Union Alpha goes free for a week on OpenRouter as an anonymous coding model
Union Alpha is free on OpenRouter until about September 22, with zero data retention and a focus on agentic coding; the author suggests testing it on real tasks rather than trusting leaderboards.
A nameless coding model just went free on OpenRouter for a week. It's called Union Alpha, and the builder stays unnamed. Cloaked drops like this are a common move for labs that want real usage before they put a name on the thing. The trade is fair enough, you get a working coding model for free through ~Sept 22 and the lab gets real repos thrown at it. It's a search away on OpenRouter. The zero data retention line is the one I'd pause on. Per the OpenRouter listing, prompts and code get dropped after the call, and that's what makes it usable on a real work codebase. Free plus zero retention is a rare combo for a brand new model, if the claim holds. The listing also frames it for agentic work, multi-step tasks, tool calls, terminal sessions. That's the part I'd test, since a few steps into a real task is where I'd expect a free model to get shaky. The team's own ask is the useful one here. Throw your hardest task at it and say what breaks. Good or bad, that beats another leaderboard screenshot. Who built it is anyone's guess, and I'm skipping the guessing. Free weeks like this one are turning into a real proving ground for coding models, and whatever people report from running it now will follow the name once one gets attached.
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