Discontinued: OpenAI shut down the Sora app in April 2026 and the API in September 2026
From $20/mo, free trialVisit WebsiteThe Bottom Line
- Best for
- Professional creators, agencies, and brand teams producing long-form cinematic content where subject coherence over 30+ seconds matters. Also the natural choice for users already paying for ChatGPT Pro. Not cost-effective for volume social content, Kling or Seedance deliver more clips per dollar.
- Price
- From $20/mo, free trial. Compare plans
Key facts
- Sora is OpenAI's text-to-video AI model that generates realistic videos
- It creates video content from text descriptions with understanding of physics
- Currently in research preview, pricing TBD
Pros
- OpenAI video model
- High quality
- Long videos
- Active development
- Industry leading
Cons
- Limited access
- Expensive
- Generation time
- Content restrictions
- Ethical concerns
What is Sora?
Ratings Across the Web
Sora holds an aggregate rating of 4 out of 5 from 59 reviews across G2, last checked September 17, 2026.
Ratings aggregated from independent review platforms. Learn more
Key Features
- Text-to-video
- AI model
- Long videos
- OpenAI
- High quality
- Limited access
Pricing Plans
Free TrialPricing checked Sep 28, 2026
| Plan | Price | Details |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Plus | $20/month |
|
| ChatGPT Pro | $200/month |
+1 more Show less
|
| API | $0.10-0.50 |
+1 more Show less
|
Is Sora worth the price?
Sora is bundled into OpenAI's ChatGPT subscriptions, there is no standalone Sora plan.
Plus subscribers ($20/month) get unlimited 480p video generation and up to 720p with credits, while Pro subscribers ($200/month) unlock 1080p, 20-second clips, and 10,000 monthly credits. The credit system is steep at higher resolutions: a single 5-second 1080p clip burns ~200 credits, meaning Pro users get roughly 50 HD clips per month.
The API charges $0.10-0.50/second depending on resolution. For occasional short clips, Plus is reasonable.
For production video work, the cost-per-second makes Sora significantly more expensive than Runway or Pika.
Hidden Costs & Gotchas
There is no standalone Sora subscription. You must pay for ChatGPT Plus ($20/mo) or Pro ($200/mo) to access Sora at all, the free tier lost Sora access in January 2026
Credit consumption scales dramatically with resolution
480p uses ~4 credits/second, 720p ~16 credits/second, 1080p ~40 credits/second. A single 10-second 1080p video burns 400 credits, 4% of the entire Pro monthly allocation
Plus users are capped at 1,000 credits for higher-quality generation (720p+). That is roughly 12 five-second 720p clips or ~50 five-second 480p clips beyond the unlimited low-res tier
No watermark removal on Plus. Only Pro subscribers get watermark-free downloads, which makes Plus-generated videos unusable for professional or client-facing work
Maximum video duration is short
5 seconds on Plus, 20 seconds on Pro. Generating a 60-second video requires multiple clips stitched together, each consuming credits separately
API pricing has no volume discounts. Whether you generate 10 seconds or 10,000 seconds per month, the per-second rate stays fixed at $0.10-0.50
Credits do not roll over month to month. Unused Pro credits (10,000) expire at the end of each billing cycle
How Sora's pricing compares
At $20/mo, billing unit not specified, Sora is the most premium of its 2 comparable direct competitors.
Not ranked, different unit or currency: Retold £3.33/mo, billing unit not specified.
Entry paid plan, monthly. Pricing checked Sep 28, 2026.
Reviews
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Across 59 verified user reviews on G2
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Sora FAQ
How does Sora generate video content?
Which teams would benefit most from using Sora?
How does Sora compare to Dream Machine?
What are the main limitations of using Sora?
How is Sora priced?
Can Sora produce extended video sequences?
Source: openai.com