Sora (Discontinued)

Overview

Sora is being switched off, and this page is a reference rather than a recommendation. The web and mobile apps closed on April 26, 2026. The API — sora-2, sora-2-pro, all three snapshots and the whole Videos API — is removed on September 24, 2026, which is eighteen days from this revision (September 6, 2026). OpenAI's deprecations table lists no recommended replacement, and after that date OpenAI's catalog contains no video generation model at all. If you have production traffic on v1/videos, skip to Getting Started — it is now a migration checklist.

Sora 2 was OpenAI's video generation model, and its last. Released on September 30, 2025, it generated short clips with synchronized audio from text or image input; OpenAI's API reference still describes it as "our new powerful media generation model, generating videos with synced audio." That description is accurate and, for eighteen more days, still purchasable.

The wind-down came in two stages. OpenAI notified developers on March 24, 2026. The consumer surfaces — sora.com and the iOS and Android apps — went on April 26, 2026, taking the social feed, remixing and the Cameo avatar system with them. The API follows on September 24, 2026.

There is no Sora 3 and no announced successor. gpt-image-2 (April 21, 2026) generates still images only, and GPT-6 Astra (September 3, 2026) is a language model. Teams moving off Sora are moving to another vendor.

Shutdown Timeline

Key Features

Everything below stopped being a reason to adopt Sora on March 24, 2026. It is kept as a record of what the product did — and as the checklist a replacement has to satisfy.

• Video and audio in one pass. A single generation produced both tracks together — dialogue, effects and ambience synchronized with the visuals — rather than compositing a soundtrack onto silent footage afterwards. This is the hardest part of Sora to replace cleanly.
• Text-to-video. Natural-language prompts describing the clip.
• Image-to-video. A still image as a starting frame or conditioning input.
• 16- and 20-second generations, in portrait or landscape, at every supported resolution.
• Extensions. POST /v1/videos/extensions continued a completed video by up to 20 seconds at a time, to a documented ceiling of about 120 seconds across up to six extensions.
• Reusable character references. POST /v1/videos/characters uploaded a recurring non-human subject so it could persist across separate generations.
• Batch support. POST /v1/videos was the one endpoint the Batch API accepted, at half price, with results downloadable for 24 hours after completion.

How It Works

Sora ran as an asynchronous job API rather than a streaming one. A client posted a prompt, a model ID, a size and a duration to POST /v1/videos; the call returned a job it then polled until the video was ready to download. Character references and extensions were separate uploads that fed later generations, and Batch wrapped the same endpoint for bulk work at half the per-second rate.

The consumer product wrapped that engine in a social app — a feed, remixes, and Cameo avatars built from a user's own likeness. None of that survived April 26, 2026, and none of it had an API equivalent, so the app's features are simply gone rather than migratable.

Technical Details

• Model IDs: sora-2, sora-2-pro
• Snapshots: sora-2-2025-10-06, sora-2-2025-12-08 (the default), sora-2-pro-2025-10-06
• Endpoint: v1/videos, removed September 24, 2026
• Input modalities: Text, images
• Output modalities: Video and audio, synchronized
• Durations: 16 or 20 seconds per generation; up to roughly 120 seconds by chaining six extensions
• Resolutions: sora-2 — 720x1280 and 1280x720. sora-2-pro — those plus 1024x1792/1792x1024 and 1080x1920/1920x1080
• Rate limits: Tiered by spend and unavailable on the free tier; at Tier 5, sora-2 reached 375 requests per minute and sora-2-pro 150

There was never 4K output and never a separate "world simulator" subsystem — OpenAI published neither, under any name.

Use Cases

These are written in the past tense on purpose. Each one is a workload that needs a new vendor before September 24, 2026, and the list doubles as the requirements document for choosing one.

• Short-form social video — portrait clips with dialogue and sound effects produced in a single generation.
• Storyboarding and previsualization — quick visual drafts of a scene before committing a production budget.
• Product and concept demos — turning a still product image into a short motion sequence.
• Marketing iteration — several treatments of one brief at $0.10 per second of footage.
• Educational clips — short sequences illustrating a process, with narration generated alongside the visuals.

Pricing & Access

Access is through the OpenAI Developer Platform only, and only until September 24, 2026. Video generation was never offered on the free API tier.

Batch requests ran at 50% of these rates. The Pro premium was not a flat multiple — 3x the standard model at 720p, but 7x at 1080p — and per-second pricing meant cost scaled linearly with duration: one 20-second clip at 1080p on sora-2-pro cost $14.00.

This rate card is documented here so that migrating teams have a number to compare replacement quotes against. It is not a price anyone should be planning around; it has eighteen days left on it.

Consumer access: none, and none returning. The Sora web platform and the mobile apps were discontinued on April 26, 2026.

Getting Started

There is nothing to start here any more. If you are landing on this page because you wanted to try Sora, go to Alternatives instead. If you are landing on it because you already ship on the Videos API, this is the checklist:

1. Fix the deadline at September 24, 2026. It is a removal, not a soft deprecation. OpenAI has published no grace period and no replacement alias to fall back on, so calls after that date will simply fail.
2. Export everything behind v1/videos now. Generated assets, character references and prompt libraries. The April app shutdown took un-exported content with it; assume the same here.
3. Pick a replacement this week. Two-plus weeks is enough for an evaluation only if it starts immediately. Shortlist from Alternatives below.
4. Check synced audio first. It is the requirement most likely to break a port, and the one Sora made invisible by handling it in the same call.
5. Re-test your prompts rather than porting them. Video prompt behaviour is not portable between vendors; a library tuned on Sora 2 needs a fresh pass on whatever replaces it.
6. Rebuild the cost model. Do not assume $0.10 per second follows you — per-second video pricing varies widely, and duration limits differ enough to change how many generations a finished minute costs.

Limitations

• It stops working on September 24, 2026. This outranks every other limitation on the page. Anything shipped on Sora now has an end-of-life shorter than most sprint cycles.
• No successor, inside OpenAI or out of it. The deprecations table's replacement column is empty, and OpenAI has no other video model to fall back to.
• No consumer surface. The apps and website have been gone since April 26, 2026; the API is the only channel left, and only until the 24th.
• Short clips. 16 or 20 seconds per generation, and continuity across chained extensions was never guaranteed.
• A short resolution ladder. sora-2 was 720p only; sora-2-pro topped out at 1080p. No 4K, no arbitrary aspect ratios.
• No free tier. Video generation was excluded from the free API tier throughout.
• No published quality benchmark. OpenAI never released a capability benchmark for Sora 2 — only safety numbers in the system card. See the Sora 2 model page for the independent arena results.

Alternatives

Every option below is live today and documented in this catalog. None is a drop-in: prompt behaviour, duration limits, resolutions and per-second pricing all differ from Sora 2.

If you want tools rather than raw models, Runway, Luma Dream Machine, Kling AI and Minimax are the hosted video products in this catalog, and Descript covers the editing end of the same workflow.

Community & Support

Support for Sora winds down with the product; these links are documentation of record, not places to get help after September 24, 2026.

• Sora 2 announcement - OpenAI's original launch post
• Model deprecations - The September 24, 2026 shutdown entry, with the empty replacement column
• What to know about the Sora discontinuation - OpenAI Help Center
• Sora 2 model reference - Pricing, modalities and rate limits, while they last
• Video generation guide - How the Videos API worked
• Sora 2 system card - Published September 30, 2025
• Sora 2 model page - Full specifications, benchmark placement and sunset timeline

Migrating off Sora? The Sora 2 model page has the full technical breakdown, or browse the AI tools directory for live video generation options.