Best AI Software for Therapists in a Group Practice: Seat Costs

AI note software for a group therapy practice costs roughly $15 to $129 per clinician per month at list price, depending on whether it is an add-on to your practice software or a stand-alone scribe. Owners get admin controls on higher tiers or team plans, so check the plan, not just the seat price.

The seat price is only part of the sum. Most group practices already pay for an electronic record, and the cheapest AI is often the add-on to it. The expensive mistake is a stand-alone scribe at $110 or more per clinician on top of a platform that already offers a $15 or $35 option. The second trap is control: the cheapest seat often comes without the owner's ability to assign seats, share one template or limit who reads whose notes, and those controls usually sit on a higher tier.

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Three ways vendors charge for a seat

List prices below were read from each vendor's own page in November 2026. They change, and several show introductory discounts, so treat them as a way to compare structures, then confirm before you sign.

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• Add-on to your practice software. You already pay a platform fee; the AI is an extra monthly charge for each clinician who uses it. SimplePractice and Jane work this way.
• Per-user plan inside a platform. The AI sits in the platform's tiers and every user pays the plan price. Carepatron works this way.
• Stand-alone scribe. A separate product with its own seat. Heidi, DeepCura and Mentalyc fall here, and the AI can feed notes into whatever record you use.

The per-seat list prices side by side

Two points matter before any sums. First, SimplePractice's page shows 50% offers for three months on several of these; the figures above are the standard list prices. Second, Carepatron's Plus and Advanced prices show a 50% offer for six months, with $15.50 and $19.50 as the discounted figures. Mentalyc's Team price is also shown as a reduction from a higher regular price, with a note that the team price is locked in; ask for that in writing. A budget built on introductory prices will be wrong by month seven.

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A worked cost: a five-clinician group practice

Say a practice has one owner who also sees clients and four employed clinicians, all full-time. They want AI progress notes for everyone and treatment-plan support for the owner. Here are the monthly costs at list price, using the models above. These sums are illustrative and rest on the vendor figures in the table.

Jane's page says the base price includes the first practitioner, and each extra full-time practitioner (24 or more booked hours a week) adds $35 on Practice; part-timers are $17.50. The SimplePractice sum puts everyone on Plus, because Plus is the plan that lists additional clinicians. The AI cost alone, once you strip out the platform, ranges from $75 (Jane) to $606 (five DeepCura seats), with SimplePractice's Note Taker at $175 and Care Aide at $255 in between, while Carepatron folds the AI into its $39 seat. That spread is the figure owners should care about.

Do not read this table as "Carepatron wins". The platforms differ in what they do around the notes: insurance billing, telehealth, client portal and reporting. A $195 option that lacks a feature you need is more expensive than a $570 option that has it. What the table shows is how much of the cost is the AI.

Which clinicians really need a seat

Before paying for five seats, check who uses it. In a typical group practice I would expect something like this, though your own team will differ:

• Full-time clinicians with high caseloads: the biggest saving, so give them seats first.
• Part-time clinicians, interns and associates: a seat is harder to justify at $110 but easy at $15. On a per-opt-in model such as Jane's, you pay only when they ask.
• Supervisors: may only need to read notes, which is an admin-controls question rather than a seat question. DeepCura gives free read and edit access to team members who are not using the AI, and Mentalyc describes an owner view.
• The owner: may want treatment planning and summary tools rather than notes alone, which favours a bundle such as Care Aide.

An illustrative example: a practice of eight where five clinicians carry full caseloads and three are part-time. On Jane, with the AI Scribe at $15 per opted-in practitioner, paying only for the five full-timers costs $75 a month, and adding the three part-timers later adds $45. On a $110 stand-alone seat the same decision is $550 versus $880, and the part-timers are likely to be left out. That is not a quality argument, it is a pricing structure that shapes who benefits.

