OpenAI has a plan to cash in on Sora.
On Thursday night, OpenAI announced that starting immediately, it will allow users to buy additional video generations beyond the current limit of 30 free videos per day.
“We have been quite amazed by how much our power users want to use Sora, and the economics are currently completely unsustainable. We thought 30 free gens/day would be more than enough, but clearly we were wrong!” Bill Peebles, OpenAI’s head of Sora, wrote on X. “This will let our pro creators get as much usage as they want to pay for.”
we are launching the ability to buy extra gens in sora today. we are doing this for two main reasons:
first, we have been quite amazed by how much our power users want to use sora, and the economics are currently completely unsustainable. we thought 30 free gens/day would be…
— Bill Peebles (@billpeeb) October 30, 2025
Ten extra videos can be purchased for $4. Pro users can still generate up to 100 videos per day, though the exact number could be less if a user uses “more expensive configs,” Peebles wrote in a reply on X.
For now, the free video limit will remain unchanged.
The TikTok-esque competitor powered by OpenAI’s Sora 2 model has become a smash hit. It is the No. 2 most popular free app on Apple’s App Store, second only to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
One day before the pro announcement, OpenAI unveiled cameo characters, enabling users to create AI-generated content featuring pets and objects.
Peebles made clear that the current free limit won’t last forever. As a common refrain among many in AI, including at OpenAI, Peebles said there simply isn’t enough computing power available.
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“Eventually we will need to bring the free gens down to accommodate growth (we won’t have enough gpus to do it otherwise!), but we’ll be transparent as it happens,” he wrote. “In the meantime, enjoy the crazy usage limits :)”
OpenAI appears to be unconcerned about GPUs for the time being, as it has temporarily allowed users in the US and Canada to sign up for Sora without an invite code.
Sora’s launch hasn’t come without bumps. Cameo, the maker of personalized, paid short videos from celebrities, sued OpenAI over naming Sora’s premier feature Cameos. OpenAI has said they disagree that anyone can exclusively own the word “cameo.” As for the app itself, OpenAI has repeatedly dialed back what users can generate videos of after concerns about intellectual property infringement and depictions of historical figures.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said that he wants to make sure the company carefully designs and guards against them becoming too addictive.
“We’re definitely worried about this,” Altman said during a Q&A in response to a question on how OpenAI will avoid problems other apps have encountered. “I worry about it not just for things like Sora and TikTok and ads and ChatGPT, which are maybe known problems that we can design carefully.”
