £2.99 fee looks small. The full cost, once you add the fee and the gap to the real market rate, comes to about £16.78 on £300. That is £14.72 more than Instarem took, for the same £300 sent, on the same morning.
Western Union sits between the two on the current sample, and their sample is 3 days old.Even at that Tuesday snapshot they were taking about £8.98 in total on £300, once you add the visible £2.99 fee and the gap to the real market rate.
Remitly's regular price is close to Wise this week: 34 shillings behind, or about 20 pence.If you are already a Remitly customer, Instarem is still the better answer for this send.
If you are a new Remitly customerTheir first-transfer rate of 170.23 shillings to the pound, with no fee, beats Wise by 221 shillings on £300, about £1.30.It does not beat Instarem's regular price. The offer is only on your first transfer, up to £600. If you were going to open Remitly anyway, take the first-transfer rate; if not, Instarem is still the number to beat.
For the whole route in one place, see how to send money to Kenya.
One thing the table cannot show
The table tells you how much of your £300 arrived as shillings. It does not tell you what those shillings then cost to move around.
If you send to an M-Pesa wallet, the shillings arrive there. What is easy to miss is that Safaricom charges the recipient a small fee to move that money onward, and a bigger one to cash it out at an M-Pesa agent. On a £300 send that arrives as about 51,000 shillings, sending it onward to another wallet costs 108 shillings, a little over 60 pence. Cashing it out at an M-Pesa agent costs 309 shillings, close to £1.80.
Those are small numbers next to the £14.72 that a bad app took at the top of this piece. They are what the receiver actually pays, out of what arrived.
Airtel Money in Kenya recently raised its fees for sending to M-Pesa. Read plainly, that is a fee the recipient pays on money already in their Airtel wallet, not a fee on your UK send. If the person you send to uses Safaricom's own M-Pesa, nothing has changed for them. If they use Airtel Money and forward the money onward to a Safaricom wallet, that hop just got more expensive on their side.
Next Friday: another country, another number.
Corrections
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said Remitly's offer applied to the first £600 you ever send with them, and gave that as a reason it was not the right answer this week. The page now says your first transfer, up to £600.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page's summary said the £14.72 gap was hidden in the exchange rate. £2.99 of it was Xoom's visible fee, so those words are gone.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page called Wise the safe default and the safest, best-known option, and said a lot of senders would pay the £3 for it. We have no source for this, so the words are gone.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said most people sending to Kenya send to M-Pesa, that most receivers use it, and that most of the receiver's cost never comes out if the money stays in the wallet. We have no source for these, so the lines are gone.
- 2026-07-26: An earlier version of this page said Instarem, Skrill and Xoom were "all sampled just before 04:30 this morning" in the Wise price comparison. Two of the three (Instarem at 04:26 UK time, Xoom at 04:29 UK time) were sampled before 04:30, but Skrill was sampled at 04:31 UK time - one minute after. The line has been rewritten to "around 04:30 this morning (between 04:26 and 04:31 UK time)". The delivered shillings, fees and rates in the table are unchanged; only the sampling-window wording was wrong.
- 2026-07-24: An earlier version of this page said Remitly's regular price took "just under 1 percent" in the exchange rate on £300 to Kenya. It takes about 1.75 percent. The rate shown in the table (169.38 shillings to the pound), the £0 visible fee, and the "34 shillings behind Wise, or about 20 pence" line in the body were all correct; only the percentage phrase was wrong. The table row now reads "about 1.75 percent".