Admin controls: what an owner should ask for

Owners usually want four things from a group plan, and vendor pages are inconsistent about which ones they list:

1. Seat assignment. Add, remove and reassign seats without calling support. Mentalyc's Team plan describes inviting clinicians and assigning seats.
2. Shared templates. One note format across the practice. Heidi lists shared templates under Teams, and Mentalyc mentions sharing customised templates with other clinicians.
3. Visibility rules. Who can read whose notes. This is a confidentiality question, and an "owner view" feature may not suit every practice. Carepatron lists roles and permissions on Advanced.
4. Central billing and a leaver process. One invoice, and a clean way to close a departing clinician's access and export their notes.

A practical way to test these is to write four small scenarios and run each in the vendor's demo: add a new clinician, remove a leaver, restrict an intern to their own clients, and export one clinician's notes. If the salesperson cannot show each in five minutes, assume it is harder than it sounds.

The confidentiality questions that sit beside the price

Therapy notes are among the most sensitive records a practice holds. A cheap seat that sends audio somewhere you cannot see is not cheap. Before comparing price, confirm these with each vendor in writing:

• Will they sign a business associate agreement (or your local equivalent)?
• Is audio kept, and for how long?
• Are notes or transcripts used to train models or kept, and can you opt out? SimplePractice's support page says clinicians who enable Note Taker on or after 17 June 2026 are opted in by default to having a de-identified transcript retained, with an opt-out at clinician, client or session level, while earlier users stay opted out. A default can change under you, so check the current setting.
• Can clients decline, and what happens to their notes if they do?

The full list is in AI note-taking tools for therapists: a confidentiality checklist, and which therapy AI vendors sign a business associate agreement compares who signs. If someone on your team is tempted to paste notes into a general chatbot to save the cost, read can therapists use ChatGPT for session notes first.

A short pilot that makes the seat decision for you

Instead of choosing a tool across the whole team, run a six-week pilot with two clinicians. Pick one who is keen and one who is cautious.

1. Week 1: both record a fake session and review the draft against the template the practice already uses.
2. Weeks 2 to 5: use it on a defined caseload, such as follow-up sessions only, and keep a note of minutes spent editing each draft.
3. Week 6: compare notes, edit times and client reactions, then decide whether to expand, switch tools or stop.

An illustrative result: the keen clinician reports 6 minutes of editing per note falling to 3; the cautious one reports 5 falling to 4 and finds the drafts too generic. That tells you the tool works but needs template work, which is cheaper to fix than buying five seats now. Pair the pilot with a client-facing line, using the wording ideas in should therapists tell clients they use AI.

Three practice sizes, three different answers

The cheapest route changes with headcount. These are illustrations built from the list prices above, not quotes.

A practice of three: keep it simple

With three clinicians, the platform fee dominates. On Jane Practice, $79 plus two extra full-time practitioners at $35 is $149, and AI for all three at $15 is $45. The total is $194. On Carepatron Plus it is 3 x $31 = $93. At this size, admin controls rarely matter, because the owner knows everybody, so choose on note quality and what the platform does for billing.

A practice of eight: admin controls start to earn their price

At eight clinicians, someone has to assign seats, keep templates consistent and handle leavers. Carepatron Advanced at 8 x $39 is $312 and lists roles and permissions. A stand-alone scribe at $110 each would be $880 plus the record. This is where I would ask for a demo of the owner view and run the four admin scenarios above. A practice manager can often do this job; it just needs to be a named person.

A practice of fifteen or more: talk to sales

Heidi's Teams plan and DeepCura's volume tiers (a table on its page shows 10 seats at $116 average and 20 seats at $108, on monthly billing only) are worth a conversation, and so are SimplePractice and Jane group arrangements. Jane's page says clinics with ten or more practitioners may be eligible for extra benefits such as dedicated onboarding and a payments rate review. Ask for the price in writing, including what happens at renewal.

A prompt and sample output for a cost comparison of your own

You can use a general chatbot to build a first cost table from vendor figures, as long as you paste only list prices and never client data. Check every figure against the vendor page afterwards.

