Confusing “run out of credits” error with OpenRouter DeepSeek V4 Pro model

I ran into a confusing issue while deploying OpenClaw. My setup was using the model: `openrouter/deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro` When I tried to run it, OpenClaw returned this error: > API provider returned a billing error — your API key has run out of credits or has an insufficient balance. Check your provider's billing dashboard and top up or switch to a different API key. Because of that message, I assumed the problem was with my OpenRouter account or billing. I checked the OpenRouter dashboard, verified my API key, and went through the OpenClaw configuration multiple times, but I couldn’t find anything wrong. After wasting a lot of time debugging in that direction, I switched to another model, and everything started working immediately. So the issue was not that the error existed, but that the error message sent me in the wrong debugging direction. Has anyone else run into this with `openrouter/deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro`? I’m trying to understand whether this is mainly an OpenClaw issue, an OpenRouter issue, or a DeepSeek/provider-side issue. Either way, I think the error message could use more context, because “run out of credits” made me spend hours checking the wrong thing.