Physiotherapy Clinic Software Compared: Which Has Built-In AI?

Zanda bundles the most AI into its plans: a capped scribe, unlimited writing help and client summaries. Jane builds its own AI Scribe, with five free notes a month and $15 per practitioner for unlimited use. Splose sells AI notes and reports as a paid add-on, and Cliniko has none of its own, relying on connected third-party scribes.

So most "AI" in clinic software today is a scribe plus a few writing helpers. That is useful, because notes are the largest admin job in a clinic, but it is narrower than the marketing suggests. The table, costs and test plan below separate a feature that saves you time from one that only appears on the pricing page.

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What counts as real AI in clinic software

Five things get called AI in this market. They are not equal, and knowing which you are buying prevents disappointment.

Connect on LinkedInSagnik Bhattacharya

1. Scribe. Records a session, or takes your dictation, and drafts a note. Saves the most time per patient.
2. Writing helper. Drafts or edits letters, reports and templates from a prompt. Useful for referrer updates and discharge summaries.
3. Message handling. Reads a patient's text reply and updates an appointment. Rare, and often labelled as coming soon.
4. Scheduling intelligence. Suggests who to offer a freed slot to. Often it is simple automation (a rule), not AI.
5. Support bot. An AI that answers your questions about the software itself. Pleasant, but it saves no clinical time.

When a vendor says "AI-powered", ask which of those five it means. A waiting list that notifies patients in order is automation. It is valuable, but it is not a language model, and you should not pay an AI premium for it. For the wider tool landscape beyond practice management, AI tools for physiotherapy clinics covers the separate scribes, chatbots and marketing helpers.

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The four systems, one by one

Jane

Jane, like Zanda, has an AI feature you can switch on today without a separate contract. Its pricing page lists three plans in USD: Balance at $59 a month (one practitioner profile, limited to 20 appointments a month), Practice at $79 a month including one full-time practitioner, and Thrive at $99 a month. On Practice and Thrive, extra practitioners are charged separately: $35 a month for a full-time one and $17.50 for a part-time one on Practice, or $40 and $20 on Thrive. Full-time means 24 or more booked hours a week.

AI Scribe is an add-on to any plan. Jane's help page says AI Scribe Free, enabled by default, gives each practitioner five notes a month, and AI Scribe Unlimited is $15 a month per opted-in practitioner. It is managed per staff profile, and a user with full access can turn it off for anyone. Jane describes it as made by Jane, so there is no separate app to install. That matters for clinic data: one vendor, one contract, one place to read the privacy terms.

Cliniko

Cliniko is priced by number of practitioners: $45 a month for one, $95 for two to five, $145 for six to eight, $195 for nine to twelve, $295 for thirteen to twenty-five and $395 for twenty-six to two hundred. Optional SMS is pre-paid at ten cents a message, and reminders can be scheduled up to nine days ahead. The vendor states that it has never charged extra for a feature other than optional SMS, which is a useful promise to hold it to.

I could not find AI features on its pricing or features pages in November 2026. That is not a criticism. Cliniko's pitch is low, stable prices and a plain tool. Its connected-apps directory does list third-party AI scribes, Heidi among them, that push drafted notes into the patient file, plus a long list of AI receptionists that book into Cliniko. So if your reason for switching is an AI scribe, Cliniko gives you none built in, and anything you add comes from a separate vendor with its own cost, consent wording and data terms.

Splose

Splose's pricing page lists AI-enhanced progress notes and report writing among its features, and describes a voice-to-text feature that turns a transcript into report-ready writing. The AI is sold as a separate splose AI add-on, charged per user per month on top of the per-practitioner platform fee. Both prices are quoted in a currency other than USD, so convert them at the day's rate before you compare. The page does not say which AI features need the add-on or whether usage is capped, so ask. The wording fits the scribe and writing-helper categories above. Ask too whether recording a whole session is included, or whether it works only from your dictated summary.

Zanda (formerly Power Diary)

The Power Diary address now redirects to Zanda's site. Zanda's pricing page, in USD, includes a set of AI tools it calls BizzyAI Core in every plan: unlimited AI writing and editing (AI Write) for notes, letters, emails and practice policies, four AI Scribe appointments per practitioner per month, AI Insights across each client's last three sessions and a daily summary of the day's appointments. The optional AI Pro add-on, $19 per practitioner a month under a fair-use policy, removes the scribe cap and lets Insights draw on the full client history. HelperBee is an AI support agent for questions about the software itself.

