Sora (OpenAI)
The video quality is real. The shutdown date is realer: the API dies 24/09/2026, 62 days after this audit. Don't build here.
Element scores
Strengths
Synced-audio video generation is genuinely frontier-grade: text or image in, up to 1080p and 20 seconds out, with speech, effects and background audio rendered in one pass. The conditioning surface is better than most competitors — input_reference for a starting frame, character uploads for consistent cast, and extensions that chain up to 20 seconds each while preserving motion and camera direction. The cost ladder is honest and documented: sora-2 for drafts at $0.10/sec, sora-2-pro for hero shots, and a Batch tier that halves both if you can wait 24 hours.
Honest dings
OpenAI announced on 24/03/2026 that it is exiting video generation. The web and app experiences were discontinued on 26/04/2026, video generation inside ChatGPT went with them, the Disney partnership was wound down, and the API shuts off on 24/09/2026 — 62 days after this audit. Both models are already labelled Legacy. Everything else is secondary, but worth stating: no evals, no MCP, no fine-tuning, and tracing stops at job status. Any pipeline built on Sora today needs a migration plan before it needs a prompt library.
Sources
Every audit lists the research it rests on — transparency and traceability are the product. Tools evolve: each audit is a snapshot of its audit date, and re-audits supersede older versions (kept below for reference).
- help.openai.com/en/articles/20001152-what-to-know-a… — Official: Sora web and app discontinued 26/04/2026, Sora API discontinued 24/09/2026, data permanently deleted after any final export window (accessed 2026-07-24)
- developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/video-generat… — Official docs: deprecation notice covering sora-2, sora-2-pro and all snapshots; 16- and 20-second generations, 720p/1080p sizes, input_reference, character uploads, extensions, job polling states (accessed 2026-07-24)
- developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing — Official pricing: sora-2 $0.10/sec 720p; sora-2-pro $0.30/$0.50/$0.70 per second by size; Batch tier at half those rates (accessed 2026-07-24)
- developers.openai.com/api/docs/models/sora-2-pro — Official model page — Sora 2 Pro marked Legacy, text+image in, video+audio out, per-second pricing by resolution (accessed 2026-07-24)
- bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-24/openai-plans… — Bloomberg, 24/03/2026: OpenAI discontinues Sora six months after launch; Disney partnership and its $1B stock-warrant stake wound down (accessed 2026-07-24)
- nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/openai-shuttering-sora-v… — NBC News, 24/03/2026: OpenAI's 'We're saying goodbye to Sora' announcement; ChatGPT also stops generating video from text prompts (accessed 2026-07-24)
- the-decoder.com/openai-sets-two-stage-sora-shutdown… — Independent confirmation of the two-stage shutdown dates and the export guidance, 28/03/2026 (accessed 2026-07-24)
- community.openai.com/t/is-the-sora2-api-still-worki… — OpenAI Developer Community, 28/04/2026: API confirmed still live after the app shutdown, and app-only objects such as cameo handles do not map to API calls (accessed 2026-07-24)
- techxplore.com/news/2026-04-sora-shutdown-reveals-l… — The Conversation via TechXplore, 27/04/2026: independent analysis of the compute-cost and copyright pressures behind the shutdown, and the watermark/metadata safeguards on outputs (accessed 2026-07-24)