Sora's API Shuts Down Sept 24: What Replaces It, Priced

Short version: OpenAI turns off the Sora API on 24 September 2026, and its own deprecation notice names no replacement. The four models at the top of Artificial Analysis's text-to-video leaderboard in mid-September all cost less per second than Sora 2 Pro. MiniMax H3 undercuts plain Sora 2 as well, and H3 Max matches it.

Quick flag: Leaxor is mine, and it runs several of the models below. The Leaxor prices in the table come straight from the pricing code the product bills from, read on 13 September.

What is actually shutting down

OpenAI posted the notice on 24 March. On 24 September the Videos API goes, and every Sora model ID with it: sora-2, sora-2-pro, and the three dated snapshots, sora-2-2025-10-06, sora-2-2025-12-08 and sora-2-pro-2025-10-06.

On OpenAI's deprecations page, the column that normally names the model to move to holds a dash. Most OpenAI deprecations name a successor. This one doesn't, so where you land is your call.

The Sora app already closed in April. If you still call the API, you have until 24 September.

What Sora costs until then

For reference, OpenAI's pricing page still lists Sora per second of output:

• sora-2 at 720p: $0.10
• sora-2-pro at 720p: $0.30
• sora-2-pro at 1024p: $0.50
• sora-2-pro at 1080p: $0.70

The Batch tier is half each of those.

The Sora alternatives that now outrank it

Artificial Analysis runs a blind arena. People watch two clips made from the same prompt, pick one, and the votes become Elo scores.

I pulled the text-to-video with audio board on 13 September. Sora 2 wasn't in its top 12. Here's what was at the top, next to what each costs on Leaxor:

Some caveats on that table, because it would be easy to read too much into it. Elo is crowd preference on one site's prompts. It doesn't tell you whether a model suits your footage.

The Leaxor prices are without native audio, and turning audio on costs more on the models that offer it. Artificial Analysis lists Gemini Omni Flash without a version number, while Leaxor runs 1.1. The arena also labels its MiniMax H3 Max entry "post-trained by fal", and fal is the host Leaxor calls it through.

Where I'd move a Sora workload

If you used plain sora-2 because it was cheap, MiniMax H3 is the obvious place to land. It sits fourth, and at 768p it costs less per second than Sora 2 does at 720p.

If you paid for sora-2-pro, the gap is wider. Wan 3.0 ranks first and costs $0.12 a second at 720p, against Pro's $0.30. That's 40% of the price.

Veo 3.1 is the one I'd think twice about. It's the most expensive line in the table and sits 16th on this board. Its output does carry one thing the others don't: in files I checked on 13 September, Google's content labels were the only ones that validated against the official C2PA trust list. If provenance is part of why you picked a big-name model, that counts for something.

Kling 3.0 Pro sits mid-table on price and tenth on rank. Plenty of people still prefer its motion, so run your own prompts before ruling it out.

If you're migrating code, check these first

Sora took a duration and a size. The models above don't agree with each other on much, and three things caught me out when I wired them into Leaxor through fal:

• Duration type. Older endpoints take duration as a string, like "5". Gemini Omni Flash, MiniMax H3 and Wan 3.0 declare it an integer, and a quoted "5" comes back as a 422.
• The audio flag has three names. Most models use generate_audio. Wan 3.0 uses audio. PixVerse uses generate_audio_switch.
• Resolution strings don't match. MiniMax H3 wants 768P with a capital P. Wan 3.0 wants 720p.

Durations differ too. Veo 3.1 renders only 4, 6 or 8 seconds. Wan 3.0 and MiniMax H3 go to 15. Kling v3 takes 3 to 15.

What I'd do this week

Pick two models from the table and run ten of your real Sora prompts through each. Then put the results next to clips you already have from Sora. It's an afternoon of work. Leave it until the 23rd and there's nothing to compare against, because the Sora side is gone.

Leaxor runs Wan 3.0, both MiniMax H3 models, Kling v3 Pro and Veo 3.1 in one AI video generator, if you'd rather do that comparison in a single tab. For background on what Sora was and why it closed, start here. For every model's per-clip price, see the full cost breakdown.