The Sora API shuts down on 24 September 2026, and for almost everyone migrating off it, the switch is a price cut. A five-second 1080p clip costs $3.50 on Sora 2 Pro; the cheapest replacement we priced does the same five seconds for $0.45. Only one model on the shelf costs more than Sora.
The dates, from OpenAI's own help centre: the Sora web and app experiences were discontinued on 26 April 2026; the Sora API will be discontinued on 24 September 2026. Export at
sora.chatgpt.com/sunset.
- You will almost certainly pay less. At 1080p, nine of the ten video models we priced undercut Sora 2 Pro — the cheapest by 7.8×.
- What you actually lose is length, not quality or audio. Sora's API generates 16- and 20-second clips. The longest fixed-duration tier priced anywhere on the replacement shelf is 15 seconds.
- Check the model id before you plan around it. We called 14 candidate ids; 11 answered, 3 were catalogue labels that no endpoint responds to.
- OpenAI's own developer pricing page still lists Sora 2 and Sora 2 Pro with no shutdown notice. Do not take the pricing page as evidence the sunset was cancelled.
Last updated: August 2026.
What OpenAI announced, and why the Sora alternatives clock started
The help centre article is unambiguous and worth quoting rather than paraphrasing: "The Sora web and app experiences were discontinued on April 26, 2026. The Sora API will be discontinued on September 24, 2026."
Two practical details sit alongside it. You can export your content from sora.chatgpt.com/sunset, and OpenAI says data associated with Sora will be permanently deleted after any final export window closes. Purchased ChatGPT or Sora credits are not stranded — they remain usable for Codex.
There is one thing worth flagging for anyone building a migration plan. We checked OpenAI's developer pricing page on 2026-08-25 and it still lists Sora 2 and Sora 2 Pro at full rates with no deprecation notice attached. The pricing page is not the sunset notice, and the absence of a warning there is not a reprieve. Plan against the help centre date.
The rates you are leaving
For the comparison to mean anything, here is what the developer pricing page listed on 2026-08-25.
| Model | 720p | 1024p | 1080p |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sora 2 | $0.10/s | — | — |
| Sora 2 Pro | $0.30/s | $0.50/s | $0.70/s |
| Batch tier | half of the above | half | half |
The API supports 16- and 20-second generations, with 1080p exports available on sora-2-pro.
Sora alternatives, priced per clip instead of per second
Every vendor quotes video in a different unit — per second, per finished video, per second with an audio surcharge — which is why no roundup compares them honestly. Normalising to one five-second clip is the only way to see the shelf.
At 720p, Sora 2's $0.50 per clip sits mid-table. PixVerse V6 does it for $0.23, Grok Imagine for $0.35, Kling 3.0 for $0.42 without audio. Above it: Kling 3.0 Turbo at $0.56, HappyHorse 1.1 at $0.70, Seedance 2 at $1.51.
At 1080p the gap stops being marginal. Sora 2 Pro costs $3.50 for five seconds. Wan 2.7 does it for $0.75, Kling 3.0 Turbo for $0.70, PixVerse V6 for $0.45. Only Seedance 2.5, at $5.70, is more expensive than what you are leaving.
For most people the money was never the constraint. It was the assumption that a shutdown means a downgrade.
What Sora alternatives cannot give you back
This is where most Sora alternatives lists get vague, so here is the specific version.
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Clip length is the real loss. OpenAI's video guide documents 16- and 20-second generations. On the replacement shelf, the longest fixed-duration price tier published anywhere is 15 seconds, and most models price 5 and 10. If your pipeline assumed a single 20-second call, nothing on the shelf we priced matches it and you will be stitching.
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Audio is not the loss people expect. Sora generates audio with the video, and several replacements do too — Kling 3.0 with audio is $0.84 per 1080p five-second clip, PixVerse V6 with audio $0.58. Both still undercut Sora 2 Pro's silent-or-not $3.50. Audio is a line item here, not a capability cliff.
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Prompt behaviour will differ, and no price table can tell you how much. We are comparing cost and availability, which are measurable. Whether a given model interprets your existing prompt library the way Sora did is something only your own prompts can answer, and it is the part of the migration worth budgeting real time for.
