OpenAI's Sora API Goes Dark, Completing the Product's Full Shutdown
OpenAI shut down the Sora API on September 24, 2026, the date it had set back in March when it first announced Sora’s wind-down. With the Videos API and every sora-2 model now switched off, OpenAI’s text-to-video product line has been fully discontinued, five months after the consumer web and app experience closed on April 26.
Details
- What was removed: the entire Videos API endpoint and all sora-2 model variants, including
sora-2,sora-2-pro,sora-2-2025-10-06,sora-2-2025-12-08, andsora-2-pro-2025-10-06 - No replacement model: OpenAI’s own deprecation documentation lists no recommended successor for the retired Sora models, unlike its usual practice of pointing developers to a newer model
- Timeline recap: the shutdown was announced March 24, 2026; the consumer web and app closed April 26, 2026; the API stayed live for developers for an additional five months before today’s cutoff
- Data handling: users and developers can still export content created with Sora from sora.chatgpt.com/sunset; once any final export window closes, OpenAI says it will permanently delete all data tied to Sora usage
- Notifications: OpenAI says it will email affected accounts before a final export window begins, rather than deleting data without warning
What happened next
Developers who were still building on the Sora API now have to migrate to a different video-generation provider or wait for OpenAI to ship a successor product, since no replacement model was named in the deprecation notice. The shutdown closes out a product line that OpenAI first launched in February 2024 and expanded into a standalone app with Sora 2 in 2025, before winding it down entirely over the course of 2026.