OpenAI shuts down the Sora 2 Videos API on 24 September 2026. There is no replacement. The official deprecation table lists a dash next to every Sora row — the Videos API itself, sora-2, sora-2-pro, and the dated snapshots. The consumer Sora app already died in April. After the 24th, the last public way to generate video through OpenAI goes with it.
That is the whole story if you do not have Sora in production. If you do, the useful question is not whether this is real. OpenAI mailed developers on 24 March and put it on the deprecations page. The useful question is what you move to, and what it costs. This page stays useful after the 24th: it is a record of what died, the last rate card, and the five APIs that still take the same job.
Key takeaways
- Shutdown is 24 September 2026. Announced 24 March. Six months' notice — the minimum OpenAI promises for generally available models. The "Recommended replacement" cell is blank on every Sora row.
- The consumer app died in April 2026. We dropped
sorafrom the Pickurai catalog in May. The API was the leftover. After the 24th there is no leftover. - Last list prices (September 2026):
sora-2is $0.10/s at 720p.sora-2-prois $0.30/s at 720p, $0.50/s at 1024p, $0.70/s at 1080p. Batch was half those rates. Our token calculator already marks both rows DEPRECATED. - Closest replacements by job: Runway Gen-4.5 for cinematic control, Veo 3.1 for Google-native clips with audio, Kling 3.0 for faces and motion, Hailuo 2.3 for cheap 1080p. Talking-head work was never Sora's job — that stays on Synthesia or HeyGen.
The timeline: app, catalog, API
Sora did not vanish in one step. It was peeled off the public stack over six months.
24 March 2026. OpenAI told Videos API customers the models and the endpoint would be removed on 24 September. That is a clean six-month window. The same notice covered the aliases sora-2 and sora-2-pro, plus the dated snapshots sora-2-2025-10-06, sora-2-2025-12-08 and sora-2-pro-2025-10-06. Every recommended-replacement cell was left empty. That is unusual. When GPT-5 snapshots retire, the table names the next model. Here the dash is the announcement.
April 2026. The consumer Sora app was discontinued. ChatGPT users who had been generating clips inside the product lost that surface. Whatever video OpenAI still wanted to show the public moved into short demos and research posts, not a product you could open.
May 2026. We took sora out of the Pickurai catalog. The old tool page is gone on purpose — 410, not a thin leftover. We kept the two API rows in the calculator so anyone still billing Sora could see the rate and the sunset note in the same place. That is why those rows still exist, and why they are labelled DEPRECATED.
24 September 2026. The Videos API stops resolving. After that date a request to sora-2 is not a slow error or a waitlist. It is a dead endpoint. OpenAI's own wording treats "sunset" and "shut down" as the same thing: the model is no longer accessible. There is no announced grace period and no named successor.
What you actually lose
You lose three things, and only one of them is the model quality people argued about.
The IDs. Anything hard-coded to sora-2, sora-2-pro, or the dated snapshots breaks. There is no OpenAI drop-in. Do not point the same client at GPT Image or a chat model and hope. Video generation is leaving the platform, not moving to a sibling ID.
The rate card. Sora billed per second of output, not per token. At the last published list, an 8-second 720p clip on sora-2 cost $0.80. The same length on sora-2-pro cost $2.40 at 720p and $5.60 at 1080p. Batch halved that. Those numbers were competitive at the base tier and expensive at Pro 1080p. After the 24th they are history, not a quote you can still hit.
| Model | Resolution | Standard | Batch | 8-second clip |
|---|---|---|---|---|
sora-2 |
720p | $0.10/s | $0.05/s | $0.80 |
sora-2-pro |
720p | $0.30/s | $0.15/s | $2.40 |
sora-2-pro |
1024p | $0.50/s | $0.25/s | $4.00 |
sora-2-pro |
1080p | $0.70/s | $0.35/s | $5.60 |
Last OpenAI list as of September 2026, verified against the Videos API pricing page before shutdown. After 24 September these rates are a historical record. Our calculator keeps the rows so the sunset is visible next to Veo, Runway, Kling and Hailuo.
The resolution ceiling. Public Sora 2 on the API topped out at 1080p on Pro. That was never the cinema-grade reel the launch videos implied. If your pipeline assumed "OpenAI will add 4K later," that assumption died with the empty replacement column.
