DeepSeek-V4 Quick Start

This tutorial helps you complete your first DeepSeek V4 API call in about 5 minutes.

Prerequisites

• A DeepSeek API key from platform.deepseek.com
• Python 3.8+ or any HTTP-capable runtime

Step 1: Install the SDK

pip install openai

The DeepSeek API is fully OpenAI-compatible — you only need to change base_url.

Step 2: Send Your First Message

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    api_key="your-api-key",
    base_url="https://api.deepseek.com/v1"
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="deepseek-v4-pro",
    messages=[
        {"role": "user", "content": "Hello, DeepSeek V4!"}
    ]
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Step 3: Choose the Right Model

• deepseek-v4-pro: Complex reasoning, long documents, code generation
• deepseek-v4-flash: Fast chat, simple tasks, high-concurrency workloads

Next Steps

Read API Integration for streaming, function calling, and error handling.