"Using DeepSeek API outside China without a Chinese phone number"

#llm #api #tutorial #deepseek

If you've tried to sign up for DeepSeek's official API from outside China, you already know the wall. It asks for a mainland China phone number to verify your account. No number, no API key. For most developers outside China, the conversation ends right there.

I ran into this exact problem and found a way around it that doesn't involve buying a virtual number or asking a friend in China for a favor. Here's the whole thing, including the code, so you can be calling DeepSeek in about five minutes.

What actually blocks you

DeepSeek's own platform gates API access behind real-name verification tied to a Chinese phone number. On top of that, topping up the balance usually means a Chinese payment method — Alipay, WeChat Pay, or a Chinese bank card. If you have neither the number nor the payment rail, you're stuck even though the model itself is fully documented and works great.

A lot of guides suggest workarounds. Some of them are sketchy, and some are outright against the platform's terms. You don't need any of that.

The way around it: an OpenAI-compatible endpoint

DeepSeek's model is exposed through an OpenAI-compatible API. That means anything that can talk to OpenAI can talk to DeepSeek, as long as it's pointed at the right base URL. The practical trick: use a gateway that hosts DeepSeek and the other open Chinese models, then talk to it with your normal OpenAI client code. The gateway handles the China-side signup and payment, so you never touch a phone number or a Chinese payment method.

There are a few of these. The one I use is keheai.com, mostly because it's dead simple and doesn't make you jump through hoops. But the code below works with any OpenAI-compatible gateway — swap the base URL and you're done.

The code

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://keheai.com/v1",
    api_key="YOUR_KEY",  # from keheai.com/register — free trial quota, no card needed
)

resp = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="deepseek-chat",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Explain the halting problem in one paragraph."}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)

Same thing with curl, for when you don't want a Python dependency:

curl https://keheai.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model":"deepseek-chat","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello from outside China"}]}'

That's it. If you already use the OpenAI SDK or the Claude Code / Cursor style of pointing a tool at a custom backend, the only thing that changes is the two env vars: OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://keheai.com/v1 and OPENAI_API_KEY=YOUR_KEY.

Why DeepSeek specifically

DeepSeek's chat model is one of the best cost-to-performance ratios around right now, and the reasoning variant (deepseek-reasoner) is genuinely good at math and multi-step problems. If you've been locked out purely by the signup wall, you're missing a solid tool, not a novelty. The same gateway also exposes GLM, Kimi, Qwen, and MiniMax under the same key, so you're not locked into one lab.

The honest caveats

You're going through a third party, not DeepSeek directly. That means a small markup on the per-token price, and you should read their data policy before sending anything sensitive.
It's a gateway, not magic. If you need a hard SLA or a specific enterprise compliance cert, you should be talking to the lab directly — and that generally means the China signup anyway.
Pricing is usage-based and shows clearly on the pricing page, so there's no "free forever then surprise bill" structure. The signup trial quota is enough to test the code above without entering a card.

I'm not affiliated with the gateway. I hit the phone-number wall, found this route, and it's worked reliably for the past few weeks. If you've been stuck on the same wall, this gets you unblocked in about five minutes.

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