DeepClaude Lets You Run Claude Code With DeepSeek's Mind for 17x Cheaper – Decrypt

A brand new open-source software referred to as DeepClaude lets builders run Claude Code—Anthropic’s autonomous coding agent—with DeepSeek’s mannequin below the hood.

Pushed to GitHub by a developer going by aattaran, the undertaking payments itself as the identical Claude Code expertise at “17x cheaper.” It is a easy bash and PowerShell script — nothing fancy, no fork, no rewrite.

Utilizing the software, you too can run Claude Code with different backends like OpenRouter, or Fireworks AI—not simply DeepSeek, although that’s apparently the principle draw.

The trick is atmosphere variables. Claude Code reads a handful of them to determine the place to ship API calls. DeepClaude rewrites these during a session, factors them at a less expensive backend, then restores the originals once you exit.

The command line software itself does not change. File studying, modifying, bash execution, multi-step software loops, subagent spawning, all of it nonetheless works. Solely the mannequin doing the pondering is completely different.

However the “software loop” is the entire level of Claude Code. Once you ask Claude to repair a bug, it does not reply in a single shot. It reads recordsdata, runs instructions, sees the output, decides what to do subsequent, edits one thing, runs your exams, reads the failures, tries once more. So it’s a course of that includes pondering, appearing, observing, pondering once more, dozens of occasions, till the job is completed.

That cycle is what folks imply by “autonomous agent loop.” You give one instruction, the mannequin takes thirty steps. It is also the half that burns via tokens—and thru your Anthropic finances.

DeepClaude retains the loop intact and simply swaps which mannequin is making the selections inside it.

The mathematics is simple. Anthropic’s Max 20x plan, which supplies heavy customers full Claude Code entry, runs $200 a month. DeepSeek V4 Professional via OpenRouter at present prices $0.435 per million enter tokens and $0.87 per million output—a promotional fee that expires Could 31, 2026, after which it doubles. Even at full value, it is drastically cheaper than Anthropic’s API.

By default, DeepClaude routes site visitors to DeepSeek V4 Professional, the 1.6 trillion-parameter open-weight AI behemoth mannequin that Hangzhou-based DeepSeek launched on April 24. (Parameters, for the uninitiated, are what decide a mannequin’s capability—the extra parameters, the broader the mannequin’s breadth of data.)

DeepSeek V4 Professional scores 93.5% on LiveCodeBench—a benchmark that runs fashions on contemporary aggressive programming issues, which means DeepSeek solved 93.5% of the duties—inserting it forward of each Gemini 3.1 Professional and Claude Opus 4.6.

Some issues are nonetheless a bit tough across the edges. Picture enter does not work. DeepSeek’s Anthropic-compatible endpoint does not assist imaginative and prescient. Parallel software calls are disabled. MCP server integrations do not cross via. And on exhausting reasoning duties, the “readme” file itself concedes Claude Opus remains to be stronger.

That mentioned, for reasoning, coding, and inventive duties, this implementation is a really highly effective and environment friendly resolution to make use of.

A little bit of context for why this exists: On March 31, Anthropic by accident shipped Claude Code’s full supply map to npm, exposing 512,000 traces of TypeScript. The leak triggered a wave of clones, Python rewrites, and instruments that hook into Claude Code’s now well-documented internals.

DeepClaude is the pure subsequent step. It does not fork the code, however it exploits the truth that Claude Code’s backend is, by design, swappable.

There’s additionally a “distant management” mode that opens a Claude Code session in any browser by way of a claude.ai/code/session_… URL, with DeepSeek nonetheless doing the mannequin work. That one requires a Claude.ai subscription, since Anthropic’s WebSocket bridge is hardcoded.

Whether or not Anthropic will care is one other query. Claude Code is a paid product, however the API endpoints are open by design, the corporate constructed them to be Anthropic-compatible for third-party adoption. DeepClaude turns that compatibility outward.

The repo at present sits at nearly a thousand stars and two forks. DeepSeek’s promotional pricing ends Could 31.