Research profile · Sora 2 and Sora 2 Pro — product discontinued April 2026
Sora 2, researched.
Placed well on blind preference while it was available. Overall verdict withheld. Explore the findings, limitations and 5 cited sources below.
We are withholding an overall verdict on Sora 2. Evidence coverage is 36%, below the 60% our method requires for a tool-level finding. Discontinued. OpenAI closed the Sora app and web on 26 April 2026 and the API closes on 24 September 2026, so most criteria can no longer be established at all.
- Researched scope
- Sora 2 and Sora 2 Pro — product discontinued April 2026
- Best supported for
- Historical reference only
- Principal limitation
- The consumer product no longer exists; the API closes 24 September 2026
- Accepted sources
- 5 · 4 of 11 criteria supported
Best for, and not for
Best supported use
Historical reference only. The strongest finding is highest blind-preference placement in this set.
Where the evidence warns
The consumer product no longer exists; the API closes 24 September 2026.
What the evidence supports, criterion by criterion
4 of 11 applicable criteria have enough accepted evidence to say something. The rest are listed below them, unscored.
| Criterion | Evidence | What we found |
|---|---|---|
| Visual fidelity and aesthetics | Limited evidence | Sora 2 (December) is the highest-placed model in this set on blind preference, Elo 1097 from 4,832 votes, with Sora 2 Pro at 1076.Vote count is under a third of Vidu's, so the interval is correspondingly wider. |
| Output specifications and delivery | Moderately supported | Discontinued. OpenAI closed the web and app experiences on 26 April 2026 and closes the API on 24 September 2026. The API documents up to 20 seconds per generation, 1920x1080 on Pro, and up to six extensions for a 120-second total.Those are API specifications for a route that is closing; they are not the limits the consumer product had, which were never published. |
| Pricing and value | Moderately supported | Discontinued. There is no consumer price because there is no consumer product. The API, which closes on 24 September 2026, publishes $0.10 per second for sora-2 and $0.30 to $0.70 per second for sora-2-pro depending on resolution.API tariffs are not consumer plan allowances, and the route they belong to closes within weeks. What the consumer product cost to use was never documented and cannot now be established. |
| Native audio and lip sync | Limited evidence | Native synchronised audio is a headline capability of the Sora 2 announcement, and one of the few models in this set where audio is generated with the video rather than added after.Vendor announcement only; no independent evaluation of the audio was accepted. |
Not established
Researched, but the available public evidence does not support a conclusion. These are gaps, not low scores.
- Temporal stability and artifact control — Searched the VBench and VBench-2.0 leaderboards on 13 September 2026 by full model-column inspection. No version matching our scope appears in them.
- Prompt or script adherence and control — Searched the VBench and VBench-2.0 leaderboards on 13 September 2026 by full model-column inspection. No version matching our scope appears in them.
- Workflow and editability — Researched; no source meeting our weighting bar addressed this for the scoped version.
- Camera motion — Searched the VBench and VBench-2.0 leaderboards on 13 September 2026 by full model-column inspection. No version matching our scope appears in them.
- Character and object consistency — Searched the VBench and VBench-2.0 leaderboards on 13 September 2026 by full model-column inspection. No version matching our scope appears in them.
- Physics and material realism — Searched the VBench and VBench-2.0 leaderboards on 13 September 2026 by full model-column inspection. No version matching our scope appears in them.
- Text rendering — Searched the vendor's own documentation on 13 September 2026 for any statement on rendering text or typography in video. None was found.
Pricing
Published list price, normalised to a five-second generation. Assumes full use of the plan allocation, before tax, no retakes — so real cost per clip you keep is higher.
| Plan | Cost / 5s | Resolution | Audio |
|---|
All Sora 2 pricing scenarios and how they were normalised. Prices verified 2026-09-13 and change without notice.
Alternatives
Same category, so genuinely comparable. We do not rank across categories.
- Kling AI — Complex physical movement and holding a character's face steady across a shot. Moderately supported.
- Higgsfield — Camera-move control and stylised cinematic shots, with access to several models in one place. Not established.
- Runway Gen-4.5 — Creative and editorial work — generative editing, motion brush and in-context controls. Moderately supported.
Sources
Every finding above traces to one of these. Version match records how closely each source matches Sora 2 and Sora 2 Pro — product discontinued April 2026.
| Source | Type | Version match | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | Official documentation | Exact | 2026-09-12 |
| OpenAI | Official documentation | Exact | 2026-09-12 |
| Artificial Analysis | Independent benchmark | Exact | 2026-09-12 |
| OpenAI | Official documentation | Family | 2026-09-13 |
| OpenAI | Official documentation | Exact | 2026-09-13 |