You can now use DeepSeek directly in Claude Code

Claude Code is a tool from the AI company Anthropic in which an AI assistant helps write and fix computer code directly from the terminal. Until now, the tool has been built to run on Anthropic's own Claude models. But the Chinese AI company DeepSeek has now created a technical solution that makes it possible to use its models instead, without having to leave Claude Code.

The solution is that DeepSeek has created a special web address (an API) designed to speak the same language as Anthropic's own service. By changing a couple of settings on the computer (a web address and a password for DeepSeek's service), you can get Claude Code to fetch answers from DeepSeek instead of Anthropic. The program translates the names itself, so DeepSeek's cheap model corresponds to Claude's "light" Haiku and Sonnet models, while a more powerful DeepSeek model replaces the expensive Opus model.

The big lure is the price. According to a test by the tech site GenAI Unplugged, a typical coding task cost about 32 US cents with Anthropic's Opus model, while the same task cost less than half a cent with DeepSeek's cheapest model, up to 98 percent cheaper. Other measurements point to similar, if somewhat smaller, differences, and in August DeepSeek raised prices during busy periods, so the savings vary.

There are also several free, open-source tools such as Claude Code Router and CC Switch that make it even easier to connect Claude Code to many different AI companies, including DeepSeek, Google and OpenAI, from the same place.

However, the solution is not officially supported by Anthropic. If you switch to DeepSeek, you lose some features that only work with Anthropic's own models, and you have to make sure yourself that you don't accidentally use your regular Claude access.

For ordinary users of Claude Code, the news means there is now a concrete, cheaper alternative if the bill for AI coding help gets too high, without having to learn an entirely new program.