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Pi is a coding agent. It doesn’t ship DeepInfra as a built-in provider, but it works with any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — so you can add DeepInfra as a custom provider and run any LLM from our catalog.

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Configure the provider

Add a deepinfra provider to your Pi configuration. See Pi’s custom provider docs for where the config file lives. 
{
  "providers": {
    "deepinfra": {
      "name": "DeepInfra",
      "baseUrl": "https://api.deepinfra.com/v1/openai",
      "apiKey": "$DEEPINFRA_TOKEN",
      "api": "openai-completions",
      "models": [
        {
          "id": "deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash",
          "name": "DeepSeek V4 Flash",
          "reasoning": true,
          "input": ["text"],
          "cost": { "input": 0.09, "output": 0.18, "cacheRead": 0.018 },
          "compat": {
            "supportsDeveloperRole": false,
            "thinkingFormat": "deepseek"
          },
          "contextWindow": 1048576,
          "maxTokens": 65536
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}
Get your API key from the Dashboard.

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Run it

Set your API key in the environment and launch Pi against the model: 
export DEEPINFRA_TOKEN=<your DeepInfra API token>
pi --model deepinfra/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash

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Notes on the values

  • id (deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash) must match exactly — it’s case-sensitive and is passed straight through as the model name.
  • The compat block applies to DeepSeek models only — omit it for other models:
    • supportsDeveloperRole: false is required for DeepSeek models. Because they’re marked "reasoning": true, Pi defaults to sending the system prompt with the OpenAI-only developer role, which is rejected with a 422 error. This setting makes Pi use the standard system role instead.
    • thinkingFormat: "deepseek" matches how DeepSeek models stream reasoning tokens (as reasoning_content), so the model’s thinking renders properly in Pi.
  • contextWindow is the model’s full 1M-token window. maxTokens (65536) is just a per-request output cap you can raise or lower to taste.
  • The cost block only drives Pi’s local spend display; the numbers above are DeepInfra’s current per-million-token rates for this model, but they don’t affect requests either way.
To get the current context window and pricing for this or any other model, fetch /v1/openai/models?filter=with_meta, or see the model’s page.

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Troubleshooting

422 role validation error — an error like: 
Error: 422: {"message":"Input should be <ChatMessageRole.TOOL: 'tool'>", ..., "param":"messages.0...role"}
means Pi sent the system prompt with the developer role, which isn’t accepted. This happens by default with DeepSeek models because they’re configured with "reasoning": true. Fix it by adding "compat": { "supportsDeveloperRole": false } to the model entry, as shown in the config above. 401 / 402 errors — if requests fail even though the config looks right, confirm your API key and balance with a direct API call. This bypasses Pi entirely and tells you whether the issue is your DeepInfra account or the Pi config: 
curl -s https://api.deepinfra.com/v1/openai/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DEEPINFRA_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Say hello in one word."}]
  }'
If this returns a normal completion, your key and balance are good. A 401 means the key is wrong; a 402/quota error means the account needs funding.

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Learn more

Custom providers

Pi’s guide to defining a custom provider.

Providers overview

How Pi handles providers and models.

Chat Completions

DeepInfra’s OpenAI-compatible API.

Authentication

API keys and scoped JWTs.