Plans start at $29 a month for one practitioner on Starter, which carries a 1,000-appointment allowance, and Growth is a $49 base plus $29 for each additional practitioner. A launch offer on the page halves those for the first six months, so price the full rate. One listed feature, in which a client's natural-language text reply updates the appointment status, is still marked coming soon. Treat it as not available until you see it running.

Side-by-side on what the AI does

Read the table as a snapshot, not a ranking. Vendors add and rename features monthly, and a blank cell may simply mean I did not find it on a public page. The right use of the table is to decide what to ask in a demo.

A three-practitioner clinic, priced both ways

Say a three-practitioner clinic with all full-time staff is choosing between two setups. This is an illustration using list prices, not a quote.

• Jane Practice with scribe: $79 includes the first full-time practitioner, plus two more at $35 is $70, so $149. Add the scribe at $15 times three, $45. Total $194 a month, before payments or insurance billing add-ons. The Practice plan lists unlimited free SMS reminders, though Jane notes that SMS availability varies by region.
• Zanda Growth with AI Pro: the $49 base plus two more practitioners at $29 is $107. AI Pro at $19 times three is $57, so $164. Zanda charges 9 cents per SMS sent, so 400 reminders add $36, for $200 a month. Without AI Pro the same clinic pays $143 and gets four scribe sessions per practitioner a month.
• Cliniko: the two-to-five tier is $95 a month, plus pre-paid SMS. With 400 reminder texts a month at ten cents, that is $40, so $135. No scribe.

The gap between Jane and Cliniko, $59 a month, buys the scribe and Jane's own feature set. If each practitioner sees 16 patients a day for five days, that is 240 notes a week across the three. If the scribe saves two minutes a note, that is 480 minutes, or eight hours a week. If it saves nothing, you have paid $45 a month for nothing. Two minutes is my assumption, not a vendor claim, which is why the trial in the next section matters more than the arithmetic.

Also compare what the cheaper tool plus a separate scribe would cost. A standalone scribe adds its own monthly fee. Some, such as those in Cliniko's connected-apps list, push the note into the patient file; others leave you copying text across, which eats part of the saving. Ask which kind you are buying. A built-in scribe has the advantage of one contract and one set of data terms.

How to trial a scribe without risking the clinic

Do this on two practitioners, for two weeks, on follow-up appointments only. Initial assessments carry more clinical judgement and more legal weight, so add them later.

1. Write the consent line first. One sentence at booking and one at the start of the session: you will record to draft notes, the recording is deleted after, they can say no at any time. Put it in the reminder text too.
2. Time ten notes the old way. From end of session to signed. Average them.
3. Run ten sessions with the scribe. Same measure, end of session to signed.
4. Mark every draft. Unchanged, lightly edited, rewritten, or wrong. "Wrong" means a fact error such as the wrong side, wrong exercise or invented finding.
5. Decide with a threshold. A reasonable rule: keep it if the average saving is at least three minutes a note and fewer than one in ten drafts contain a factual error you would have missed. Without a threshold, the trial becomes a vote.

An illustrative scribe draft for a follow-up reads: "Patient reports left shoulder pain reduced from 6/10 to 4/10. Range of abduction improved. Continued strengthening programme, progressed band resistance. Advised to continue home exercises twice daily. Review in one week." What you fix: the AI will sometimes add a sentence you never said, such as "no red flags noted". Delete anything you did not assess. The practitioner remains responsible for the note, which is why every draft is read, not skimmed.

Where AI saves time in a clinic that has no scribe

You do not need a scribe to benefit. A general chat assistant can handle the non-clinical writing, with no patient detail pasted in. Three examples:

A referrer update template. Give the AI a headings-only version of your letter and ask for a tidy, short format with placeholders. You fill the clinical content yourself. The referrer update tutorial walks through it.

A cancellation message. Ask for three versions of a late-cancellation reminder, from friendly to firm, using your policy wording. You pick one and paste it into your software's reminder template.

A first-visit FAQ. Paste your own policies, parking, what to wear and fees, and ask for a one-page sheet for new patients. This is also the base text for a chatbot later, covered in the first-visit chatbot tutorial.

None of that needs software with AI inside. If you are choosing between a scribe and a booking-side fix, filling cancellations from a waiting list is often the more profitable first move, because an empty slot is lost income while a slow note is lost evening time.

