OpenAI’s Sora, an AI video app with a social-style feed, has sparked a brisk gray market for access. Within hours of launch, sellers on eBay were listing Sora invite codes for sale as buyers looked to jump the line and start churning out videos.
One speculative sale has tried to push as high as $175, according to monitoring by independent reporters, but most listings have clustered around $20 to $35. 404 Media says it acquired a functioning code that works, and eBay’s Terapeak data tool showed well over 100 successful sales shortly after the market arose, meaning there is real demand beyond hype.
Why scarcity is driving a secondary market for Sora
OpenAI released Sora as a free download on iOS, but gated generation behind invites, which is a strategy tech companies use to manage growth, moderate abuse, and throttle expensive compute. It is safe to say that Sora by default is free out of the box with lots of limits, which means there are really good chances for monetization and limitations depending on mass usage.
The constraints are not only political, but economic. High-resolution video production is one of the most compute-intensive consumer AI experiences, and costs rise quickly at usage spikes. Bill Peebles, a research scientist on Sora, said that daily generation limits per user will have to fall as more users join the platform if the system is going to remain stable. That dynamic — high viral visibility and low supply — is predictably fodder for arbitrage.
How sellers are finding and reselling Sora invite codes
When people sign up, the app distributes a few new invitations to share. That viral distribution mechanic is great for growth, but it also lets “farming”: early users can resell excess codes, and those resale buyers can stock up as their invitees activate accounts. 404 Media found that some of the codes do work as advertised, though quality varies, and buyers are looking to seller feedback and sales volume when making a reputational call.
Not everyone is flipping codes for a buck. Some Sora users are giving them away on Reddit and X, typically to gain community clout or followers. The free community sharing versus paid listings pricing split usually crushes prices over time, especially as the platform becomes more widely available.
On eBay and elsewhere, buyer beware of code resale risks
Resale of access codes falls into a murky area. eBay allows a wide range of digital delivery but reviews listings that seem to enable unauthorized use or violate the terms of a platform. The company has previously taken down invite and access-code listings in other social-app manias when such content violated policy. Enforcement can be spotty in the early days of a trend, when opportunistic hucksters tend to move fastest.
There’s also a possibility that OpenAI might take away codes or accounts purchased secondhand, particularly if doing so runs afoul of Sora’s stated terms of use. Buyer protections for digital goods may be less robust than those for physical goods, and codes may be invalid, duplicate, or already redeemed by the time they arrive. You can do everything short of running a background check on a seller — proof, feedback history, and plain refund policies are the new currency for savvy buyers — but the best way to buy access like this is still through the official waitlist.
A seen-it-before pattern from previous invite booms
Markets of scarcity like this are far from new. Gmail, Clubhouse, and Bluesky each generated a thriving resale market for invitations before access expanded and prices plunged. The arc is predictable: early buzz, price gouging, rapid supply expansion as existing users mint more invites, and a final sprint to the bottom as official onboarding broadens.
Sora adds a wrinkle: its primary function — AI video generation — uses orders of magnitude more compute than text or image apps, so the impetus for managed growth is even greater. Which means OpenAI needs to juggle these three competing goals: showing awesome-looking content so the hype train doesn’t run out of steam, rationing invites to limit GPU burn and abuse, and sending a beacon for what kind of monetization will allow limits to feel consistent instead of arbitrary.
What to watch next as access expands and prices shift
Look for invite prices to decline as more codes circulate and as OpenAI opens up access beyond iOS. eBay could theoretically also get stricter about moderation if posts start to violate its policies, and forums will remain a distribution channel/early-warning system for scams.
When it comes to Sora, patience may matter. Free codes pop up here and there on social, so official access minimizes the chance of suddenly losing an account one day. For OpenAI, the early resale economy is a kind of backhanded compliment — it shows huge appetite. The task now is to turn that ambition into sustainable, well-governed growth without running up the compute bill — or user frustration — too high.