# Sora alternatives after the shutdown: 4 models tested on a Sora-style shot
By TokLab · Published 2026-11-04 · Updated 2026-11-04
If you made videos with Sora, you need somewhere else to make them now. OpenAI closed the Sora app and website on April 26, 2026 and the Sora API on September 24, 2026. Its developer docs put it plainly: "There is no one-to-one replacement API."
Sora was worth using for a particular mix: realistic motion, sound effects and spoken dialogue generated in the same clip. That last part is the hardest to replace, so it's the focus here. On November 4, 2026 four video models got a Sora-style basketball shot with one line of dialogue, and we transcribed what each one actually said. The four clips cost $0.673756.
We make TokLab, which sells all four models; it never sold Sora. The clips ran through its API.
## The Sora shutdown: what actually happened
| Date | What changed |
| ------------------ | --------------------------------------------------- |
| March 24, 2026 | OpenAI announced Sora would be discontinued |
| April 26, 2026 | The Sora web and app experiences closed |
| September 24, 2026 | The Sora 2 models and the Videos API were shut down |
Source: OpenAI Help Center, "What to know about the Sora discontinuation"; OpenAI developer docs, Sora 2 model page.
If you still have work in Sora, OpenAI's help page says you can export it at sora.chatgpt.com/sunset, and that purchased ChatGPT and Sora credits can still be used for Codex. OpenAI hasn't published an end date for exports. It says it will email users before any final export window and will permanently delete Sora data once that window passes. If you haven't downloaded your clips, do that before anything else on this page.
## What made Sora useful, and what replaces each part
OpenAI described Sora 2 as "more physically accurate, realistic, and more controllable than prior systems," with "synchronized dialogue and sound effects." Here's where each of those features lives now:
| Sora feature | Replaced by | Notes |
| ----------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Dialogue and sound in the same clip | [Veo 3.1](https://toklab.ai/docs/veo-3-1), [Seedance 2.0](https://toklab.ai/docs/seedance-2-0), [Grok Imagine Video 1.5](https://toklab.ai/docs/grok-imagine-video-1-5), [MiniMax H3](https://toklab.ai/docs/minimax-h3) | all four returned speech in our test |
| Realistic physics | the same four | all four made the missed shot bounce off the rim |
| Putting a person in the scene ("characters") | Seedance 2.0 reference images (up to 9), MiniMax H3 reference images (1–4), [Kling 3.0](https://toklab.ai/docs/kling-3-0) elements | you upload reference photos; there's no one-time likeness capture like Sora's |
| Portrait and landscape at 720p | every model here, most up to 1080p or 4K | Sora 2's API output was 720×1280 or 1280×720 |
| Remixing other people's videos in a social feed | nothing comparable | the Sora app's feed has no API equivalent |
## Best Sora alternatives: quick picks
* **For scripted dialogue:** Seedance 2.0 Mini, the only model that said our line without adding words.
* **For a polished cinematic shot with sound:** Veo 3.1 Fast, 8 seconds at 720p for $0.168.
* **For the lowest cost:** MiniMax H3 Standard, $0.076926 for 5 seconds at 768p. Check the dialogue before you use it.
* **For keeping one person across many clips:** Seedance 2.0 with reference images, or Kling 3.0's elements.
## The test: a Sora-style shot with one line of dialogue
Sora's own launch example was a missed basketball shot that rebounds instead of teleporting into the hoop. We wrote a shot in the same spirit and added one spoken line:
"Two friends on an outdoor basketball court at sunset. One shoots and misses; the ball hits the rim and bounces away across the court. The other laughs and says: "Unlucky. One more try?" Sound of the ball on the rim, sneakers squeaking, distant traffic."
Each model rendered it once. Then each clip's audio went through Whisper, OpenAI's speech recognition model (the base English version), to see what was actually said. Here are all four, one after another, with sound:
| Model | Clip | Billed | What it said (transcript) | Ball bounced off the rim |
| ---------------------- | --------- | --------: | ---------------------------------------- | ------------------------ |
| Seedance 2.0 Mini | 480p, 5 s | $0.18883 | "(laughing) Unlucky, one more try." | yes |
| Veo 3.1 Fast | 720p, 8 s | $0.168 | "Unlucky. One more try. One more try." | yes |
| Grok Imagine Video 1.5 | 480p, 6 s | $0.24 | "Unlucky. One more try? Yeah, one more." | yes |
| MiniMax H3 Standard | 768p, 5 s | $0.076926 | "I'm lucky one more try" | yes |
All four got the physics right. Not one ball teleported.
## The 4 Sora alternatives, model by model
### Seedance 2.0 Mini: the only one that kept to the script
Seedance 2.0 Mini edited the shot like a sports highlight. It opens on a player shooting, cuts to a low close-up of the ball hitting the rim against a pink sky, then cuts wide to the two friends as the ball rolls away. The laugh and the line come in over that wide shot.
The transcript reads "(laughing) Unlucky, one more try." The laugh comes first, as the prompt asked, and the words match; only the punctuation differs. If you're replacing Sora for clips with scripted lines, this is the result you're after.
It took about two minutes and cost $0.18883 at 480p. For a sharper final take, Seedance 2.0 and 2.5 render up to 1080p. Seedance 2.0 also takes up to nine reference images, the closest thing here to Sora's characters feature.
