The Sora 2 API and the whole Videos API shut down on 24 September 2026, and OpenAI names no replacement. Its deprecation page lists six Sora entries, and the recommended-replacement column is empty for every one of them.OpenAI, Deprecations, read at source 16 Sep 2026: “On March 24th, 2026, we notified developers using the Videos API and Sora 2 video generation model aliases and snapshots of their deprecation and removal from the API on September 24, 2026.” The table lists sora-2, sora-2-pro and four dated snapshots, each with no replacement given.
Six months’ notice, one hard date, and nowhere to go inside OpenAI.
- Date: 24 September 2026. Announced 24 March 2026.
- It is not just the models. The Videos API goes with them.
- No replacement is offered. OpenAI’s own table leaves the column blank.
- Six months’ notice is OpenAI’s standard for generally available models, and that is what was given.
- Migration means another vendor — Veo, Seedance, Kling or Grok Imagine.
What exactly is being switched off
| Model or system | Shutdown |
|---|---|
| Videos API | 24 Sep 2026 |
sora-2 | 24 Sep 2026 |
sora-2-pro | 24 Sep 2026 |
sora-2-2025-10-06 | 24 Sep 2026 |
sora-2-2025-12-08 | 24 Sep 2026 |
sora-2-pro-2025-10-06 | 24 Sep 2026 |
OpenAI, Deprecations, read at source 16 Sep 2026, section “2026-03-24: Sora 2 video generation models and Videos API”.
The empty replacement column is the whole story. When a vendor retires a model it normally points at the successor. Here it points at nothing, which means the migration is off the platform rather than across it.
What happens if you do nothing
Calls fail. OpenAI is explicit about what a shutdown means: it uses “sunset” and “shut down” interchangeably, “to mean a model or endpoint is no longer accessible.”
So this is not a deprecation warning in your logs. On the date, requests to the Videos API and to any Sora 2 alias stop working.
Where to go instead
There is no like-for-like swap, so the choice is a different vendor. The three with published specifications are compared on Veo 3.1 vs Gemini Omni vs Grok Imagine Video, and the per-second costs are on what a Veo clip costs.
Prompt structure does not transfer cleanly between video models either. The vendors publish three different formulas, which is set out on what the vendors actually say.
This page does not rank the alternatives. Nothing here was generated or compared; what is offered is each vendor’s published specification and price, which is the part you can check before you commit.
Six months, and what that tells you
OpenAI publishes the notice it commits to, and Sora got the full amount: “Generally available models: At least 6 months.” Specialised variants get at least three months, and preview models “may be retired with much shorter notice, such as 2 weeks”.OpenAI, Deprecations, read at source 16 Sep 2026.
Worth reading that last line twice if any part of your stack runs on something with preview in the name. OpenAI says so itself: “We don’t recommend using preview models for business-critical production workloads unless you can migrate on short notice.”
How the other vendors handle the same problem is on when AI models retire.
The consumer app has already gone. OpenAI’s Help Center dates the end of the web and app versions to April, five months before the API.OpenAI Help Center, What to know about the Sora discontinuation, read in a browser 17 Sep 2026: “The Sora web and app experiences were discontinued on April 26, 2026.” and “The Sora API will be discontinued on September 24, 2026.”
What this page could not verify
- Whether the date moves. It has been published since March and was unchanged on 16 Sep 2026.
- Which alternative is best. Not tested here.
OpenAI, Deprecations, read at source on 16 September 2026.
OpenAI Help Center, What to know about the Sora discontinuation, read in a browser on 17 September 2026.
Dates on this page are OpenAI’s own and were re-read eight days before the shutdown.