Is Union Alpha free?
Short answer: yes today, verified against the catalogue — and treated as a countdown, not a price. Here is exactly what “free” means on an anonymous endpoint, what the two previous Alpha models did when their windows closed, and how to check the number yourself in ten seconds.
Today, in one table
| Field | Value | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Model id | stealth/union-alpha | Verified |
| Price per million, in / out | $0 / $0 | Verified 2026-09-17 |
| Expected price after the preview | ≈ $0.50 in / $1.50 out per million | Claim, third-party |
| Notice before it changes | None published | Assume there is none |
What “free” means on a stealth endpoint
A stealth preview is a lab testing an unreleased model in public. The free price is the incentive to get people to use it: you supply the traffic and the feedback, the lab supplies the compute. That arrangement ends when the test does.
It also means the endpoint has no commercial obligations to you — no SLA, no published data-retention terms, no support channel and no notice period. Everything on this page is written with that in mind.
What happened to the last two Alpha models
This is the closest thing to a forecast that exists, and it is a precedent rather than a rule.
| Codename | Revealed as | What happened to the free window |
|---|---|---|
| Hunter Alpha | Xiaomi MiMo-V2.5 | Repriced as a normal paid model after the reveal |
| OX Alpha | Z.ai GLM 5.3 Flash | Folded into the vendor's own lineup at its list price |
| Union Alpha | Still anonymous | $0 today; the maker has published nothing |
Deeper background: how the Alpha line works.
Checking the price yourself
- 1. Ask our status endpoint. /api/union-alpha/status reads the catalogue live and returns the current price, context window and whether the model is still listed.
- 2. Or read the listing. OpenRouter shows the per-million price on the model page .
- 3. Watch for the reveal, not the price. The price changes when the identity does. If a lab claims the model, the free tier is on borrowed time.
If you are building on it
- • Keep a fallback model configured and tested, so a delisting is a config change rather than an outage.
- • Log which model served each request — an anonymous endpoint that disappears is hard to reason about after the fact.
- • Keep secrets and other people's data out of the prompts. No data policy has been published to trust.
- • Budget for the reported post-preview price rather than the current $0, so the free window is upside, not a dependency.
FAQ
Is Union Alpha free right now?
Yes as of 2026-09-17: the OpenRouter endpoint for stealth/union-alpha lists $0 per million input tokens and $0 per million output tokens, which we read directly from the public catalogue. That is a snapshot, not a promise — the status endpoint on this site re-checks it.
How long will it stay free?
Nobody outside the maker knows. The previous two models in this line were free while anonymous and were repriced or delisted once they were revealed. Treat the window as days-to-weeks, and never as a guarantee.
What will it cost after the preview?
Unconfirmed. Material published for the model itself lists anticipated pricing of about $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens — roughly the budget tier. That is a claim by an anonymous party, not an announcement, and the listing on OpenRouter still bills $0 today.
Will I be told before the free window closes?
Assume not. Free stealth previews have ended without notice before, and there is no mailing list, changelog or status page from the maker. The only honest mitigation is to not depend on it.
Get told when the free window closes
One email when Union Alpha is revealed and the price becomes real.