Set up DeepSeek in Cline

Before you start

• VS Code with the Cline extension installed
• An API Store key (it starts with sk-) and some balance

Steps

1. Open the Cline panel and click the settings (gear) icon.
2. Set API Provider to OpenAI Compatible.
3. Fill in the three fields below and save.
4. Start a task. Cline shows the tokens and cost of each request.

Menu names can differ slightly between versions of the app.

Recommended settings

• Context window: 1M tokens
• Daily cap: set a daily spending cap on the key. Agents can run many requests in a row.

Troubleshooting

• 402 insufficient_balance or key_spend_cap. Top up, or raise the key's daily cap.
• 429 rate_limit_exceeded. Cline retries by itself; if it keeps happening, slow the task down or ask us for a higher limit.
• 429 too_many_failed_requests. The key is paused after many failed requests in a row. Fix the cause shown in the first error, then retry.

What it costs

deepseek-v4-1-flash: $0.21 input and $0.84 output per 1M tokens in peak hours, $0.105 and $0.42 off-peak. Input read from cache costs $0.0042.

Cached input is billed at the lower cache-hit price, which helps agents that resend long context.

All prices →