### Veo 3.1 Fast: the most composed shot, with a line that ran long
Veo cast two young women and framed them against the sunset through the chain-link fence. As the shot goes up, the camera looks up at the hoop from below, the ball bounces off, and it comes back down to the two of them laughing while the ball rolls between them. Of the four clips, it's the one that looks most like it had a director.
Its dialogue went past the script: "Unlucky. One more try. One more try." Veo repeated the last phrase. For a scene where the exact words don't matter, that's fine. For an ad with approved copy, it's a retake or an edit.
Veo 3.1 Fast makes 8-second clips, the longest of the four, for $0.168. It took just under two minutes.
### Grok Imagine Video 1.5: natural delivery, extra words
Grok Imagine gave the widest shot: a big, worn outdoor court under an orange sky, one friend dribbling in from the left, the other near the hoop. After the miss the camera closes in on the two of them, both laughing.
Its line sounded the most like two friends talking, which is partly why it didn't match the script: "Unlucky. One more try? Yeah, one more." The added reply is the kind of thing a real person would say. It still isn't what was written.
It was the fastest render, at about a minute, and the most expensive, at $0.24 for 6 seconds at 480p. Grok's shortest clip is 6 seconds.
### MiniMax H3 Standard: the cheapest, with a line we couldn't use
MiniMax H3 Standard put the friends on a red and green court with several hoops behind them. One takes a jump shot, the ball hits the rim, and the clip cuts to a close-up of the other friend talking straight to camera. The look is clean and the sound effects are there.
The line is the problem. It transcribed as "I'm lucky one more try". That may be the transcription model mishearing a fast "unlucky", but either way you'd retake it before using it.
At $0.076926 for 5 seconds at 768p it was less than half the price of anything else here, and it took about 77 seconds. For scenes with no dialogue, or for testing a prompt before a final render, that price is hard to argue with.
### Kling 3.0: not in our dialogue test, but worth knowing
Kling 3.0 wasn't part of this test. It comes up in most lists of Sora alternatives because of its elements feature: you store a character once and call it into later clips. Sora's characters worked differently, with a one-time likeness capture, but for a series with the same person in every shot, Kling's elements and Seedance's reference images are the nearest replacements.
### Runway and Luma: also not in our test
Both appear on most lists of Sora alternatives, and both sell their own video models through credit plans. On November 4, 2026 Runway's pricing page listed a free plan with 125 one-time credits and a Standard plan at $15 a month, or $12 billed yearly, for 625 credits, which it says covers 52 seconds of Gen-4.5. Luma's plans start at $30 a month for 10,000 credits, with no free plan listed. We didn't test either for dialogue, so check a quoted line on a short clip before you commit.
## Price and access comparison
| Model | Billed in our test | Longest clip in one pass | Also available in |
| ---------------------- | --------------------: | ------------------------ | ---------------------- |
| Seedance 2.0 Mini | $0.18883 (5 s, 480p) | 15 s | Dreamina |
| Veo 3.1 Fast | $0.168 (8 s, 720p) | 8 s | Google Gemini and Flow |
| Grok Imagine Video 1.5 | $0.24 (6 s, 480p) | 15 s | Grok |
| MiniMax H3 Standard | $0.076926 (5 s, 768p) | 15 s | Hailuo |
These are the amounts TokLab charged for our four clips on November 4, 2026; current rates are on the [pricing page](https://toklab.ai/pricing).
## If you had Sora API calls running
Anything that called the Sora 2 models or the Videos API stopped working on September 24, 2026. Moving it over looks like this:
1. **List every place that called Sora.** For each, write down the shape (Sora 2's API returned 720×1280 or 1280×720), the length you needed and whether it relied on dialogue.
2. **Pick a model per job, not one for everything.** Dialogue went best on Seedance 2.0 Mini, cinematic framing on Veo 3.1 Fast, cheap volume on MiniMax H3 Standard.
3. **Set duration and aspect ratio explicitly.** Each model has its own range. Grok Imagine starts at 6 seconds, and every Veo 3.1 tier renders exactly 8, so a default that worked on Sora may be refused or silently changed.
4. **Keep dialogue in quotation marks and name the sounds.** All four models read a quoted line as speech and picked up named effects like "sound of the ball on the rim."
5. **Check the transcript, not just the picture.** Three of our four clips looked right and said something other than the script.
## How free are the alternatives?
Free video generation is getting harder to find. In an [r/SoraAi thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/SoraAi/comments/1s2plw8/openai_shutting_down_sora_best_alternatives/) with 215 comments, started the day OpenAI announced the shutdown, one of the first questions was whether any alternative is free. One reply said Grok had just ended free generation for Imagine and that "only one left is maybe meta ai." ByteDance's Dreamina advertises free video generation with Seedance. Wherever free tiers remain, expect tight daily limits.
## FAQ
### Is Sora completely shut down?
Yes. OpenAI closed the Sora app and website on April 26, 2026 and shut down the Sora 2 models and the Videos API on September 24, 2026.
### Can I still download my Sora videos?
OpenAI's help page says you can export your content at sora.chatgpt.com/sunset. It hasn't published an end date, says it will email users before any final export window, and will then permanently delete Sora data.
### What is the best alternative to Sora?
For spoken dialogue, Seedance 2.0 Mini was the only model in our test to say the words of the line exactly. For cinematic shots with sound, Veo 3.1 Fast. For the lowest cost, MiniMax H3 Standard.