AI Medical Scribe Pricing in 2026: What Practices Actually Pay

Updated September 14, 2026: we re-checked every price in this guide against vendor pricing pages. Heidi, Tali, Upheal, and Mentalyc changed pricing. DAX Copilot is now Microsoft Dragon Copilot. The ROI section now uses published study data instead of vendor estimates.

"How much does an AI medical scribe cost?" is the question every clinician asks first, and the one vendors answer least clearly. Some publish exact prices. Others want a sales call before they'll say anything. Practices end up overpaying for features they don't need, or missing a cheaper option they didn't know about.

This guide covers what AI medical scribes actually cost in 2026. Where a vendor publishes a price, we checked it on their own pricing page. Where they don't, we say so and label third-party estimates as estimates. It covers four pricing tiers, the costs that don't show up on the price tag, and realistic ROI math based on published studies.

The four pricing tiers

The market has settled into four price bands. Picking the right tier matters more than picking the right vendor within it.

Tier 1: Free (permanent, with limits)

A few legitimate vendors offer free plans that don't expire. They aren't 7-day trials; they have usage or feature limits instead.

• Doximity Scribe is free for verified US physicians, NPs, PAs, and medical students with a Doximity account. There is no paid tier. Notes are copied into your EHR.
• Heidi Health has a free plan with unlimited transcription and standard templates. Ask Heidi, advanced templates, and coding are limited or reserved for the paid Clinician plan.
• Glass Health offers a free Lite tier with limited ambient scribing plus limited clinical decision support.
• Tali AI has a free Personal plan capped at 5 AI scribe notes and 60 minutes of dictation a month. That's enough to evaluate the tool, not to run a clinic on.
• Nabla still lists a free tier, but third-party sources indicate it does not come with a signed BAA. Treat it as an evaluation tool, not a place for real patient encounters. We cover this in our Nabla review.

The catch with every free plan: confirm that a Business Associate Agreement covers the free tier before you record a real patient. Several vendors reserve the BAA for paid plans.

Tier 2: Self-serve individual (roughly $20–$150/month per provider)

This is where most solo and small-practice clinicians end up. Pricing is public and you sign up online, with no sales call.

• Freed AI has Starter at $39/month (up to 40 notes), Core at $79/month (unlimited notes, and free for residents, students, and trainees), and Premier at $119/month or $104/month billed annually. Premier adds EHR push, ICD-10/CPT suggestions, visit summaries, and patient instructions.
• Twofold Health is $69/month billed monthly or $49/month billed annually, for unlimited notes with a BAA included.
• Heidi Health Clinician: Heidi doesn't show a US price on its pricing page. Third-party reviews report about $150 per user per month billed annually after a price change in early 2026, up from roughly $99. There's a 14-day free trial. Confirm the price before you commit.
• Glass Health has Starter at $20/month and Pro at $90/month. Max is $200/month and adds EHR integration.
• Tali AI Starter and Pro plans are priced in Canadian dollars. Check tali.ai for current rates and the exchange rate at your billing date.
• OrbDoc lists $199 per provider per month on its own comparison pages, with offline capture and long-term audio retention.

Therapy-specific tools price very differently. See our therapy AI pricing comparison for break-even math at different caseloads:

• Mentalyc has note-capped tiers: $19.99 (40 notes), $39.99 (100), $69.99 (160), and $119.99 (330) per month, with discounts for annual billing.
• Upheal charges $1 per session, capped at $69/month, and has a free plan.
• Blueprint gives away its EHR and charges $0.99–$1.49 per AI-documented session.

For a typical solo primary care clinician, this tier is usually the right answer. The differences within it are about EHR fit, specialty templates, and whether EHR push is included, more than raw note quality.

Tier 3: Mid-market (roughly $150–$500/month per provider, mostly unpublished)

This tier is for multi-provider practices that want deeper EHR integration, voice commands, or coding support, and are willing to go through a sales process. Almost none of these vendors publish prices, so every figure below is a third-party estimate.

• Suki AI: third-party coverage puts Suki Assistant at about $299–$399 per clinician per month. See our Suki review.
• Nabla: now sold through demos and contracts. Third-party trackers cite about $119 per clinician per month, with higher tiers reported.
• DeepScribe: enterprise sales only. Third-party estimates run several hundred dollars per provider per month, and it's strongest in specialty settings such as oncology.
• Abridge: enterprise-only. Third-party estimates are around $2,500 per clinician per year, with procurement data suggesting $250–$500 per provider per month depending on scope. See our Abridge review.

Tier 4: Enterprise and EHR-bundled

• Microsoft Dragon Copilot (formerly DAX Copilot, renamed in March 2025) has no public price. Reseller and third-party listings vary widely with volume, term, and existing Microsoft agreements. Expect a quote-based enterprise contract.
• Augmedix is now part of Commure, which completed the acquisition in October 2024. It offers hybrid AI-plus-human documentation at custom enterprise pricing.
• Notable has custom enterprise pricing and covers intake, prior authorization, and patient communication as well as documentation.
• EHR-native scribes changed this tier in 2026. Epic released AI Charting to its customers in February 2026. athenahealth made its native ambient scribe generally available in August 2026 at no added subscription cost for athenaOne customers. If you're on one of those EHRs, compare against the bundled option first. See Epic's AI scribe vs. standalone tools.

