Can I still use Sora through the API?

Only until September 24, 2026. OpenAI's API deprecations page says the Videos API and the sora-2 and sora-2-pro models are removed on that date, after developers were notified on March 24, 2026. If a third-party app you use was built on Sora, it has to switch to another model or stop making video.

Will OpenAI delete my Sora data and my cameo?

OpenAI says that after the discontinuation and any final export window, it will permanently delete the data associated with your use of Sora. Its help page doesn't list cameo or likeness data separately, so treat everything stored there as going away. Export what you can from the sunset page and keep your own copies.

Is there anything like Sora I can try before paying?

Most tools offer some free use, but low-star reviewers report free queues that stay busy and free limits that run out before the first video. On Cinely the scene preview costs nothing: you see the written scenes and characters, then pay only if you approve the render. New accounts get a welcome gift of credits, and the amount can vary.

Can I make one 10- or 15-second clip on Cinely like I did on Sora?

Not as a single take. Every Cinely scene is one 8-second clip, and a film is made of 2 to 100 scenes, so the shortest film runs 16 seconds. If a moment needs more than 8 seconds, split it into two beats. Cinely joins the scenes into one video with voices and optional subtitles.

Sora Alternative: What to Use After the Shutdown

Sora's app and website closed on April 26, 2026, and OpenAI removes the Sora models from its API on September 24, 2026. If you made videos there, you need a Sora alternative, and you probably don't want to trade one set of problems for another: filters that block original characters, drafts that vanish, and clips too short to tell a story.

The short answer: export what you can from Sora, then pick a replacement by what you make. For single shots, the big clip generators (Google Flow, Kling, Runway, Pika and Luma) all work, with trade-offs that reviewers describe below. For a story with the same characters from scene to scene, a tool that writes, casts and joins the scenes for you saves the most time and credits.

If credits are what worry you most, our guide to how AI video credits actually get spent covers that part in depth.

Did Sora shut down, and when?

Yes. OpenAI announced in late March 2026 that it was closing Sora, and it is doing it in two stages, according to OpenAI's help page on the Sora discontinuation:

April 26, 2026: the Sora web and app experiences were discontinued. The App Store listing is gone, and the Google Play listing no longer loads.
September 24, 2026: the Videos API and the sora-2 and sora-2-pro models are removed from OpenAI's API. The OpenAI API deprecations page says developers were told on March 24, 2026.

So as of mid-September, the consumer app is closed and the API has days left. If a third-party app you use runs on Sora, expect it to change models or stop generating after September 24.

What happens to your Sora videos now?

OpenAI's help page tells users to export their Sora content as soon as possible. The export sits at sora.chatgpt.com/sunset: sign in, choose Export, and OpenAI emails you when the file is ready. After the discontinuation and any final export window it offers, OpenAI says it will permanently delete the data associated with your use of Sora.

What to do now:

Try the export page, signed in with the account you used for Sora. If it still works, download the file as soon as the email arrives.
Gather what you already have. Clips you downloaded or posted to other apps live outside OpenAI's servers.
Copy your prompts and scripts into a document. You can't take Sora's model with you, but your writing moves to any tool.
If you only used the API, switch models before September 24.

The closure became a complaint of its own. In the one- and two-star Google Play reviews of Sora we read, roughly one in eight were about the shutdown: paid generations left unused, drafts and downloads lost, and people who say they never saw a warning. One Google Play reviewer wrote that "it shut down before I could finish my first AI video."

What were Sora users unhappy about before it closed?

In September 2026 we read more than 12,000 one- and two-star reviews of 63 apps on the App Store, Google Play, Trustpilot and Capterra, including about 200 low-star Google Play reviews of Sora. Its App Store reviews disappeared with the listing. The patterns matter, because they tell you what to test in whatever comes next.

Lost work. More than two in five complained about drafts that wouldn't load, videos that disappeared and cryptic error codes.
Filters. About a quarter hit false positives: original characters rejected as someone else's content, adults flagged as minors, and no reason given. One Google Play reviewer said it "rejects the submission for 'third party content'."
Load and limits. About one in six got stuck in heavy-load loops. Others watched daily generations drop from 30 to 10, then to 1 unless they paid, with flagged or failed tries still counted.
A weaker Android app. One of the most-upvoted Google Play reviews said the Android app was "Unable to upload images, create characters … can't set video length."
No story. Story makers disliked the 10- to 15-second clips, and one Google Play reviewer found "No way to get the same person in 2 videos either."

What should you look for before you switch?

Most AI video tools share the same economics. The model renders a short clip, you pay per clip or per second, and every retry costs as much as the first try. That's why the same complaints repeat across brands. Check these six things before you pay:

Story length. How long is one clip, and does the tool join clips into a film or leave the stitching to you? Most generators stop somewhere between 4 and 15 seconds. Our guide to making a long AI video that holds together covers both routes.
Character consistency. Many clip tools generate each clip fresh from text, so faces drift unless a reference image anchors them. Can you set a face once and reuse it, and how many fixed faces fit in one shot? Make two scenes with the same character before you commit.
Failed renders. Does the tool return credits automatically when a render fails or gets blocked, and does it tell you? Across Runway, Pika, Luma, Sora and Flow, paying for output that never arrived was the most common complaint.
Filters that explain themselves. Every major generator runs safety checks on prompts, uploaded photos and finished clips. You want a named reason and no charge for the block. Here's why harmless prompts get flagged and how to rewrite them.
A price you can see first. Runway and Pika reviewers said they couldn't see what a generation would cost before it ran. Also check whether a subscription covers generation or only the right to buy credit packs.
Real apps, one account. Make sure the official app exists on your phone, does what the website does, and shares your purchases.

