Both OpenAI's Sora 2.5 and Google's Veo 3.5 ship API access at scale this month, and the question Indian YouTube and Instagram creators keep asking — which one is worth the spend — turns out to depend less on visual quality (both are now better than most creators need) and more on prompt discipline. We ran 40 paired generations across fashion, food, and travel briefs from creators in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Kochi.

Sora's price-per-clip lands around Rs 180 for a 30-second 1080p generation; Veo runs about Rs 130 but with stricter region-availability via Google AI Studio India. The interesting finding is the failure mode. Sora over-stylises Indian wedding and street scenes by default — over-saturating, smoothing skin, defaulting to Western framing. Veo holds the brief better but is more conservative on motion.