Sora 2 API Is Gone: Higgsfield Publishes Migration Guide for Developers

What happened to the Sora 2 API

According to Higgsfield's guide, OpenAI published a deprecation notice for Sora on March 24, 2026, and phased the product out in two stages. The Sora website and apps closed on April 26, 2026. The API followed on September 24, 2026, six months after the announcement.

The Videos API and every sora-2 and sora-2-pro model, including dated versions, were removed from the platform. OpenAI's developer documentation still hosts the Sora guide, now marked as deprecated, and the deprecation notice names no replacement model, the guide says.

Teams with a video feature built on Sora therefore face two tasks: picking a new backend and rewriting the integration layer. Higgsfield's guide covers the second part.

Why there is no drop-in swap

Sora requests do not work on other video APIs without changes. Higgsfield argues that the closest replacement is one that keeps the same architecture: an asynchronous job, a status check or webhook, and a file to download. In that case the product logic around generation can stay, and the changes remain in the integration layer.

The company also warns that moving to another single-model API recreates the same dependency, with the whole feature resting on one model from one vendor. Its own offer is one key and one prepaid balance in US dollars for more than 50 current video and image models. According to Higgsfield, switching models means changing the endpoint path and the body fields, while polling, webhooks and file handling stay the same.

The video catalog includes Seedance 2.5, Kling 3.0 and Wan 3.0, plus models from the MiniMax, LTX, PixVerse and Grok families. Image models include Higgsfield's Soul 2, Soul Cinema and Marketing Studio Image, as well as models from Recraft, Ideogram and Qwen.

Which model replaces which Sora workload

For reference, the guide notes that Sora 2 generated clips up to 20 seconds at 720p, and Sora 2 Pro reached 1080p, both in 16:9 and 9:16. Higgsfield lists three candidates:

• Seedance 2.5: longer clips with sound, up to 30 seconds and 1080p per request, with aspect ratios of 16:9, 4:3, 1:1, 3:4, 9:16 and 21:9. Audio is produced in the same pass.
• Kling 3.0: multi-shot and higher-resolution work, up to 15 seconds and up to 4K depending on the endpoint, in 16:9, 9:16 and 1:1. It can produce several shots in one request.
• Wan 3.0: long, reference-driven clips, up to 30 seconds and 1080p, with native audio and an adaptive aspect ratio option.

Because all models sit behind the same key, a pipeline can mix them, for example drafts on one model and finals on another. A Soul 2 or Marketing Studio Image request can also produce a still whose URL goes straight into an image-to-video request on Seedance 2.5 or Kling 3.0.

What changes in the code

The Sora API ran every generation in four stages: submit, wait in the queue, poll or receive a webhook, and download the file. Higgsfield follows the same order. A Sora job returned a video id; Higgsfield returns a request_id, a status_url and a cancel_url. Sora used the statuses queued, in_progress, completed and failed. Higgsfield uses the same four and adds nsfw for requests stopped by moderation and canceled for requests withdrawn while still queued.

Sora download links stayed valid for up to one hour. On Higgsfield, the completed response contains a video URL, and the file stays available for at least seven days.

Several parts need updating: authentication, endpoint paths, request fields, response parsing, status handling, webhook setup and error handling. In the guide's translation table:

• The Bearer header with an OpenAI key becomes an Authorization: Key header with a key ID and secret, used server-side only.
• The model name moves from the body into the URL, for example /bytedance/seedance-2.5/text-to-video.
• Multipart or JSON requests become JSON only.
• Clip length changes from seconds sent as text to duration sent as a number.
• Frame size in pixels is replaced by resolution plus aspect_ratio.
• Webhooks are set with an hf_webhook parameter on each request.

Setting up and what it means for developers

Higgsfield says its API is a separate product from a higgsfield.ai plan, with its own account and billing. Setup means signing up as an individual or company, adding a payment method, topping up the prepaid balance (the minimum is $5) and generating a key in the console at open.higgsfield.ai. The full key is shown only once. Official Python and TypeScript SDKs are available alongside plain REST.

For teams hit by the shutdown, the guide's main message is that the work is mostly a rewrite of the integration layer rather than of product logic, since the submit, wait and download pattern carries over. Note that the comparison and claims come from Higgsfield, which is promoting its own service.