Getting Your API Keys
How to get a DeepSeek API key
The cheapest content generation available here — plus the data-residency question you should answer before sending client work through it.
What a DeepSeek key powers in Landio
DeepSeek's models write text: captions, hooks, post copy and inbox replies. No images, no video.
The reason to pick it is cost. Per thousand posts it lands well below the US vendors, which matters if you're generating at volume or running many client workspaces.
DeepSeek guarantees valid JSON but not a specific shape, so we describe the shape we need in the prompt and check the reply before using it. In practice that means the occasional generation fails and is retried rather than arriving malformed — a little less reliable than the vendors with strict structured output, at a fraction of the price.
Before you start
DeepSeek's API platform is separate from its chat app, and only the platform issues keys. Sign-up takes an email or a phone number.
DeepSeek is a Chinese company and API requests are served from infrastructure in China under its own terms. If your organisation has data-residency rules, or you're handling client material under a contract that specifies where it may be processed, read those terms before choosing this vendor. That's a real consideration here in a way it isn't for a US or EU provider.
Creating the key
The console is small and the whole flow is on one page.
Go to platform.deepseek.com and sign in or register.
Screenshot: The DeepSeek open platform home page with the sign-in button
Open Top up and add credit. DeepSeek is prepaid — a key without a balance authenticates but every call fails.
Screenshot: The DeepSeek billing page showing the top-up options
Open API keys and choose Create new API key. Name it after where it will be used.
Screenshot: The DeepSeek API keys page with the create key dialog open
Copy the key — it begins with sk- and is shown only once.
Screenshot: The newly created DeepSeek API key displayed with a one-time-only warning
Adding the key to Landio
Open AI Providers from the sidebar, find DeepSeek in the vendor list, paste the key, and save. DeepSeek then becomes a choice for content generation.
Keys are encrypted at rest and write-only — after saving, the page only tells you that a key exists, never what it is. That also means there's no way to read a key back out of us later, so keep the copy you saved at the vendor.
Adding a key doesn't unlock a feature; it changes who bills you for it. Every plan already includes an AI allowance, so drafting works before you do any of this. With your own key, that usage bills from DeepSeek at their rates instead of counting against the allowance.
You can add more than one key per vendor. Landio will either spread calls across them or treat the extras as failover spares, depending on how you configure that vendor — useful when one key is a paid account and the rest are backups.
Choosing a model
DeepSeek Chat is the default and the one to use for captions and short copy. DeepSeek Reasoner thinks before answering, which costs more and is slower; on social copy that rarely changes the result enough to justify it.
If something goes wrong
An insufficient balance error is the common one — the key is fine, the account is empty.
Long generations, like a large carousel plan, are the most likely to fail here: DeepSeek's output ceiling is lower than the other vendors'. If a big carousel keeps failing, either shorten it or generate that one with another provider.
Frequently asked questions
Is DeepSeek good enough for client work?
For captions and short copy, the quality gap against the mid-tier US models is small. The question that should decide it isn't quality, it's where the data goes — see the note above, and check your client contracts before defaulting a client workspace to it.
How much cheaper is it really?
Enough that it changes what's worth generating — roughly an order of magnitude below the flagship models for the same caption. If you're drafting a handful of posts a week, that difference is pennies and shouldn't drive your choice.
Does my data train their models?
Their terms govern this and have changed before, so read the current version rather than trusting a summary — including ours. If you need a contractual no-training guarantee, that generally means an enterprise agreement with a vendor that offers one.
Is it safe to paste an API key into a third-party app?
Keys are encrypted before storage and never displayed again after you save them. That said, the honest general answer is: give any third party the narrowest key you can, and keep the ability to revoke it. Where a vendor supports scoped or restricted keys, use one limited to the models Landio actually calls, and rotate it from the vendor's console if you ever stop using us.
This walkthrough was last checked against the provider's live console on . Providers redesign their dashboards without notice — if what you see doesn't match, the button names have probably moved rather than the process changing.
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