Pricing breakdown, updated September 2026
Sora 2 Pricing: What Sora 2 Costs Per Second, Per Clip and Per Month
The real numbers behind Sora 2 and Sora 2 Pro, what a finished clip actually costs once you count retries, and the September 24, 2026 shutdown date that ends Sora 2 billing entirely.
- Sora 2 per second
- $0.10
- Sora 2 Pro from
- $0.30
- Flat plan from
- $24
Want to see generated output before you price anything? Render a clip in the panel here, no card needed.
The short answer
Sora 2 costs about $0.10 per second of finished video through the OpenAI API, so a 10 second clip runs roughly $1.00. Sora 2 Pro is tracked at $0.30 to $0.50 per second depending on resolution, putting a 10 second Pro clip near $3.00. There is no consumer Sora subscription any more, and no free tier. The larger point for anyone budgeting right now: OpenAI has scheduled sora-2, sora-2-pro and the Videos API for shutdown on September 24, 2026, with no replacement model named.
Last updated September 11, 2026. Figures checked against OpenAI developer documentation and published API rates.
Before you price Sora 2, read the shutdown date
This is the part most Sora 2 pricing articles published earlier in 2026 still get wrong, because they were written before the deprecation notice landed.
Announced
March 24, 2026
OpenAI notified developers that the Videos API and every Sora 2 alias and snapshot would be removed.
Consumer app ended
April 26, 2026
The standalone Sora web and mobile app closed, which is when free and subscription Sora access disappeared.
API shutdown
September 24, 2026
sora-2, sora-2-pro, their dated snapshots and the Videos API stop responding. No replacement model is listed.
The deprecation column that usually names a successor is empty. That is unusual. When OpenAI retires a text model it points you at the next one, and the migration is a string change in your code. Here there is nothing to migrate to inside OpenAI, so every team rendering video on Sora 2 has a vendor decision to make rather than a version bump.
If you are costing out a video pipeline this month, the per-second rate matters less than it looks. A rate you can only pay for another two weeks is not a budget line, it is a countdown. Price the replacement, not the thing being switched off.
Sora 2 cost per second, per clip and per finished shot
The headline rate is per successful render. The number that decides your budget is the third column, because nobody gets the shot on the first prompt.
| Model and output | Rate per second | One 10s render | Realistic cost per usable 10s shot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sora 2, standard, 720p | $0.10 | $1.00 | $2.00 to $4.00 at two to four attempts |
| Sora 2 Pro, 720p | about $0.30 | about $3.00 | $6.00 to $12.00 |
| Sora 2 Pro, 1080p | $0.50 and up | about $5.00 | $10.00 to $20.00 |
| Sora consumer app | discontinued | not available | Closed April 26, 2026 |
Standard Sora 2 rates are consistent across OpenAI documentation and independent trackers. Sora 2 Pro is quoted as a band rather than a single figure because the rate moves with resolution, so treat the Pro rows as planning estimates and confirm against your own billing export.
Why per-second pricing bites harder than it reads
Generative video is not deterministic. You write a prompt, you get a take, and the take is often close but wrong: the camera drifts, the product label goes to mush, a hand does something a hand should not do. You adjust and render again. Every one of those attempts is billed at the full rate, whether or not you keep the file.
That is the gap between the sticker price and the invoice. At $0.10 per second, a marketer who needs six usable 10 second shots for a campaign is not spending $6. At a realistic three attempts per shot they are spending closer to $18, and on Pro at 1080p the same campaign runs past $90. Neither number is shocking on its own. What catches teams out is that it is unpredictable month to month, which makes it hard to put in a budget and harder to defend to a finance lead.
Flat monthly plans solve a different problem than they appear to. The saving is not always the headline rate. It is that a fixed number lets you commit to a content calendar without re-forecasting spend every week.
Sora 2 pricing next to the platforms people move to
Vendor figures taken from each company's own published pricing page in September 2026. Plans change often, so re-check before committing to an annual contract.
| Sora 2 via API | Runway | VideoMake | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billing model | Per second, pay as you go | Monthly credits | Monthly credits, flat plan |
| Entry price | No minimum, $0.10 per second | $12 per month billed yearly, $15 monthly | $24 per month billed yearly, $49 monthly |
| Included allowance | None, usage only | 625 credits on Standard | 50 credits monthly, 288 on the annual plan |
| Video cost in credits | Not applicable | 60 credits per 5 seconds on Gen-4.5 | 1 credit per second at 720p |
| Clip length | Model dependent | Varies by model | 4, 8 or 12 seconds |
| Highest resolution | 1080p on Pro | Model dependent | 1080p on Pro and Business |
| Free tier | No | 125 one-time credits, watermarked | One 4 second demo clip |
| Available after Sept 24, 2026 | No, scheduled shutdown | Yes | Yes |
| Best for | Developers who wanted metered access | Editors who want a full timeline and toolset | Teams shipping short generated clips on a predictable budget |
Runway is the stronger buy if you need an editing timeline, motion brush and a deep feature set around the generation step. It is a creative suite. If what you actually need is short generated footage dropped into an edit you are doing elsewhere, you are paying for a lot of surface area you will not open. Our Sora alternative page covers the switching decision in more detail, and HeyGen vs Synthesia covers the separate case where what you wanted all along was a presenter reading a script.
