Short answer: yes. If you’re searching for “Sora AI” hoping to try OpenAI’s text-to-video tool, it’s gone — not paused, not rebranded, actually shut down. Here’s the timeline, what happens to anything you made with it, and what to use instead.
What actually got discontinued, and when
Per OpenAI’s own help center, two things are being shut down separately: the Sora web app and mobile app, and the Sora API. The consumer web/app product was discontinued on April 26, 2026 — it’s already off. The API, which some developers were still using to generate video programmatically, is scheduled to shut down on September 24, 2026. As of this writing, that’s very close.
OpenAI hasn’t announced a replacement product. If you have content sitting in Sora, the company’s guidance is to export it as soon as possible from sora.chatgpt.com/sunset — after the shutdown (and any final export window OpenAI is able to offer), associated data is permanently deleted. If you’d previously bought credits, standard ChatGPT subscription refund policy applies, and any unused Sora-specific credits are said to carry over to other OpenAI products like Codex — worth confirming directly with OpenAI support if that affects you.
What to use instead
The AI video space didn’t stand still while this played out. If you were using Sora for text-to-video or image-to-video clips, the tool we’d point you to first is Runway, which is still actively developed, has a genuine free tier to test before paying, and is particularly strong at turning a still image into controlled motion. For a broader side-by-side of options, see our AI video generator comparison.
If something changes — OpenAI has surprised the market before — we’ll update this page rather than leave stale information live.
