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Crouton Alpha: The Free Stealth Model, What’s Known and How to Use It

November 3, 2026 Blog
Two tall wordless bars of nearly equal height standing for Crouton Alpha's context window and longest answer

What you actually get today

Crouton Alpha: Preview or beta.

Where Who Status Notes
OpenRouter API, model ID stealth/crouton-alpha Anyone with an OpenRouter account and API key Preview or beta OpenRouter does not say every account in this group has it. Free stealth preview that OpenRouter can remove at any time. (source)
Command Code, cmd –model stealth/crouton-alpha Command Code users Preview or beta OpenRouter does not say every account in this group has it. Listed as free on Command Code's own model page. (source)

Not included:

  • Image, audio or video output: Crouton Alpha answers in text only (source)
  • The maker's name, the model's size and any downloadable weights (source)
  • Regions: Not stated in the OpenRouter pages we checked.
  • Price: $0 per million input and output tokens during the stealth preview (source)
  • Limits: 1,048,576-token context window and answers of up to 943,718 tokens (source)
  • Tested by Kingy: Not tested by Kingy.

Checked against OpenRouter’s own pages on Nov 4, 2026, 02:13 UTC. Rollouts change in the first days; this box is re-checked for 72 hours.

Crouton Alpha is a new anonymous AI model that OpenRouter listed at 01:38 UTC on November 3, 2026. It is free to use while the preview lasts, reads text, images, files, audio and video, and has a context window of just over one million tokens. Nobody has said who made it: OpenRouter’s listing says a third-party provider runs it and has chosen to stay anonymous during the preview. This page sets out what is confirmed, how to try it for free, what happens to your prompts, and what is still unknown.

What OpenRouter’s listing says

OpenRouter describes Crouton Alpha as a lightweight model for coding, agent sub-tasks, tool use and document analysis, aimed at work that repeats many times a day. The listing suggests pairing it with a stronger reasoning model, so that model makes the plan and Crouton Alpha carries out the smaller, well-defined steps.

The details in OpenRouter’s public model list, read on November 3:

  • Inputs: text, images, files, audio and video. Output: text only.
  • Context window: 1,048,576 tokens. Longest answer: up to 943,718 tokens.
  • Reasoning is always on. It cannot be switched off, and the default effort is “max”. The effort can be set to max, xhigh, high, medium, low or minimal.
  • Tools and structured output: it supports tools, structured outputs and a response format. Per its endpoint details, tool choice can only be left on “auto”; forcing a specific tool is not supported.
  • API formats: chat completions, completions, messages and responses.
  • Price: $0 for input and output tokens.
  • Knowledge cutoff and end date: both left blank.
Bar chart of Crouton Alpha's limits on OpenRouter: a 1,048,576-token context window and answers of up to 943,718 tokens

The two limits are close: nearly the whole window can go to the answer. In practice, a long answer with reasoning on “max” can take a long time to come back, so for quick sub-tasks a lower effort setting is the obvious first thing to try.

How to use Crouton Alpha for free

Through OpenRouter. Create an OpenRouter API key, then send requests with the model ID stealth/crouton-alpha. Free does not mean unlimited: OpenRouter’s limits page says free-model requests are capped per minute and per day, and that an account with a negative credit balance can get errors even on free models. A GET request to /api/v1/key with your key shows how many free-model requests you have left today.

In OpenCode. OpenCode’s provider guide covers OpenRouter: run /connect, search for OpenRouter and paste your key. If stealth/crouton-alpha is not in the /models list yet, add it under the openrouter provider’s models in opencode.json.

In Command Code. Command Code’s model page lists Crouton Alpha as free and gives the command cmd --model stealth/crouton-alpha.

Privacy: what happens to your prompts

The listing says: “Prompts and completions may be retained by the provider but are not used for training.” The rest is set by OpenRouter’s Stealth Program terms, which say your content may be collected and shared with the anonymous provider, and that OpenRouter may not tell you who that provider is. Do not send passwords, client files, personal details or anything else confidential to a model whose maker you cannot name.

How long will it stay free?

Nobody has said. The same terms describe stealth models as free for a limited period, removable at any time, with or without notice, and the listing has no end date. The last stealth model Kingy followed, Ox Alpha, was listed on August 20, 2026, and its maker named it six days later, on August 26, as Z.ai’s GLM-5.3-Flash. That is one example, not a rule. Details are in our Ox Alpha page.

What is still unknown

  • Who made it. The listing does not say, and OpenRouter’s endpoint details name the provider only as “Stealth”. We are not guessing.
  • Size and weights. No parameter count, no downloadable weights, and the quantization is listed as “unknown”.
  • Price after the preview. Not stated anywhere we checked.
  • Benchmarks. No official scores. Command Code shows its intelligence and coding indexes as not yet scored.
  • Reliability. OpenRouter showed about 93% uptime over the past day when we checked at 02:13 UTC on November 4, so expect some failed requests while the preview settles.

What Kingy tested

Not tested by Kingy. We have not run Crouton Alpha ourselves yet. Everything above comes from OpenRouter’s and Command Code’s own pages. We will update this page when the maker is named or the listing changes.

Sources

Revision log

  • Nov 3, 2026: first published.