Cryptandra alpina is a prostrate shrub that typically grows to a height of up to and has many slender, wiry branches usually less than long. Its leaves are linear, cylindrical and glabrous, long and wide. The flowers are arranged singly on the ends of branches with broad, overlapping brown bracts at the base, the inner bracts often nearly as long as the sepal tube. The sepals are white and joined at the base, forming a tube more than long and woolly hairy on the outside with egg-shaped lobes slightly shorter than the sepal tube. The petals are white, tube-shaped and form a hood over the stamens.