I run a therapy group practice with 6 clinicians: 4 full-time, 2 part-time (under 24 booked hours a week). Using only the prices I paste below, build a monthly cost table for each option and flag any assumption you had to make. Do not add any price I have not given you.

Option 1: Platform base $79, extra full-time clinician $35, extra part-time $17.50, AI add-on $15 per opted-in clinician.
Option 2: Per-user plan $39 per clinician, AI included.
Option 3: Stand-alone scribe $110 per clinician on top of an existing record costing $0 extra.

An illustrative reply: Option 1 comes to $79 + 3 x $35 + 2 x $17.50 = $219 for the platform, plus 6 x $15 = $90 for AI, so $309. Option 2 is 6 x $39 = $234. Option 3 is 6 x $110 = $660. The assistant should state that it assumed the base plan covers one full-time clinician. What you would fix: confirm that assumption on the vendor page, add the existing record cost to Option 3, and check whether the part-timers need seats at all.

A policy paragraph for owners to adopt before the first seat is bought

A written rule prevents arguments later. This is a draft to adapt, not legal advice, and a qualified adviser should look at it for your area.

AI note tools policy (draft)
1. Only tools approved by the practice owner may be used for client notes, and only inside the practice's own accounts.
2. Each clinician reviews and signs every AI-drafted note; the AI draft is never the final record.
3. Clients are told about the tool before the first recorded session and may decline.
4. Audio and transcripts are handled as the vendor's agreement allows; the owner keeps a copy of that agreement.
5. When a clinician leaves, the owner removes their seat and exports their notes within [x] working days.
6. The owner reviews this policy each time a vendor changes its terms or defaults.

Annual or monthly: the decision to make after the pilot

Annual billing is cheaper on paper. Heidi's $110 is quoted on annual billing, and DeepCura's annual plan is $999 against $129 a month, saving $549 a seat a year. But a year's commitment for five seats is $4,995 on DeepCura. Pay monthly through the pilot, then switch to annual once your edit-time numbers are stable and the team has not abandoned the tool. A seat nobody uses at $999 a year is worse value than a monthly seat used by half the team.

What a leaver and a new starter do to the bill

Group practices have staff turnover, and seat pricing reacts differently to it. Take a practice that loses one clinician in March and hires two in April. On a per-opted-in model such as Jane's AI Scribe, the March leaver's $15 stops once you remove them and the two new starters add $30. On an annual stand-alone seat, the leaver's $999 year is already paid; you may be able to reassign the seat, and you should ask the vendor whether you can before you sign. Reassigning means the new starter inherits an empty account, so export the leaver's notes first.

A second realistic snag is the new starter who arrives mid-month. Ask whether charges are prorated. Jane's page says it charges only for profiles that book appointments and lets you adjust practitioner profiles month to month, and Mentalyc's Team plan lists reassigning seats, but none of the pricing pages I read says how a mid-month start is billed, so it is a question for the sales call rather than a fact I can give you. Put the answers in one row per vendor in your comparison sheet, next to the price, so the cost of churn is visible when the decision is made.

Hidden costs the seat price does not show

• Insurance billing add-ons. SimplePractice's Insurance Navigator lists $1.79 per claim; Jane's insurance billing add-on lists $20 a month plus $5 or $2.50 per extra practitioner. These are not AI costs, but owners often compare totals.
• Token or credit limits. Carepatron's free plan shows an allowance of 1M AI tokens where the paid plans show unlimited, and DeepCura's plan includes 1,000 monthly credits with a $59 add-on for 2,000. Heavy users can hit limits.
• Annual billing. Heidi's $110 is billed annually; a monthly rate would be higher. Annual plans also lock you in if the tool disappoints.
• Setup and training time. Count two hours per clinician for the first week. At a clinician's hourly rate this can exceed a month's seat cost.
• Template building. A practice-wide note format takes a few hours to agree and set up.

