Sora Export: Do It Today. OpenAI Has Not Promised You a Final Window, and Deletion Is Permanent

If you made anything in Sora that you want to keep, the Export button is still there as of September 25, 2026. The question is how long it stays. OpenAI has written down every date in the Sora shutdown except the one that decides whether your files survive.

This guide covers what OpenAI's own pages say today, how to run the export, what to do when it fails, and what you can and cannot do with the files afterwards. It is written for people who used the Sora app or sora.com. If you built on the Sora API and are choosing a replacement model, the Sora 2 alternatives guide and the cost-per-video breakdown cover that side.

Can you still export your Sora data after the shutdown?

Yes, for now. OpenAI's help article "What to know about the Sora discontinuation" gives two dates: "The Sora web and app experiences were discontinued on April 26, 2026" and "The Sora API will be discontinued on September 24, 2026." The API deprecations page still lists the Videos API and five sora-2 model entries with a shutdown date of 2026-09-24, and the "Recommended replacement" column for all six rows still reads "—".

So the app is gone, the API is gone, and the data is still held. The same help article then says what happens next, and this is the sentence to read carefully:

"After Sora is discontinued, and after the period of time of any final export window passes (if we are able to offer one), we will permanently delete any data associated with your use of Sora." That is a conditional window followed by an unconditional deletion.

The article adds: "If a final export window is offered, we'll notify you by email before it begins. We recommend you export your Sora content as soon as possible." Our reading is simple. OpenAI has not committed to a final window, has not given a length for one, and has put a firm word, "permanently", only on the deletion. Waiting for the email means betting that the email comes.

When we checked on September 25, OpenAI's official pages did not agree with each other on tone. The export page at sora.chatgpt.com/sunset says "Sora is no longer available. You can export your data at any time." The help article, as quoted above, says something much narrower about the long run. The help article's own summary line also promises coverage of "refunds, credits", yet the body we read has no section on either. We would treat the stricter page as the one that binds.

How do you export your Sora content, step by step?

OpenAI documents exactly three steps. Go to sora.chatgpt.com/sunset, click Export, and "You'll get an email when it's ready." That is the whole official procedure. It says nothing about how long the export takes, what format the files come in, or how long the download link stays valid.

The closest official reference is OpenAI's ChatGPT data export article: "Exports can take up to 7 days to arrive" and "The download link expires 24 hours after you receive it." That page is written for ChatGPT, not Sora, so treat those numbers as a working assumption, not a Sora rule. The practical consequence still holds: plan to download on the day the email lands.

1. Sign in with the same account you used for Sora, then open the sunset page and click Export once. Do not stack requests: for ChatGPT exports, OpenAI says to "Wait for the existing request to finish before submitting another request."
2. Watch the inbox, spam and promotions folders of the account email.
3. Download while signed in to the same account, then open the archive before you do anything else. Count what is there against what you remember making, including drafts and anything you published to the feed.
4. Copy the archive to two places you control, for example a local drive and one backup. An export link that expired, or an archive that lives only in your downloads folder, is not a backup.

Sora export not working? What to check before the window closes

Google's autocomplete for this topic already includes "sora export not working", "sora data export not working" and "sora your export did not complete", so this is not a rare problem. There is no Sora-specific troubleshooting page. Here is what we would do, in order.

First, rule out the boring causes. Wrong account (your Sora content may sit under a different login from the ChatGPT account you use today), a request still in progress, or an email filtered away. The ChatGPT export article's own advice, to check spam and promotions and to contact support if nothing arrives after 7 days, is the best official guidance available.

Second, if you cannot sign in at all, OpenAI's Privacy Portal accepts a "Download my data" request without going through the app. OpenAI does not say whether that route includes Sora media, so use it in addition to the sunset page, not instead of it.

Third, keep a record. Save the confirmation emails, note the date of every request, and write to OpenAI Support before any deletion date is announced, not after.

The reason for urgency is that this already happened once. In March 2026, a Sora 1 user opened issue #14653 on OpenAI's Codex repository titled "Urgent pending data loss, Sora 1, all other support channels broken". He wrote that he filed data export requests on February 25 and March 2, received "Your data export has started" emails, and never got a download link; a follow-up comment linked Reddit threads in which users said their exports arrived without the Sora 1 files. An OpenAI-affiliated contributor account replied that it "isn't the right forum for sora bug reports" and the issue was closed; the openai organization later locked it. These are one user's statements, not an OpenAI finding. But one detail we could check ourselves: the "Sora 1 Sunset FAQ" the issue links to, help.openai.com article 20001071, returned a 404 when we opened it on September 25. The instructions from the last shutdown are already gone.

