{"slug": "claude-openrouter-deepseek-v4-flash", "title": "claude-openrouter-deepseek-v4-flash", "summary": "A developer has published a guide for configuring Anthropic's Claude Code CLI to route requests through OpenRouter, enabling the use of DeepSeek's v4 Flash model instead of Anthropic's default models. The setup involves installing Claude Code, setting environment variables for the OpenRouter API key and base URL, and optionally configuring sub-agents to use the same model. The guide includes verification steps to confirm requests are processed by the desired model via the OpenRouter Activity dashboard.", "body_md": "\n\n```\nnpm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code\n```\n\n- Create an OpenRouter account.\n- Generate an API key (\n`sk-or-v1-...`\n\n). - Add credits if you're using paid models.\n\nAdd the following environment variables to your `~/.zshrc`\n\nor `~/.bashrc`\n\n:\n\n```\nexport OPENROUTER_API_KEY=\"sk-or-v1-...\"\n\nexport ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=\"https://openrouter.ai/api\"\nexport ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN=\"$OPENROUTER_API_KEY\"\nexport ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=\"\"\n```\n\nRestart your terminal after saving the changes.\n\n```\nexport ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL=\"deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash\"\nexport ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL=\"deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash\"\nexport ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL=\"deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash\"\n```\n\n(Optional) Configure Claude Code sub-agents to use the same model:\n\n```\nexport CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL=\"deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash\"\n```\n\nIf you've previously logged into Claude Code using Anthropic, run:\n\n```\n/logout\n```\n\nThen restart Claude Code to avoid authentication conflicts.\n\nStart Claude Code:\n\n```\nclaude\n```\n\nInside Claude Code, run:\n\n```\n/status\n```\n\nVerify that:\n\n**Anthropic Base URL** is`https://openrouter.ai/api`\n\n**Auth Token** is`ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN`\n\nFinally, send a prompt and open the **OpenRouter Activity** dashboard to confirm the request is being processed by:\n\n```\ndeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash\n```\n\n", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-openrouter-deepseek-v4-flash", "canonical_source": "https://gist.github.com/iam-veeramalla/11dc1508f1557a0d6b6d59702b83c0ee", "published_at": "2026-08-07 08:56:13+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-10 10:39:06.571172+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools", "large-language-models", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["Anthropic", "Claude Code", "OpenRouter", "DeepSeek"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-openrouter-deepseek-v4-flash", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-openrouter-deepseek-v4-flash.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-openrouter-deepseek-v4-flash.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-openrouter-deepseek-v4-flash.jsonld"}}