Looking for a Sora Alternative Now the App Has Shut Down?
OpenAI closed the Sora app in April 2026 and set a removal date for its API. What you used Sora for decides the replacement. An honest look at where HexUGC fits and where it does not.
HexUGC is an AI influencer generator. You design one character once, then generate vertical talking-to-camera videos of that character whenever you need them, and download each one as a captioned 9:16 MP4. If you are looking for a Sora alternative, that is one possible replacement, not the only one. Which one fits depends on what you were actually using Sora for.
What happened to Sora
OpenAI told developers on 24 March 2026 that Sora was being discontinued. The Sora app and web experience shut down on 26 April 2026, and the Sora 2 API was given a removal date of 24 September 2026. If you still have work tied to that account, check OpenAI's help centre for the current position rather than our summary.
Start with the job, not the brand
| What Sora did for you | What to look for next |
|---|---|
| One striking or funny clip from a prompt | A general video model |
| You, or a recurring character, across many clips | A tool that stores the character |
| Video generation inside your own app, via the API | Another model provider's API |
| A feed to post into and remix from | The platforms you already post on |
Only the second row is our job. For the first, a general model is the shorter route, and we set out where that kind of tool and ours part company in our Veo 3 comparison. For the third and fourth we are not a replacement at all, and the last section says so plainly.
If the cameo was the point
Cameos were the part of Sora that behaved most like an account. You could appear in your own generations, and later register a non-human character, a pet or an object, and bring it back. The idea worth keeping is a character as a stored asset rather than a sentence you retype.
That is the unit HexUGC is built around. You write a description and generate one character sheet: front, side and back, head to toe, plus closer head angles. You can anchor it to up to three photos of a real face, including your own, which we walk through in making an AI avatar of yourself. Regenerate the sheet as often as you need. Each attempt starts fresh from the description and photos rather than from the last sheet, so artefacts do not compound.
Once the sheet is right, every still you make afterwards is generated from it. That is what keeps the face from drifting into a different person over months of posts.
One difference matters if your recurring character was a dog or a mascot. The sheet is designed around a person, with clothing, hair and shoes, and the videos are a face talking to camera. Pets and objects are not what we build for.
What a finished video is
Stills anchored to the sheet build a small library: a kitchen, a desk, a street, a few angles of each. A video is an ordered list of scenes. Each scene picks a still, takes one plain line of direction, and carries its part of the script, which you can write, paste in whole, or have drafted from a freeform direction and then edit. The voice is stamped on the character when you create it, and you can change it for a given video.
Each voiced scene is lip-synced to its audio, and the scenes are stitched into one MP4 with word-synced captions burned in. A voiced scene holds up to 60 seconds of speech and a project holds up to ten scenes, so length comes from the script rather than a fixed clip size.
Motion reference covers some of what remixing did. In a silent scene you hand over a clip that already performs, a TikTok URL included, and your influencer performs that motion while keeping its own face.
What this does not do
We are not a general video model. No creatures, no action sequences, no cinematic establishing shots. Vertical creator video is the whole remit, so if you want range, pick a general model for that and use this for the account.
There is no public API. If you built a product on the Sora 2 API, we are not a drop-in replacement and you need a model provider.
There is no feed, and no remixing of other people's generations. We do not publish or schedule to TikTok, Instagram or YouTube either. You download the MP4 and post it yourself.
Videos are made one at a time, and there is no free tier. You pay from the first generation. A 10 second voiced video costs 28 credits, so Starter at $15 a month works out at roughly 10 videos and Creator at $30 at roughly 21.
Closing
The app is gone. If what you miss is a face that comes back, that part still exists.