You may also see "Sora exporter" browser extensions in search suggestions. They run inside your logged-in session. OpenAI does not mention or endorse any of them, so if you try one, treat it like any extension that can read your account, and still run the official export.

What can you do with exported Sora videos?

Ownership is the easy part. OpenAI's Terms of Use (effective January 1, 2026) say that "you (a) retain your ownership rights in Input and (b) own the Output", with the caveat that output "may not be unique". Subject to that "to the extent permitted by applicable law" caveat in the same clause, exported files are yours to keep, edit and post.

Labeling is the part people get wrong. OpenAI's launch safety post (September 30, 2025) states that at launch "all outputs carry a visible watermark" and "All Sora videos also embed C2PA metadata". That is why one of the autocomplete suggestions is "sora export without watermark", and it is the one we would not follow. Removing provenance marks does not remove your disclosure duty. YouTube's GenAI disclosure policy asks creators to disclose photorealistic content made or meaningfully altered with AI, and China's Measures for Labeling AI-Generated Synthetic Content (in force since September 1, 2025) prohibit maliciously deleting, altering, forging or concealing AI-content labels (Article 10; see the official text, which governs). Our AI labeling requirements overview lists the rules by platform.

If you used the API rather than the app, the situation is harsher. OpenAI's video generation guide now opens with "The Sora 2 models and Videos API were shut down on September 24, 2026 and are no longer available. No one-to-one replacement API is available." The same guide also states that "Download URLs are valid for a maximum of 1 hour after generation." If your pipeline did not copy each file to your own storage, there is nothing left to export on the API side.

The wider lesson is about where outputs live. A Hacker News commenter, writing about local LLM weights, put it in one line: "A provider deprecating a model doesn't mean the .gguf file disappears from my computer." The same logic applies to finished videos. Whatever you use next, prefer a workflow where each finished file lands on a disk you control before it goes anywhere else. NoobClaw is one example of that design: its video engines write each finished video to a local folder and can stop there ("save locally only") before anything is posted. Local copies do not make you immune to a model being retired, but they mean a retirement costs you a tool, not your archive. Per-second prices for the models people are moving to are in our AI video API pricing comparison.

FAQ

Is there a deadline to export Sora data?

No published one. OpenAI says it will email before a final export window begins "if a final export window is offered", and that data will be permanently deleted after any such window passes. With no date announced, export now rather than planning around a notice that may not come.

Does a normal ChatGPT data export include my Sora videos?

OpenAI does not say. Its ChatGPT export article describes chat history and "other relevant account data", and Sora 1 users reported exports that arrived without their Sora files. Use the Export button at sora.chatgpt.com/sunset, which is the route OpenAI names for Sora content.

Can I still get videos I generated through the Sora API?

Not from OpenAI. The API shut down on September 24, 2026, and generated download URLs were only valid for up to one hour. Check your own storage buckets, render queues and editing projects; that is where any surviving copies are.

Sources

1. What to know about the Sora discontinuation — OpenAI Help Center — updated 2026 (read September 25, 2026) — https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001152-what-to-know-about-the-sora-discontinuation
2. Sora export page — OpenAI — read September 25, 2026 — https://sora.chatgpt.com/sunset
3. Deprecations: Sora 2 video generation models and Videos API — OpenAI API docs — notice March 24, 2026 — https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/deprecations
4. Video generation guide — OpenAI API docs — read September 25, 2026 — https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/video-generation
5. Exporting your ChatGPT history and data — OpenAI Help Center — read September 25, 2026 — https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7260999-how-do-i-export-my-chatgpt-history-and-data
6. Terms of Use — OpenAI — effective January 1, 2026 — https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use/
7. Launching Sora responsibly — OpenAI — September 30, 2025 — https://openai.com/index/launching-sora-responsibly/
8. Issue #14653: Urgent pending data loss, Sora 1 — GitHub, openai/codex — March 14, 2026 — https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/14653
9. Disclosing use of GenAI content — YouTube Help — read September 25, 2026 — https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/14328491
10. Measures for Labeling AI-Generated Synthetic Content (人工智能生成合成内容标识办法), full text — Cyberspace Administration of China et al. — published March 14, 2025, in force September 1, 2025 — https://www.cac.gov.cn/2025-03/14/c_1743654684782215.htm
11. Hacker News comment by trollbridge — July 11, 2026 — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48868755