What "free trial" actually means

• Permanent free plan with limits: Doximity (verified US clinicians), Heidi, Glass, Tali, Upheal
• Time-limited trials: Freed (7 days), Twofold (7 days), Heidi Clinician (14 days), Mentalyc (14 days)
• Demo-only, no self-serve trial: Suki, Abridge, DeepScribe, Nabla (for most buyers), Dragon Copilot, Augmedix

A permanent free plan lets you test with real workflows over weeks, as long as a BAA covers it. A 7-day trial means evaluating while doing your day job, so trial the tier you would actually buy, on your hardest visits.

Hidden costs to watch for

• Note caps. Freed Starter's 40 notes is roughly two notes a workday. Mentalyc's tiers are hard monthly caps.
• EHR push gated to higher tiers. Freed only includes unlimited EHR push on Premier, and Heidi puts EHR integration on Teams. "Works with any EHR" usually means copy-paste.
• Currency. Tali bills in Canadian dollars, and Heidi's pricing varies by region.
• Implementation and setup fees are common on enterprise contracts. Ask for them in writing.
• Audio and transcript retention. Some tools delete audio immediately, while others keep it for years. That's both a privacy and a legal-discovery decision; see your AI scribe is a recording device.
• Add-ons. Coding suggestions, patient communication, and AI phone answering are often sold separately. Freed's Front Desk receptionist, for example, is $149/month per block of 250 calls.

ROI math: what the evidence actually supports

Vendor ROI calculators usually assume one to three hours saved per day. Independent studies don't support that as an average.

• The largest multi-site study to date (JAMA, 2026; 8,581 clinicians at five academic health systems) found about 16 fewer minutes of documentation time per eight scheduled patient hours. EHR time outside scheduled hours showed no significant change. Clinicians who used the scribe on at least half their visits saved roughly twice the average.
• A randomized trial at UCLA Health (NEJM AI, 2025) found a 9.5% reduction in time in notes for one scribe and no statistically significant change for the other.
• UCSF physicians who adopted an ambient scribe (JAMA Network Open, January 2026) generated about $3,044 in additional annual revenue per physician, with no increase in claim denials.

Here's the realistic math for a full-time clinician:

• Time saved: about 16 minutes a day for an average user and about 30 for a heavy user. Over 22 clinic days, that's roughly 6–11 hours a month.
• Value of that time: at $150–$200 an hour, it's worth about $900–$2,200 a month if the time is actually reclaimed.
• Cost: $50–$150 a month for a self-serve tool.

A self-serve scribe can still pay for itself comfortably, especially for heavy users, but in weeks rather than hours. The math is much tighter at $300–$500 per month. It also only works if clinicians actually use the tool on most visits, which is why how you roll it out matters as much as which tool you buy.

Vendor case studies report bigger numbers; Heidi says Advanced Urology recovered about $121,000 of clinical time over 16 weeks. Treat those as best-case examples, not averages. Also don't build your ROI on billing higher-level visits: payers now watch E/M distributions closely, as covered in AI scribes and coding intensity.

A practical decision framework

Pick a free plan if you're low-volume, a trainee, or evaluating, and you've confirmed a BAA covers it. Doximity (verified US clinicians), Heidi, or Glass Lite are good starting points. See our free and low-cost scribe guide.

Pick a self-serve plan ($20–$150/month) if you're a solo or small-practice clinician who wants published pricing and can live with copy-paste or browser-based EHR push. Freed, Twofold, Heidi Clinician, and Glass are the natural shortlist. Therapists should start with Mentalyc, Upheal, Blueprint, or Twofold.

Pick mid-market if you have several providers, need native EHR integration or voice commands, and have the volume to justify a sales process. Suki, Nabla, DeepScribe, and Abridge fit here.

Pick enterprise or EHR-native if you're a health system or large group, or you're on Epic or athenahealth, where the bundled scribe may already be included.

Common mistakes:

• Paying enterprise prices as a solo clinician
• Buying on a vendor's time-savings estimate instead of a measured baseline
• Signing an annual contract before testing on real, difficult visits
• Recording patients on a free tier that isn't covered by a BAA

The bottom line

In 2026, most outpatient clinicians can get a capable AI scribe for $50–$150 per provider per month. EHR vendors are starting to include one at no extra cost. The published evidence supports modest average time savings and much larger savings for clinicians who use the tool on most visits. The best buy is the tier that fits your EHR and volume, priced against a measured baseline rather than a vendor's calculator.

Compare options in our AI medical scribe directory, or narrow by practice type: family medicine, small clinics, and nurse practitioners.

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This article is informational only and is not financial, legal, or procurement advice. Prices were checked on vendor pricing pages in September 2026 where published; figures for vendors that do not publish pricing are third-party estimates and are labeled as such. Pricing, plan contents, and BAA coverage change frequently — confirm current terms directly with the vendor before signing.