What’s happened? OpenAI’s Sora is launching paid video-generation credits and has confirmed it will be reducing its free quota moving forward. Bill Peebles, head of Sora at OpenAI, announced on X, “We are launching the ability to buy extra gens in Sora today.”
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
- The change applies to all user tiers: free, ChatGPT Plus, and Teams.
- Everyone in those tiers now gets 30 free Sora video generations per day.
- Pro subscribers will receive up to 100 daily gens.
- After hitting the free limit, users will be prompted to buy a $4 pack for 10 extra gens.
- Peebles also confirmed that the free quota will be reduced in the future to make the system more sustainable.
OpenAI
This is important because: With paid video credits, OpenAI is clearly laying the groundwork for a new creator economy within Sora — one where identity and avatars become products.
- The new Cameo feature lets people turn themselves (or characters they own) into reusable digital actors that others can drop into AI-generated videos.
- Creators or rights-holders can set usage permissions for these avatars by keeping them private, sharing them with followers, or making them public, which opens the door to licensing or paid use of likenesses.
Why should I care? In the past, you might have treated Sora as a free experiment, but now, the cost per generation matters.
- So now you have to keep track of your current usage.
- Heavy users like creators, agencies, or marketers need to start factoring in credit costs into their workflow budget.
- With free limits shrinking, you might have to explore other tools or fallback options that remain cheaper or more generous.
As Sora’s output ramps up, issues around deepfakes, copyright, and ethics become louder.
