Pricing breakdown
Sora 2 Pricing Per Second and Per Clip and What to Budget Now
The final numbers behind Sora 2 and Sora 2 Pro, what a finished clip actually cost once you count retries, and what to budget now that OpenAI switched the API off on September 24, 2026.
- Sora 2 per second
- $0.10
- Sora 2 Pro from
- $0.30
- Flat plan from
- $24
Need clips that Sora 2 used to render? Write the prompt in the panel here and generate it on a flat monthly plan.
The short answer
Sora 2 cost about $0.10 per second of finished video through the OpenAI API, so a 10 second clip ran roughly $1.00. Sora 2 Pro was tracked at $0.30 to $0.50 per second, putting a 10 second Pro clip near $3.00. None of that can be bought any more. OpenAI shut down sora-2, sora-2-pro and the Videos API on September 24, 2026, named no replacement model, and now answers every request with 410 Gone. Budget for a different vendor.
Figures checked against OpenAI developer documentation and published API rates.
The dates that matter now Sora 2 is shut down
Most Sora 2 pricing articles still ranking were written before the deprecation notice, so they quote a rate you can no longer pay.
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 stopped responding. Requests return 410 Gone. No replacement model was listed.
The deprecation column that usually names a successor stayed 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 was nothing to migrate to inside OpenAI, so every team that rendered video on Sora 2 now has a vendor decision to make rather than a version bump.
If you are costing out a video pipeline this month, use the Sora 2 figures below as a benchmark only. They tell you what a generated second used to cost, which is useful when you compare replacements. Price the replacement, not the thing that was switched off.
Sora 2 cost per second, per clip and per finished shot (final rates)
These were the last published rates before shutdown. The headline rate was per successful render. The number that decides a 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 were consistent across OpenAI documentation and independent trackers. Sora 2 Pro is quoted as a band because the rate moved with resolution. If you still have an OpenAI billing export, it is the most accurate benchmark for pricing a replacement.
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 moved 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 | Was $0.10 per second, no minimum | $12 per month billed yearly, $15 monthly | $24 per month billed yearly, $49 monthly |
| Included allowance | None, usage only | 625 credits on Standard | 49 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 on Standard, 4 per second on Pro |
| Clip length | Model dependent | Varies by model | 4, 8 or 12 seconds |
| Highest resolution | 1080p on Pro | Model dependent | 1080p on the Pro model, Pro plan and up |
| Free tier | No | 125 one-time credits, watermarked | No, sample clips to watch, generation on a paid plan |
| Available after Sept 24, 2026 | No, shut down | 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 now, depending on how you paid for Sora 2
You were on the consumer app
That route closed in April 2026 and is not coming back, so there is 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
Since September 24, 2026 every call returns 410 Gone and there is no drop-in successor from OpenAI. Find where the model name is hard-coded, check that failed render calls do not take a user flow down, and point the pipeline at a vendor that is still running.
You had priced Sora 2 into a campaign
Rebuild the budget around cost per usable shot rather than a 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 was billed per second of finished video through the OpenAI API, at roughly $0.10 per second for the standard model, so a 10 second clip cost about $1.00. Sora 2 Pro ran $0.30 to $0.50 per second. Since September 24, 2026 it costs nothing because it no longer exists: OpenAI shut the API down.
Does Sora 2 cost money?
It did. Every Sora 2 render was metered per second against an OpenAI API account, with no free tier. The free allowance lived in the Sora consumer app, which closed on April 26, 2026, and the paid API followed on September 24, 2026. There is no way to buy Sora 2 today.
How much is Sora 2 Pro?
Sora 2 Pro was the higher quality model, tracked at roughly $0.30 to $0.50 per second and rising toward $0.70 at the highest resolution. A 10 second Pro clip cost around $3.00, near $5.00 at full HD. It was retired with the rest of the Videos API on September 24, 2026.
What happens to Sora 2 after September 24, 2026?
It stopped working. OpenAI's deprecation table listed sora-2, sora-2-pro, their dated snapshots and the Videos API with a shutdown date of September 24, 2026. Requests now return 410 Gone and account data was deleted. OpenAI named no replacement model.
Is Sora 2 free?
No, and it is not available at all now. Sora 2 had no free tier while it ran: it was an API product billed by the second. Free access ended with the consumer app in April 2026 and the API closed on September 24, 2026. Sites still advertising free Sora 2 generation are selling something else under the old name.
How much does a 10 second Sora 2 video cost?
It cost about $1.00 on the standard model at $0.10 per second, and roughly $3.00 on Sora 2 Pro, per successful render. With two to four attempts per usable shot, a finished 10 second clip realistically cost $2 to $4 standard or $6 to $12 on Pro. Use the same retry math when you price a replacement.
Is there a Sora 2 monthly subscription?
No. OpenAI priced Sora 2 per second through the API with no monthly plan, and the ChatGPT Pro route ended with the Sora app on April 26, 2026. Since the API shutdown on September 24, 2026, any monthly plan for generated video comes from another platform rendering on its own models.
Why did OpenAI shut down Sora 2?
OpenAI did not publish a detailed reason. Reporting points at the economics: inference costs for video generation ran far ahead of revenue, and Sora app usage fell sharply after the launch spike. OpenAI announced the deprecation on March 24, 2026 and switched the API off on September 24, 2026, six months later.
What is the cheapest way to generate AI video clips?
On raw rate, per-second API billing and credit-heavy creative suites are the cheapest, often 10 to 25 cents a second. Flat plans cost more per second and buy predictability, a browser interface and no API account. Price tools on cost per usable clip, counting retries, not on the headline rate.
Can I still use Sora 2 right now?
No. The consumer app closed on April 26, 2026 and the API was shut down on September 24, 2026, so every sora-2 and sora-2-pro request now returns 410 Gone. Anyone still selling Sora 2 access is using the name for a different model. Pick a platform that renders on models it still runs.
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. Pick a plan and start generating.
See plans and credit allowances