Sora Pricing 2026: What It Cost and What to Use Now

Last Updated: November 8, 2026

Summary: Sora no longer has a price because OpenAI has shut it down. The Sora app and website closed on April 26, 2026, and the Sora 2 API was removed on September 24, 2026, so there is no ChatGPT plan, credit pack or API rate that buys Sora video today. The closest replacements are Google Veo 3.1 at $0.05 to $0.60 per second through Google Cloud, Runway Gen-4.5 at about $0.12 per second through Runway's API, and Kling 3.0 and Luma Ray3.2 on credit plans.

Most "Sora pricing" pages still list plans and per-second rates as if you could sign up tomorrow. You can't. OpenAI announced the shutdown on March 24, 2026, and its own developer documentation now describes the Sora 2 models as shut down and no longer available.

This guide covers what happened to Sora, what it cost before it closed, and what the main alternatives cost now. It ends with a worked example pricing 10 one-minute videos on each option and a table to help you pick one. Prices were checked against official vendor pages on November 8, 2026.

No. OpenAI's Sora video generator is fully discontinued: the consumer app ended in April 2026 and the developer API followed in September 2026. OpenAI's Sora 2 launch page now carries the notice "As of April 26, 2026, the Sora product is no longer available."

The Sora shutdown is recorded on OpenAI's API deprecations page, which lists sora-2, sora-2-pro and their dated snapshots for removal on September 24, 2026, with no replacement model named. OpenAI's Videos API reference is now kept "for historical reference" and says the Sora 2 models "are no longer available."

The reasons behind the Sora shutdown came from reporting, not a pricing change. According to SiliconANGLE, Sam Altman told staff OpenAI would wind down all products using its video models, including video features in ChatGPT, and shift compute toward business and productivity tools. The same report says Disney canceled its planned investment in Sora after the announcement.

Sora 2 launched free with usage limits, with a premium Sora 2 Pro model reserved for ChatGPT Pro subscribers. Developers paid per second of generated video through the API.

At launch, OpenAI's Sora 2 announcement said the app would start "free, with generous limits," subject to compute constraints. ChatGPT Pro users could use the experimental Sora 2 Pro model on sora.com. The only paid option OpenAI described for consumers was buying extra videos when demand outstripped compute.

On the API side, Sora was billed by the second of output. OpenAI's API changelog for March 12, 2026 states that "1080p generations on sora-2-pro are billed at $0.70 per second." That made a 20-second 1080p Sora 2 Pro clip cost $14 before retakes. OpenAI's current API pricing page no longer lists any Sora rates, so the other historical per-second prices can't be checked against an official page today and are left out here.

No. ChatGPT plans no longer include Sora or any video generation feature. The current ChatGPT pricing page compares Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise without mentioning Sora or video generation. The only video item listed is "Voice with video," which is a voice chat feature, not a video generator.

So upgrading to ChatGPT Plus or Pro will not get you Sora back. If you are weighing a ChatGPT plan for other reasons, our ChatGPT pricing guide breaks down every tier, and our ChatGPT Go explainer covers the budget plan.

The Sora API stopped working on September 24, 2026. Calls to the Videos API and the Sora 2 model aliases are no longer served, and OpenAI has not named a replacement video model.

Developers asked OpenAI to release Sora 2's weights before the shutdown. In a September 8, 2026 reply on the OpenAI Developer Community forum, OpenAI Support said it had no open-weight or self-hosted Sora release to announce and "no release plan or timeline to share."

OpenAI's API still sells text and image models. Our OpenAI API pricing guide covers those rates. For video, you now need another vendor.

The main Sora alternatives cost between about $0.05 and $0.60 per second of video, depending on model, resolution and whether audio is generated. Here are list prices from each vendor's official pages, checked November 8, 2026.

Google's Google Cloud pricing page lists Veo 3.1 at $0.40 per unit with audio and $0.20 without at 720p and 1080p. The page labels the unit "1 count" rather than seconds, but Runway's API resells Veo 3.1 at 40 credits ($0.40) per second with audio, which matches a per-second rate. Veo 3.1 Lite is the cheapest Veo tier at $0.05 with audio at 720p. Prices in Google's Gemini API can differ from Vertex AI; our Gemini API pricing guide covers the developer API side.