Export anything you still need before the cutoff. Generated assets sitting only in an OpenAI library are not a backup. Download the files. Keep the prompts. The endpoint will not fetch old jobs for you once it is gone.
What to use instead
No third-party API is a pixel-for-pixel Sora. Pick the job, then pick the vendor. We kept this to the five models we already price on the calculator — not a 20-tool dump, and not a Chinese-lab tour that ignores who can actually sign a Western invoice.
| Model | Provider | Per second | Resolution | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gen-4 Turbo | Runway | $0.05/s | 720p | Volume drafts. Closest dollar match to Sora 2 Batch. |
| Kling 3.0 Standard | Kuaishou | $0.084/s | 720p | Faces, body motion, lip-sync. Best Sora-like motion on a budget. |
| Hailuo 2.3 | MiniMax | $0.10/s | 1080p | Same $0.10/s as Sora 2, one resolution step up. |
| Gen-4.5 | Runway | $0.12/s | 1080p | Camera moves, references, finishing. The cinematic seat. |
| Veo 3.1 Fast | $0.15/s | 720p | Gemini-stack teams who want native audio without a new vendor. | |
| Veo 3.1 Standard | $0.40/s | 1080p | Higher-fidelity Veo. Cheaper than Sora 2 Pro 1080p was. |
Prices from the Pickurai video catalog, last verified 18 September 2026. Kling's $0.084/s is the official Standard tier without native audio; Pro and audio cost more. Veo 3 with audio is $0.40/s at 1080p after the July cut from $0.75/s. Runway Gen-3 Alpha Turbo already sunset on 30 July — do not migrate onto a dead Runway ID.
If you were on plain sora-2 at $0.10/s, Hailuo 2.3 is the cleanest price match and gives you 1080p at the same per-second rate. Kling 3.0 Standard undercuts it if faces and motion are the reason you picked Sora. Runway Gen-4 Turbo is cheaper still if you can live at 720p and want a Western vendor.
If you were on sora-2-pro, almost every row above is a cut. Pro 1080p at $0.70/s was the expensive seat. Veo 3.1 Standard at $0.40/s and Runway Gen-4.5 at $0.12/s both undercut it. The upgrade was never "pay more for OpenAI." It was "pay less for a lab that still sells video."
Chinese video APIs are cheaper for a reason we already mapped in the 2026 API price war: they win on volume. The hosted API is still the risk, not the weights. If your clips leave the building, read the same jurisdiction answer we use for text models in are Chinese AI models safe before you point production at Kling or Hailuo.
Who should migrate — and who can ignore this
Three jobs used Sora. They do not share a replacement.
API builders. If sora-2 is in a production client, remap the endpoint this week. Keep the prompt library. Run the same ten clips through Hailuo, Kling and Runway Gen-4.5 and pick the one whose artifacts you can live with. Do not wait for an OpenAI sequel. The empty replacement column is the sequel. Price the new seat in the token calculator video tab before you rewrite the client — an 8-second clip is the unit that makes the rows comparable.
Editors and motion designers. You were probably already in Runway. Stay there. Gen-4.5 is the flagship; Gen-4 Turbo is the draft lane. The rest of the job — captions, silence removal, finishing — was never Sora. That work still lives in CapCut, Premiere and Descript, which is the honest split in AI tools for video editing. Generation is B-roll. Editing is still the product.
Talking-head and training video. Sora was the wrong tool for this even when it was alive. A script-to-avatar job is Synthesia or HeyGen, both from $29/month, and they are still here. Synthesia vs HeyGen is the comparison: Synthesia for L&D and brand-safe avatars, HeyGen for marketing and translation. Do not "replace Sora" with an avatar tool, and do not replace an avatar tool with Kling. They are different products.
If you never called the Videos API, you can ignore the sunset. ChatGPT did not quietly keep a Sora button for you. The consumer surface has been gone since April. This page exists for the people who still had an API key wired, and for anyone who will search "what happened to Sora 2" in October and need a dated answer.
OpenAI did not hand video to a successor. It left. The replacement is a different lab, a different invoice, and a prompt you re-test — not a new model ID on the same key.
If you are choosing a video tool this week and you are not already locked into a vendor, start at the wizard. Six questions. It will not send you to a dead Sora page. If you already know the job is generation versus editing versus talking-head, the three links above are the shorter path.