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Google undercuts AI video rivals at $3 a minute as OpenAI's Sora API shuts down
Google charges $0.05 a second, or $3 a minute, for Veo 3.1 Lite video and made Vids generation free on the day OpenAI's Sora API shut down. Teams losing Sora can budget against that rate. Google has not published the free tier's allowance, and Decrypt's test of it produced only 720p.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Google opened free AI video generation and upscaling in Vids to anyone with a Google or Workspace account on September 23, advertised at 1080p.
- Google had already cut the API rate for its Veo 3.1 Lite video model to $0.05 per second, undercutting developer-facing rivals.
- OpenAI's Sora developer API, the last part of Sora still running, shut down the same day, after the consumer Sora 2 app and website closed in April 2026.
- Personal accounts get a standard free allowance, Google's paid AI plans unlock more, and Workspace Business and Enterprise get larger pools with admin controls.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- cost At Veo 3.1 Lite's rate, an hour of generated footage costs a team $180 in API fees, and any rival quote now has to beat that figure.
- decision Developers who built on Sora's API have to move to another supplier, and the alternatives Decrypt names are Google's metered API and Chinese models such as Kling and Hunyuan Video.
- constraint Because Google sizes free allowances by plan, a team producing video at volume ends up on a paid AI plan or a Workspace Business or Enterprise contract.
- contradiction A team comparing free Vids output with paid 1080p tools may be judging 720p footage, since 720p was the only resolution Decrypt's test produced.
Five cents a second comes to $3 for a minute of generated footage, $180 for an hour and 50 cents for a ten-second clip [1][2][3]. Those are the only prices in the day's news that a finance team can put in a budget. Decrypt did not report what Veo 3.1 Lite cost before the cut, or how many clips a free Vids allowance covers [3][6].
The day supports three readings. The first is a price war, with Google undercutting its developer-facing rivals (or rather, whichever of them are still selling, now that the Sora API has gone dark) while Kling and Hunyuan Video push prices down from the other side [3][4][9]. The second is a sales funnel, with the largest free generation pools kept for Workspace Business and Enterprise subscribers [6]. The third is that the free product falls short of how it is billed. Decrypt generated a short clip in under 30 seconds, but only at 720p [13][7].
I think the funnel reading fits the record best. Gemini Omni launched in May as a paid feature for Google AI Plus, Pro and Ultra subscribers, and free use was confined to YouTube Shorts and YouTube Create [8]. Vids opens that access to any Google account, and the tiers give heavy users a route to a paid plan or a Workspace contract [1][6]. The counter-case is that Google is buying share in a market OpenAI has just left. A published personal allowance big enough to cover a small team's routine output would prove that case right [4].
The resource choices are clearer than the prices. OpenAI has stopped selling generated video in every Sora channel Decrypt describes [4][5]. Google has chosen not to bill Vids users per clip. A team with a library of older low-resolution AI clips can upscale them to 1080p in Vids instead of paying $0.05 a second to regenerate them [10][3].
For a buyer whose Sora API budget line ended on September 23, Google's is the only replacement price in the source [4][3]. Teams that move work to the free Vids tier also accept a watermark. Every clip carries SynthID, and anyone can check for it with Google's SynthID Detector [12].
What to watch
- Google publishing how many clips or seconds a personal account's free Vids allowance actually covers.
- Independent tests showing whether free Vids output reaches the advertised 1080p consistently.
- Price responses from Kling and Hunyuan Video to Veo 3.1 Lite's $0.05-a-second rate.