Which Sora alternatives answer a live API call today
Price and capability are useless if the endpoint does not exist under the name you found. So on 2026-08-25 we sent schema-only requests to 17 candidate model ids — no prompt, nothing to render. A wrong id returns "model name not supported"; a live one should return a missing-field error.
Thirteen answered. Three did not: minimax-h3, ltx-2-5 and wan-3-0 all returned "model name not supported" — they read as product-page names rather than API ids. One did something worse, below. That is the trap worth carrying out of this article: a model can be listed, priced and documented and still not respond to the name printed on its own page, and the only way to find out is to call it before you plan a migration around it.
Not every probe is free.
grok-imagine/image-to-videoreturned HTTP 200 and created a billable task from a request with no input at all, where every other id in the sweep rejected it. If you run this check yourself, assume nothing about a malformed request costing nothing — check your balance after each one.
Picking between Sora alternatives, by what your pipeline was for
Short social clips at volume — the cheapest Sora replacements
Cost per clip dominates and nobody is inspecting a single frame of a Sora replacement here. PixVerse V6 and Grok Imagine are the cheapest rungs; at $0.23–$0.35 for five seconds at 720p you can afford to throw away most takes, which matters more than any per-clip quality edge.
Product and brand work at 1080p, where leaving Sora pays
This is where leaving Sora 2 Pro pays for itself. Kling 3.0 Turbo at $0.70 and Wan 2.7 at $0.75 per five-second 1080p clip are a fifth of what you were paying. Our Kling 3.0 Turbo page covers what it takes as input.
Image-to-video from an existing library
Sora's own guide describes generating from natural language or images, and this is the least disruptive migration: every model in our probe that exposes a separate image-to-video id answered it, and Seedance 2, Kling and Wan all price image-to-video identically to text-to-video rather than charging a premium.
Long-form single takes
Nothing on this shelf matches a 20-second single take the way Sora did. Plan on stitching, and budget time for making the seams hold.
How to spend the last 30 days before the Sora alternatives decision
Export your Sora library first — that window closes and the data is deleted. Then take your three most-used prompts and run them against two candidates, not five; the cost difference between the shortlist is smaller than the cost of an indecisive month. If you want to do that without wiring up an API, our video generator runs several of these models on credits, and the pricing page lists which credits buy which model.
FAQ
When exactly does the Sora API shut down?
24 September 2026, per OpenAI's help centre. The Sora web and app experiences were already discontinued on 26 April 2026.
Is there a free Sora alternative?
Not at the API layer — every video model we priced charges per second or per clip. Consumer front ends sit on top of those same rates, which is why their free tiers come with caps.
Will switching off Sora cost me more?
Almost certainly not. At 1080p, eight of the nine replacements we priced are cheaper than Sora 2 Pro, and the cheapest is 7.8× cheaper for the same five seconds.
What is the closest Sora alternative for quality?
Cost and availability are measurable; quality ranking is not, and any list that hands you one is guessing. Shortlist on price and clip length, then test your own prompts — that comparison is the only one that transfers.
Can I still get my videos out of Sora?
Yes. OpenAI directs users to sora.chatgpt.com/sunset to export, and says data will be permanently deleted after any final export window. Do it before the deadline rather than after.
Do the Sora alternatives generate audio too?
Several do. Kling 3.0 and PixVerse V6 both publish separate with-audio and without-audio rates, and both with-audio tiers still cost less than Sora 2 Pro's 1080p rate.
Sources
- What to know about the Sora discontinuation — OpenAI help centre, retrieved 2026-08-25.
- OpenAI API pricing — Sora 2 and Sora 2 Pro per-second rates, retrieved 2026-08-25.
- OpenAI video generation guide — supported durations and resolutions.
- fal.ai and vendor published per-second rates for the replacement models, retrieved 2026-08-25.
- First-party API probe, 14 video model ids, schema-only requests, 2026-08-25.
One number is worth carrying out of this: the same five seconds of 1080p video costs $3.50 on the platform with the shutdown date and $0.45 on the cheapest model we could still call today. The deadline is doing you a favour.