Where this leaves a practice that already has an EHR

For most small groups, the order of sensible choices is: first, try the AI add-on inside your current platform, because it is cheapest and already connected. Second, if the quality disappoints, trial a stand-alone scribe with two clinicians and compare edit times. Third, only then move platforms, since switching an EHR costs far more than any scribe. If you want a second opinion on your own sums, my AI implementation consultation includes pricing a clinician mix like yours and checking what each plan really lets the owner control.

Seat cost questions from group practice owners

Do all clinicians have to use the AI feature?

Not on every platform. Jane charges its AI Scribe per opted-in practitioner, and SimplePractice lists Care Aide and Note Taker as add-ons, so you can pay only for clinicians who want it. Check how each vendor counts a seat before you promise anyone a rollout.

Which plans give the owner control over who sees what?

Carepatron lists roles and permissions on its Advanced plan, and Mentalyc describes an owner view and seat assignment on its Team plan. Confirm exact controls with a demo using your own staffing, because an owner view of notes has confidentiality implications for your team.

Are promotional prices safe to budget with?

No. Several vendors show 50% introductory offers for three to six months. Budget with the standard list price and treat any discount as a bonus.

Is a free scribe good enough for a group practice?

Possibly for a small team, but free tiers tend to limit usage, templates or admin features. Run a month on the free tier with one clinician before you decide, and ask what the owner can and cannot see.

Further reads

• Best AI Scribe for Physical Therapy: Four Tools Compared — A similar comparison for a related practice type.
• AI Scribe Costs Compared: What Small Clinics Pay in 2026 — Broader scribe pricing across clinic types.
• AI Scribe Security: Audio, Retention and BAA Vendor Questions — Audio retention and agreement questions for any vendor.
• Is an AI Scribe Worth It for a Small Private Clinic? — Does a scribe pay back at your volume?
• How to Roll Out an AI Scribe Without Losing Patient Trust — Introducing a scribe without losing client trust.
• AI Platform for Doctors: One Suite or Separate Scribe and Phone Tools? — One suite or separate tools, a decision that carries over.
• AI Scribe for Occupational Therapists: A Buyer's Checklist — Twenty-two questions to put to any AI scribe vendor before an occupational therapist signs, from goal wording to recording deletion and per-clinician cost.
• AI Software for Psychologists: Practice Systems With AI Built In, Compared — SimplePractice, Carepatron and Jane compared for a solo psychologist: plan prices, what the AI adds, and the real monthly total for one clinician and three.
• Automated Booking Systems for Therapists: Which Ones Automate What? — A solo therapist's comparison of booking tools on reminders, waitlists, cancellation fees, BAA and SMS, with a worked cost example.
• Best AI Tools for Occupational Therapists: School, Clinic, Home Visit — One AI pick per job for school-contract, paediatric clinic and home-visit occupational therapists, with privacy checks, cost bands and a worked example each.
• Blueprint AI for Therapists: Notes, Cost and Alternatives to Check — Blueprint's trial and per-session pricing set against Heidi Free, Carepatron Free and SimplePractice Note Taker, with break-even sums for a solo therapist.
• How to Use AI on SimplePractice: Note Taker or Care Aide? — A decision rule for solo therapists: when SimplePractice Note Taker is enough, when Care Aide earns its extra $24, and how to trial each safely.
• Therapy Practice Management Software: What the AI Add-Ons Cost — SimplePractice, Jane and Carepatron base plans against their AI add-ons, with a monthly sum for a three-therapist practice and the traps in each quote.
• What Does AI Cost a Speech Therapy Practice? Three Budget Levels — Three monthly budgets for a speech therapy practice, from a free stack to a four-clinician clinic, with what each covers and what stays manual.
• What Does an AI Scribe for Therapists Cost a Solo Practice? — List prices for five AI scribe routes for a solo therapist, with cost per note, annual totals and the privacy defaults to check.
• What's the Best AI Tool for Therapists? A Rule by Practice Size — A rule for choosing a therapy AI tool by practice size, with list prices, BAA checks and worked costs for a solo, three-clinician and nine-clinician practice.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: SimplePractice, Jane, Carepatron, DeepCura, Heidi and Mentalyc pricing pages, read in November 2026.