The Sora API shuts down on 24 September 2026, covering sora-2, sora-2-pro and the Videos API, with no recommended replacement from OpenAI. Data associated with Sora accounts is deleted after the cutoff. Files you've already exported are unaffected. If anything of yours exists only on the platform, 24 September is when it stops existing.
This was announced in March and the web app closed in April. The API is the last piece, and it goes on 24 September.
What exactly happens
Three endpoints stop working: sora-2, sora-2-pro and the Videos API. OpenAI hasn't named a replacement.
The consumer app and website closed on 26 April 2026, so if you'd moved off then, this doesn't affect you.
The part that catches people is the data. Data associated with Sora accounts is deleted after the cutoff dates. Not archived, not made read-only. Files you exported before are fine — anything still sitting on the platform isn't.
Rights and storage fail independently. Only one of them is recoverable by acting early, and you have until 24 September.
What to do before 24 September
Three things, and the first takes priority over the other two.
Export everything still on the platform
Not just the finished pieces. Drafts, alternate takes, anything you might want later. Storage costs you nothing and re-generation isn't an option after 24 September.
Save your prompts separately
The descriptions transfer to another model even though the tuning won't. A prompt you refined over twenty attempts is worth keeping as a starting point.
Check what in your pipeline calls the API
If anything automated points at sora-2 or the Videos API, it fails silently on 24 September. Worth grepping for now rather than debugging later.
What transfers, and what doesn't
Exported files transfer entirely — they're yours, they're finished, nothing changes.
Your original inputs transfer too. Photographs, reference art, scripts: all model-agnostic, all worth keeping outside any platform.
Prompts transfer partially, and this is where people lose time. The description part — who's in shot, the blocking, the light, the action — works anywhere. The tuning you added because Sora responded to it is a property of Sora. Strip prompts back to the description before you rebuild them elsewhere, rather than carrying the old phrasing across.
The broader lesson, since you're here anyway
Platform storage is a convenience, not an archive. That's true of every platform including this one.
Sora gave roughly six months of notice, publicly, twice. The people who came through it fine weren't the ones who read the notice carefully — they were the ones who had already exported.
Which is an argument for exporting as you go rather than at the end of a project, regardless of what any platform's terms say about your rights. Rights and files are two different questions with two different answers.
- The API shuts down 24 September. sora-2, sora-2-pro and the Videos API, with no OpenAI replacement
- Account data is deleted after the cutoff. Already-exported files are unaffected
- Export everything still on the platform, including drafts. Re-generation isn't available after 24 September
- Save your prompts, then strip them back to description before rebuilding elsewhere
- Check whether anything automated calls those endpoints. It fails silently on 24 September
- Export as you go on every platform. Storage is a convenience, not an archive
24 September 2026. That covers sora-2, sora-2-pro and the Videos API. The consumer app and website closed earlier, on 26 April 2026.
Data associated with Sora accounts is deleted after the cutoff. Files you've already downloaded are unaffected — the deletion applies to what's still held on the platform, so anything existing only there needs exporting before 24 September.
Yes, until the cutoff. Export everything rather than just the finished pieces — drafts and alternate takes go too, and re-generating them won't be possible afterwards.
OpenAI hasn't named one. Which means migration is a model-selection decision rather than a swap, and worth making on what each alternative actually does rather than on which is closest to what you had.
Partially. The description part — who's in shot, the blocking, the light, the action — transfers anywhere. The tuning you added because Sora responded to it won't. Strip prompts back to description before rebuilding them elsewhere rather than carrying the old phrasing across.
It stops working on 24 September, and it will fail rather than warn. Worth searching your pipeline for sora-2 and the Videos API endpoint now, while there's still time to point it somewhere else.
Thirty-plus models, one balance
If you're migrating, Creative Studio runs the current roster on a single credit balance — so you're picking per shot rather than committing to one vendor again.
Open Creative StudioMore on model capability, access and rights in Models.