Which alternatives work on iPhone and Android?

Among the Sora alternatives App Store shoppers will find, Runway, Kling, Pika and Luma have official iPhone apps, and Google Flow has a newer one with few reviews so far. Android is narrower. If you need a Sora alternative for Android, only Flow, Kling and Runway have official apps among these five. Google Play listings using the Pika or Luma name come from other developers, so check the developer before you install.

Here's what low-star reviewers report about each. Experiences vary, and these apps change often.

Google Flow and Veo. Google's Veo model runs in the Flow app, which has more than 10 million Google Play installs, and inside Gemini. About a quarter of Flow's low-star reviews are about blocks on harmless material, including kids' stories, the user's own face and AI-made characters flagged as prominent people. Some say failed runs were charged even when the app said they weren't, and that the app has far fewer tools than the web version. In Gemini, paid users report about three videos a day.

Kling AI. Official apps on both platforms and a 4.5-star average across about 580,000 Google Play ratings, so plenty of people are happy with it. The top low-star theme on Play is a free queue that always says it's busy. Some bought credit packs and were then told to subscribe before they could spend them, and others were charged for clips that failed or ignored the prompt.

Runway. The app is now a chat-style agent that plans and generates for you. Close to half of the low-star App Store reviews we read say credits went on failed renders and on paying again to fix the agent's own mistakes. Story makers report the wrong people turning up across connected scenes, even with reference images.

Pika. iPhone only. Reviewers describe queues lasting hours or days, even on paid plans, failed jobs that still cost credits, and support that runs through Discord.

Luma Dream Machine. iPhone only. Video generation is paid-only, and reviewers say the free plan hit its limit before they could test once. Even people who like the results call the clips very short, and renders can take hours.

Tool	Official apps	Watch out for
Google Flow / Veo	Android, a newer iPhone app, and Gemini	Blocks on harmless prompts, failed runs charged, clips of 4 to 10 seconds
Kling AI	iPhone and Android	A busy free queue, credit packs that need a subscription
Runway	iPhone and Android	Credits spent on retries and fixes
Pika	iPhone only	Long queues, Discord-only support
Luma Dream Machine	iPhone only	Paid-only video, short clips, slow renders
Cinely	Web, iPhone and Android	A strict third-party filter, fixed 8-second scenes, 48-second free films by default

Competitor rows summarize the low-star reviews we read in September 2026. The Cinely row lists our own limits.

What's the best Sora alternative for storytelling?

If you want one striking shot, any tool above can deliver on a good day. If you want a story, a clip generator leaves the writing, casting, stitching and continuity to you, and every retry comes out of your credits. That gap is what makes Cinely different for storytelling: it's an AI movie maker on the web, iPhone and Android that turns an idea or a script into a finished film.

Here's how it handles the checklist:

Two ways in. The Idea tab writes a story from your idea. The Script tab films exactly what you wrote, scene for scene, with dialogue kept word for word, which makes it text to movie in the literal sense. Our walkthrough on turning a text prompt into a movie shows the flow.
Length. Each scene is one 8-second clip. A film runs 2 to 100 scenes, from 16 seconds to about 13 minutes 20 seconds, in portrait 9:16 or widescreen 16:9, and Cinely joins the scenes for you.
Your face. Add one photo and you're cast as the lead. It becomes the face reference for the scenes you appear in. Standard keeps up to 3 fixed faces in a scene and Cinematic up to 7; anyone beyond that is an extra without a fixed face.
Voices and subtitles. Pick a voice for each character or let Cinely choose. In Standard and Premium's Pro mode, only the first character's chosen voice is applied. Subtitles are an optional toggle, free, in 17 languages.
A free preview. Cinely writes the scenes and styles the characters first. You review, edit and approve, and you pay only for the scenes you approve: 30 credits per Standard scene, so a 6-scene film costs 180.
Refunds on failure. If a movie fails after you were charged, the credits come back automatically. If only some scenes fail, the film finishes with the rest and those scenes are refunded. A film stopped by the safety filter takes the same path.
Blocks with a reason. The filter names one of six reasons (violence, sexual content, real or famous people, hateful language, self-harm, copyrighted material) and gives advice for that reason.
One account. Credits, Premium and movies follow you across the website and the Cinely apps for iPhone and Android.

What Cinely won't do for you

The safety filter is strict and belongs to a third-party video provider, so changing a few words rarely gets a blocked prompt through, and photos of real people, even your own, are often declined. Scenes are fixed at 8 seconds, so there's no single long take. Free accounts can pick up to 6 scenes (48 seconds) by default, and on the web, longer films and Cinematic quality need Premium.

A scene that rendered fine but isn't what you pictured isn't refunded either; fixing it in the editor costs 60 credits. For how the phone and browser versions compare, see the Cinely app versus the website.

How do you move a Sora project to a new tool?

Export first. Use OpenAI's export while it's available and keep the files somewhere you control.
Turn prompts into a script. Write one short beat per scene and label who speaks, as in MAYA: "We're late." Cinely's Script tab builds the cast from labels like that.
Pick your cast. Decide who needs a fixed face, and gather a clear, well-lit photo or a written description for each.
Test small. Make a two-scene film with your main character, and check the face, the voice and the cost before you go bigger.
Then scale up. Once the test holds together, render the full story.

If your Sora clips were the start of a story, make your first film on Cinely from the script you already have, then keep going on your phone.