What to do, depending on how you were paying for Sora 2
You were on the consumer app
That route closed in April 2026 and is not coming back, so there is no subscription to cancel and nothing to wait for. You need a platform that renders clips directly in the browser. Cost per month matters more to you than cost per second, because you are producing a handful of shots, not a pipeline.
You were calling the API in production
You have a hard deadline of September 24, 2026 and no drop-in successor from OpenAI. Audit where the model name is hard-coded, confirm what your fallback does when a render call fails, and make sure a dead video endpoint degrades gracefully rather than taking a user flow down with it.
You were pricing Sora 2 for a campaign
Build the budget around cost per usable shot rather than the per-second rate, and assume two to four renders per shot you keep. A flat plan makes that number knowable in advance, which is usually what the person approving the spend actually wants.
Questions people ask about Sora 2 pricing
How much does Sora 2 cost?
Sora 2 is billed per second of finished video through the OpenAI API, at roughly $0.10 per second for the standard model. A 10 second clip therefore costs about $1.00. Sora 2 Pro is several times more, commonly tracked at $0.30 to $0.50 per second depending on resolution. There is no consumer Sora subscription any more.
Does Sora 2 cost money?
Yes. Every Sora 2 render is metered per second against an OpenAI API account, so there is no free tier in any practical sense. The old free allowance lived in the Sora consumer app, and OpenAI shut that app down on April 26, 2026. Today Sora 2 access means paying per second of output.
How much is Sora 2 Pro?
Sora 2 Pro is the higher quality model and is tracked at roughly $0.30 to $0.50 per second, rising toward $0.70 per second at the highest resolution. A 10 second Pro clip lands around $3.00, and at full HD it can approach $5.00. It was previously bundled with ChatGPT Pro before consumer access ended.
What happens to Sora 2 after September 24, 2026?
It stops working. OpenAI's deprecation table lists sora-2, sora-2-pro, their dated snapshots and the Videos API with a shutdown date of September 24, 2026. After that date the endpoints return errors and associated data is removed. OpenAI lists no recommended replacement model.
Is Sora 2 free?
No. Sora 2 has no free tier. It is an API product billed by the second, so the first clip you render costs money. Free Sora 2 access ended with the consumer Sora app in April 2026. Sites advertising free Sora 2 generation are reselling API calls they pay for, usually with a watermark or a hard daily cap.
How much does a 10 second Sora 2 video cost?
About $1.00 on the standard model at $0.10 per second, and roughly $3.00 on Sora 2 Pro. That is one successful render. Budget two to four attempts per usable shot, because prompt iteration is normal, so a finished clip realistically costs $2 to $4 standard or $6 to $12 on Pro.
Is there a Sora 2 monthly subscription?
Not from OpenAI. Sora 2 is priced per second through the API, with no monthly plan attached. The consumer route, where ChatGPT Pro included Sora 2 Pro generation, ended when the Sora app shut down on April 26, 2026. Monthly Sora style plans today come from third party platforms that resell rendering.
Why is Sora 2 being shut down?
OpenAI has not published a detailed reason. Reporting points at the economics: inference costs for video generation ran far ahead of revenue, and monthly active users of the Sora app fell sharply after the launch spike. OpenAI announced the deprecation on March 24, 2026, giving developers six months of notice.
What is the cheapest way to generate AI video clips?
A flat monthly plan beats per-second billing for most teams, because you stop paying for failed renders out of pocket. Per-second billing only wins at very low volume or when usage is genuinely unpredictable. Price the tool on cost per usable clip, not on the headline rate per second.
Can I still use Sora 2 right now?
Through the API, yes, until the September 24, 2026 shutdown date. The consumer app is already gone. If you are starting a project this month, building it on an endpoint with a published end date is a decision worth making deliberately rather than by default.
Price the clip, not the second
Generate a clip from a text prompt or a still image, in 16:9 or 9:16, on a plan with a number you can put in a budget. Try it before you pay anything.
See plans and credit allowances