Crouton Alpha: OpenRouter's Free Stealth Model

What Crouton Alpha is

Crouton Alpha is a code name, not a product name. It is listed on OpenRouter, the multi-provider router, as a free model aimed at the work agents do repeatedly: coding, tool use, and mixed text-and-image input. That pattern is how several recent frontier models first appeared — anonymous listing, benchmark screenshots in developer communities, then an official name a few weeks later. Until that announcement, every capability claim about the model is provisional, including the context window.

What is confirmed so far (2026-11-04)

This is the short list of facts that hold today. Anything not on it — parameter count, training recipe, benchmark scores, the lab behind it — is not public.

• Listed on OpenRouter as a free stealth model under the code name Crouton Alpha.
• Positioned for coding, agentic and multimodal workflows; OpenRouter's own launch post calls it a highly efficient reasoning model built to handle work agents repeat all day.
• Served through OpenRouter's OpenAI-compatible chat completions endpoint, so existing OpenAI SDK code works with a base URL and model ID change.
• Reported 1M token context — a third-party figure from launch-week write-ups, not an official spec sheet. Confirm on the listing before you design around it.
• The developer has not been disclosed. Community guesses about which lab is behind it are unconfirmed and change from day to day.
• No public paid tier, no public SLA, and no data-processing commitment published specifically for this code name.

How to call Crouton Alpha

Register for TokenRa, open the dashboard, create an API key, confirm that Crouton Alpha is enabled for your account, and then send an OpenAI-compatible request from your server. Keep the key private and verify the live model identifier before production use.

curl https://tokenra.io/v1/chat/completions   -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"   -H "Content-Type: application/json"   -d '{"model":"crouton-alpha","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"YOUR_TEST_PROMPT"}]}'

Who is behind Crouton Alpha?

Nobody has said, and that is the honest answer. The model is published under a code name with no developer named, no model card, and no weight release. Launch-week discussion in developer forums has already produced guesses — one write-up argues from serving behaviour and output style that it is a Meta release — but a guess is not evidence.

What you can check for yourself: OpenRouter sometimes lists an upstream provider or a data-policy hint on the model page, and the response headers or billing line can name the provider that actually served your request. Those are first-hand signals. Screenshots in a forum are not. If a name does get published, this page will say which lab it turned out to be and where it is available through TokenRa.

Need a paid, documented API instead?

A free stealth model is fine for evaluating output quality. It is a poor foundation for production: the name changes when the model is unveiled, limits move, and there is no commercial agreement behind it. If you are shipping, route the same request to a model with published rates and a stable identifier.

How Crouton Alpha compares to earlier stealth releases

Every code name in this table followed the same path: anonymous listing, free or discounted preview, then either an official name or a quiet shutdown. The last row is a reminder that some of them simply disappear.

Dates and status are recorded when each page is updated. Open the linked page for current rates and the disclosed developer. The "listed by" column names the service that published the code name, not the lab that trained it.

What to watch next

Four signals tell you the preview is turning into a real product, and the first one usually shows up in developer communities rather than in an announcement.

• An official name appears. The listing switches from a food-themed code name to a vendor plus version number.
• A paid tier is published. Per-token rates and a rate-limit table mean the model is becoming a commercial offer.
• The free listing disappears. Silence is also an answer: some previews end without ever getting a name.
• Benchmarks get claimed by a vendor. Until the lab speaks, treat any score screenshot as unverified — including the ones driving the current search spike.

If you are evaluating Crouton Alpha for a real workload, record your own results now: same prompts, same scoring, run against the paid model you would use instead. When the name is published, that comparison is the only thing that still has value.

Before you send anything: data handling

Free previews are usually free because the operator wants evaluation data — and here there are two parties to consider. OpenRouter routes your request, and the unnamed upstream provider generates the completion. With a code-named model there is no model card to check and no data-processing commitment published under that name.

Treat every prompt as readable by both parties: do not send customer records, credentials, regulated data, or anything you would not put in a public issue. If your use case requires a data policy you can point a client at, use a model whose provider publishes one — that is what the paid catalog is for.

Crouton Alpha FAQ

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