Integrate Deepseek into Google Sheets
Recently, Deepseek launched their own AI chatbot to compete with the giants at ChatGPT. Along with the launch of the chat bot, they also opened up access to their API (this had been paused for a while, but has recently been re-opened). And, oh boy, it is cheap! I just used it to generate 400 meta descriptions and it used $0.01!
This allows us to use their API model to integrate into a wide range of tools to make your workload more productive and efficient, whether its creating content or performing in depth analysis.
But you don't need to be an expert coder to make this work. I have created a Google Sheet which can allow you to get responses to 100s of prompts in seconds, no coding required. Just download the sheet and off you go.
How to use
Step 1 - Get your API key here and paste into the settings tab https://platform.deepseek.com/api_keys. You will need to top up your account before you use it, but this can be done from as little at $2 USD.
Step 2 - Edit the system prompt in the settings tab. This provides instructions for all the responses that the AI provides to help customize your results (this can be left blank if you don't need it)
Step 3 - In the main sheet, use the formula =deepseek("prompt") to generate your responses, where "prompt" is the question that you're looking to ask the AI.
I have set the template up as a meta description generator, but this is purely for inspiration. You can update it to use whatever prompt you like.
Considerations
At the time of writing this, the API had been available for less than 24 hours. Therefore, it was very slow and would sometimes time out. If this happens, try using later in the day when the servers are less busy. Deepseek currently offer a hefty discount for those using the tool between 16:30-00:30 UTC daily, which suggests that this is definitely the best time for running large numbers of requests.
In the settings tab in the template, you can select your AI model. The default model is deepseek-chat, otherwise known as DeepSeek-V3, this is the basic AI model, perfect for general chat or simple content. You can also set this to deepseek-reasoner, also known as DeepSeek-R1, this is the more advanced chat bot to be used for more detailed analysis.