DeepSeek LLM

Overview

DeepSeek models are available in LiveKit Agents through LiveKit Inference and the DeepSeek plugin. With LiveKit Inference, your agent runs on LiveKit's infrastructure to minimize latency. No separate provider API key is required, and usage and rate limits are managed through LiveKit Cloud. Use the plugin instead if you want to manage your own billing and rate limits. Pricing for LiveKit Inference is available on the pricing page.

LiveKit Inference

Use LiveKit Inference to access DeepSeek models without a separate DeepSeek API key.

Usage

To use DeepSeek, use the LLM class from the inference module. You can use this LLM in the Voice AI quickstart:

from livekit.agents import AgentSession, inference

session = AgentSession(
    llm=inference.LLM(
        model="deepseek-ai/deepseek-v3",
        provider="baseten",
        extra_kwargs={
            "max_tokens": 1000
        }
    ),
    # ... tts, stt, vad, turn_handling, etc.
)

import { AgentSession, inference } from '@livekit/agents';

const session = new AgentSession({
    llm: new inference.LLM({
        model: "deepseek-ai/deepseek-v3",
        provider: "baseten",
        modelOptions: {
            max_tokens: 1000
        }
    }),
    // ... tts, stt, vad, turnHandling, etc.
});

Parameters

The following are parameters for configuring DeepSeek models with LiveKit Inference. For model behavior parameters like temperature and max_tokens, see model parameters.

Model parameters

Pass the following parameters inside extra_kwargs (Python) or modelOptions (Node.js). For more details about each parameter in the list, see Inference parameters.

String descriptors

As a shortcut, you can also pass a model ID string directly to the llm argument in your AgentSession:

from livekit.agents import AgentSession

session = AgentSession(
    llm="deepseek-ai/deepseek-v3",
    # ... tts, stt, vad, turn_handling, etc.
)

import { AgentSession } from '@livekit/agents';

const session = new AgentSession({
    llm: "deepseek-ai/deepseek-v3",
    // ... tts, stt, vad, turnHandling, etc.
});

Plugin

LiveKit's plugin support for DeepSeek lets you connect directly to DeepSeek's API with your own API key.

Usage

Use the OpenAI plugin's with_deepseek method to set the default agent session LLM to DeepSeek:

uv add "livekit-agents[openai]~=1.4"

pnpm add @livekit/agents-plugin-openai@1.x

Set the following environment variable in your .env file:

DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=<your-deepseek-api-key>

You can use this LLM in the Voice AI quickstart:

from livekit.plugins import openai

session = AgentSession(
    llm=openai.LLM.with_deepseek(
        model="deepseek-chat", # this is DeepSeek-V3
    ),
)

import * as openai from '@livekit/agents-plugin-openai';

const session = new voice.AgentSession({
   llm: openai.LLM.withDeepSeek({
    model: "deepseek-chat",  // this is DeepSeek-V3
   })
});

Parameters

This section describes some of the available parameters. For a complete reference of all available parameters, see the plugin reference links in the Additional resources section.

Additional resources

The following links provide more information about the DeepSeek LLM integration.

Python plugin

ReferenceGitHubPyPI

Node.js plugin

ReferenceGitHubNPM

DeepSeek docs

DeepSeek API documentation.

Voice AI quickstart

Get started with LiveKit Agents and DeepSeek.