Sora 2 Access, Pricing, and Shutdown

OpenAI announced on March 24, 2026, that it was discontinuing Sora across both the consumer app and the API. The Sora app went offline on April 26, 2026. The API will continue until September 24, 2026, after which all video generation via sora-2 and sora-2-pro endpoints ends.

OpenAI did not publish a detailed explanation in its official discontinuation notice.

Reporting from the AI industry linked the decision to a combination of factors: compute cost pressures at OpenAI scale, the difficulty of sustainably monetizing cinematic-quality video generation at consumer price points, and a broader internal prioritization toward enterprise and ChatGPT-core products.

For users who had content inside the Sora app, OpenAI directed them to export at sora.chatgpt.com/exports/me before the April 26 cutoff. Content recovery after that date was not guaranteed.

The Sora X account confirmed the closure directly: "We're saying goodbye to the Sora app. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you."

Sora 2 launched on September 30, 2025, as a standalone iOS and Android app alongside access via ChatGPT.com. It was available in most major markets, with some regional restrictions on specific features.

Starting January 10, 2026, OpenAI restricted Sora access to Plus ($20/month) and Pro ($200/month) ChatGPT subscribers only. Free-tier users lost access to both image and video generation through Sora at that point.

By the time the consumer app shut down on April 26, 2026, Sora had accumulated approximately 9.6 million downloads across iOS and Android. After that date, the only access path was through the OpenAI API, which itself is scheduled to sunset on September 24, 2026.

As of June 2026, there is no consumer-facing Sora product available to new users.

While Sora 2 was active, pricing worked as follows:

At those API rates, a single 30-second 1080p video cost $21 on the standard tier or $10.50 on batch. This was among the most expensive API-based video generation pricing on the market, which contextualizes the shutdown decision.

The API pricing remains active until September 24, 2026, but any production workload built on Sora needs to migrate before that date.

No, Sora AI is not free to use as of June 2026, and it is no longer available to new users at all.

While Sora originally launched in December 2024 with a limited free tier, OpenAI removed free access on January 10, 2026, restricting the product to Plus and Pro subscribers only. The consumer app then shut down entirely on April 26, 2026.

If you are seeing third-party sites or apps claiming to offer "free Sora access" as of mid-2026, treat them with skepticism.

OpenAI tightened access controls significantly before the shutdown, and the unofficial reverse-engineered API wrappers that circulated earlier in 2026 have largely stopped functioning following OpenAI's API deprecation enforcement.

Yes. Sora 2 embedded a visible moving watermark in generated videos across all plans, including the Pro tier at $200/month. The watermark appeared regardless of resolution, with 1080p Pro-tier output still carrying the Sora watermark by default.

This was a meaningful limitation for marketing creators who needed clean, unbranded video output for paid advertising or client-facing content. Unlike some competing AI video tools where the watermark is removed on paid tiers, Sora's watermark policy applied universally.

For marketing video production where watermark-free output is required, this was one of the practical reasons creators looked at alternatives even before the shutdown.

With Sora 2 gone, the realistic options for AI video generation in mid-2026 depend on what you are trying to produce.

See also: Free Alternative to Sora and Veo for a direct comparison of no-cost options.