For non-developers, Google bundles video tools into its consumer subscriptions. Google's I/O 2026 subscription update says AI Pro and both AI Ultra tiers ($100 and $200 a month) include its Flow filmmaking tool, with optional pay-as-you-go top-up credits. Google does not publish a fixed number of videos per plan there.

Runway's API pricing guide charges $0.01 per credit. Gen-4.5, Runway's latest in-house text-to-video and image-to-video model, costs 12 credits per second ($0.12), and Gen-4 Turbo costs 5 credits ($0.05). Runway's API also resells other companies' models, including Veo 3.1, Kling and Seedance, at per-second credit rates. On Runway's subscription side, its help center says the Pro plan includes 2,250 credits a month.

Kling sells monthly credit plans directly. Kling's credit cost guide lists Standard at $6.99 for the first month and $8.80 on renewal with 660 credits, Pro at $25.99 then $32.56 with 3,000 credits, and Premier at $64.99 then $80.96 with 8,000 credits. Kling does not publish a clean per-second dollar rate on that page, which is why the table above uses Runway's API rate for Kling 3.0. Our full Kling AI pricing guide goes plan by plan.

Luma's plans and pricing page lists Plus at $30 a month (10,000 credits), Pro at $90 (40,000 credits) and Ultra at $300 (150,000 credits), with lower rates on annual billing. A 5-second Ray3.2 clip costs 100 credits at 720p and 400 credits at 1080p, so Plus buys about 500 seconds of 720p video or 125 seconds of 1080p a month.

Ten one-minute videos means 600 seconds of finished footage. Using the list prices above, that costs from about $27 to $240 depending on the tool, assuming every clip is usable on the first try.

Each video would be stitched from shorter clips (Sora's own API topped out at 20 seconds per generation). The math below simply multiplies 600 seconds by each per-second rate, with audio included where the model offers it.

Two things change the real bill. First, retakes: if you keep one clip in three, multiply these figures by three. Second, subscriptions: Luma's credits come in plan-sized blocks, so the effective cost is the plan price unless you use the rest of the credits on other work. Pay-per-second APIs like Google Cloud and Runway only charge for what you generate.

Even the priciest current option in this example, Veo 3.1 with audio, costs well under the $420 the same footage would have cost on Sora 2 Pro at 1080p.

Pick by how you work: developers who want per-second billing and native audio, like Sora's API had, should start with Veo 3.1, while teams that want one tool for many models should look at Runway.

For hands-on comparisons beyond price, see our roundups of the best AI video tools and AI text-to-video generators. Our monthly AI Pricing Index tracks how these rates move.

How much does Sora cost in 2026?
Sora has no price in 2026 because OpenAI discontinued it. The Sora app closed on April 26, 2026 and the Sora 2 API was removed on September 24, 2026, so no plan or API rate buys Sora video today.

Is Sora included with ChatGPT Plus or Pro?
No. ChatGPT's current pricing page lists no Sora or video generation feature on any plan, from Free to Enterprise. Upgrading ChatGPT will not restore Sora access.

What did the Sora API cost?
The Sora API billed per second of generated video. OpenAI's changelog states that 1080p generations on sora-2-pro cost $0.70 per second. The API stopped working on September 24, 2026.

What is the best Sora alternative?
Google Veo 3.1 is the closest replacement for developers, with per-second billing and native audio from $0.05 per second on the Lite tier. Runway, Kling and Luma suit teams that prefer an app or a monthly credit plan.

Will OpenAI release Sora as open source?
OpenAI has not announced one. In September 2026 OpenAI Support said on its developer forum that it had no open-weight or self-hosted Sora release and no timeline to share.

Searching for Sora pricing in 2026 leads to a dead end: OpenAI closed the Sora app in April and removed the API in September, and ChatGPT no longer generates video on any plan. The last official Sora rate on record was $0.70 per second for 1080p Sora 2 Pro.

The good news for budgets is that the replacements cost less than Sora 2 Pro's last 1080p rate. Veo 3.1 Fast and Runway Gen-4.5 both run about $0.12 per second, and the budget tiers drop to $0.05. Start with the per-second APIs if you are a developer, and with Kling or Luma if you want a simple monthly plan.

Written by Sameer Khan with AI assistance, fact-checked against the sources linked above.