Is the Sora2 API still working?

API Deprecations
1

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to understand the current status of the Sora API and whether I’m interpreting OpenAI’s announcement correctly.

According to the official information:

  • “The Sora web and app experiences were discontinued on April 26, 2026.”

  • “The Sora API will be discontinued on September 24, 2026.”

My understanding is that the API should still be available until September 2026. However, when I try to use it in my automation, I get an error like:

404 Invalid URL (POST /platform/video_gen)

So I’m a bit confused and would like to clarify:

  1. Is the Sora API still accessible to new users (e.g. individuals without prior access), or only to existing/whitelisted users?

  2. Are there any publicly documented endpoints for video generation, or is this no longer available?

  3. Does the “API available until September 2026” statement only apply to internal or partner access?

In short: Am I misunderstanding the announcement, or is the API simply not publicly usable anymore?

Thanks a lot for any clarification!

2

Welcome to the community!

There seems to have been an issue earlier today and should now be working normally.

3

Hi Larisa,

thank you for your quick response. I tried it this morning, and as you said, it works.

I have one more question: what about the avatars? I tried to use one of my existing avatars, but it didn’t appear in the video I created. Is there any way to use them?

4

If you mean characters, I found this on API docs under “Video generation with Sora” → “Use characters for consistency.”:

For the API, avatars seem to map to “characters,” but the docs describe characters mainly as reusable non-human subjects, like animals, mascots or objects.

The flow is:

  1. Upload a short MP4 to POST /v1/videos/characters
  2. Use the returned character ID in the characters array when creating the video
  3. Mention the character name verbatim in the prompt, because the docs say passing only the ID may not reliably preserve the character

Important caveat: the docs say character uploads that depict human likeness are blocked by default. For human-likeness access, they say to contact an account manager or sales.

So if your existing avatar is a human/person avatar, it may not work in the API unless your account has human-likeness access enabled.

Hopefully I understood your question correctly and that this might be of help.

5

In the Sora 2 app, I was able to create reusable avatars directly from generated videos. These avatars were essentially characters extracted from a video, and they had a handle (e.g. @inan) that I could reuse in future prompts to maintain the same person/appearance across different videos.

I’m trying to understand how this concept translates to the API, since the documentation only refers to “characters” and seems to focus more on non-human subjects.

Do you happen to know if there’s an equivalent workflow for this in the API, or any additional details about it? Or would you recommend simply trying the character upload method you described above?

6

The Sora app and the API are separate surfaces.

Something that works in the Sora app, like reusable avatars/handles, does not automatically mean the same object or handle can be used through the API.

For the API, I would only rely on what is documented in the API docs. Like mentioned and linked above.

So I would not assume that a Sora app avatar handle like @inan can be passed directly to the API unless OpenAI documents that mapping or the account exposes it.

If you want to test, I’d try the documented character upload workflow.