DeepSeek shook the market in January 2025 with its R1 model, which matched leading OpenAI models on a number of standard benchmarks at a fraction of the reported development cost. The main technical idea behind DeepSeek is a mixture-of-experts architecture, where only the relevant parts of the model are activated for each request. This saves computing resources and keeps prices low.
Here is how to connect the DeepSeek API to Excel and process prompts in bulk right from a sheet.
Main advantages of the DeepSeek API
- Low cost: the API is among the cheapest for models of this level. Check the current prices on the official DeepSeek pricing page, they change often.
- Free web access to the chat for manual work.
- Open model weights: you can also run DeepSeek models locally or through OpenRouter.
Install the !SEMTools add-in
If your Excel doesn’t have the !SEMTools Pro tab yet, download and install the add-in first. Follow the installation guide carefully and come back here when you’re done.
How to get a DeepSeek API key
You get the key in your account on the DeepSeek API platform: sign up on the official website, top up the balance, open the API keys section and create a new key.
To save the key in the add-in, there is a separate procedure in the AI menu on the !SEMTools tab:
Paste the key into the box and click OK. It’s saved in the add-in file for future use, so you won’t have to enter it again. Keep in mind: if you share your .xlam file, others will be able to use your key.
Bulk processing of prompts
Prepare the list of prompts, select it and run the “Process list of prompts” procedure. To turn your data into prompts, add a common prefix with the Insert text at the beginning procedure from the Change cells menu, for example “Classify this review as positive, negative or neutral: ”. The answers appear in the next column.
In the trial version of !SEMTools, about 2/3 of the prompts are processed. The other 1/3 of the cells are replaced with the note “Available in the full version”, and no API request is made for them.
DeepSeek models for free
Since DeepSeek publishes its models, you can also use them for free. OpenRouter offers free versions of some DeepSeek models through the same kind of API, see the OpenRouter setup guide.
You can also run the model locally on your own computer with Ollama. For reasonable results you’ll need a powerful graphics card and plenty of memory, but you can be completely sure your data doesn’t leave your computer.
Process thousands of prompts with the DeepSeek API right from an Excel sheet and get the answers in the next column.
!SEMTools solves this and hundreds of other tasks in a couple of clicks!
Summary
I hope you found what you were looking for on this page and were able to connect DeepSeek to Excel. Get a key, save it in !SEMTools and process whole columns of prompts. More scenarios are in the article on working with AI in Excel.