A realistic first week with a scribe, and where it goes wrong

Picture a practitioner (illustrative) who switches the scribe on for Monday. On Monday she records six follow-ups and finds the drafts pleasant but long. By Wednesday she has learned to say the plan aloud at the end of the session ("plan: continue band work, review Friday") because the scribe turns that spoken line into a tidy plan section. By Friday her average time to sign a note has dropped, but one draft recorded a "mild click" that the patient described and she did not examine. She deleted it. That is the pattern to expect: faster notes, a habit of speaking the plan aloud, and one or two inventions to catch each week.

The common failures are predictable. A noisy treatment room produces garbled drafts, so a small clip-on microphone is often a better first purchase than a higher plan. Patients who talk about three subjects at once produce a muddled note, so ask a closing question to summarise. And a practitioner who stops reading drafts because the first twenty were fine will eventually sign a wrong one. Build the habit of reading every draft in full during the trial and keep it afterwards.

Finally, keep a record of what you changed. A simple tally on a sheet (unchanged, edited, rewritten, wrong) after each week gives you evidence for the renewal decision and for any conversation with your insurer or professional body about how you supervise the tool.

Data and consent questions to put to every vendor

Whichever product you pick, get written answers to the following. Vendor sales staff often answer verbally in a demo; a written reply is what you rely on later.

• Is the audio stored, for how long, and where is it processed?
• Is any patient data used to train or improve the vendor's AI models, and can you opt out in writing?
• Can each practitioner turn the scribe off, and does patient opt-out work per session?
• If you leave, can you export your notes in a usable format, and is that free?
• Who can see the drafts, and do the drafts stay editable until you sign them?

Jane's feature page says data and transcripts are never used to train AI models and lets you set a recording deletion policy; Zanda's pricing page makes a similar promise about client data. Get the same in writing from anyone else. Jane's per-profile controls are also a good model: a full-access user can turn the scribe off for any staff member, and the free tier is on by default. That default is worth knowing, because it means a practitioner can try the feature before you have written your consent wording. Switch it off in settings until your process is ready, then turn it on deliberately. For a professional-body angle, the clinic checklist lists the questions to ask before any AI use.

Switching costs people forget

The licence is the smallest cost of a move. Count these too:

• Data import. Jane lists free data import; Cliniko says migration from many systems is free. Confirm what comes across: appointments, treatment notes, invoices, attached files.
• Templates. Your intake forms, treatment note layouts and reminders need rebuilding. Allow a full day per practitioner.
• Patient confusion. New booking link, new reminder look, new portal log-in. Send one clear email and keep the old link redirecting for a month if you can.
• Parallel running. Plan a fortnight in which new bookings go to the new system while old appointments finish in the old one. Choose a quiet fortnight, not before a public holiday weekend or in the middle of term for school-based clinics.

If the only reason to switch is AI notes, test the scribe inside your current system or a standalone scribe first. Moving a whole clinic for one feature is rarely worth it, and the feature may arrive in your current system within a year.

A short decision guide by clinic type

Solo practitioner, 20 patients a week. Balance on Jane is capped at 20 appointments a month, so you will outgrow it quickly; Practice at $79 is the realistic plan. With the free scribe tier you get five notes to test with. Zanda Starter at $29 includes four scribe sessions a month within its appointment allowance, and Cliniko at $45 suits you if you do not want AI.

Three to five practitioners, mixed caseload. This is where the price gaps in the sum above are clearest. Run the scribe trial first; Zanda's four included sessions per practitioner make a no-cost trial easy. If the saving clears your threshold, Jane or Zanda with AI Pro wins on convenience. If not, Cliniko's flat tier wins on cost.

Larger clinic with a receptionist. The biggest time cost may be calls rather than notes. Look at AI receptionist costs and booking set-up before you buy a scribe for twelve people.

Clinic that writes many reports. If medico-legal or employer reports dominate, a system with strong report writing (Splose lists it) may matter more than a session scribe. Ask for a demo using one of your own anonymised report formats.

What to ask in the demo

Take a short script to each demo and ask for answers on screen, not in slides.

1. Show me a scribe note created from a recording, then one from dictation. Where does it appear in the chart?
2. Show me what a patient sees when asked for consent.
3. What happens to the audio file after I sign the note?
4. Show me how I edit a draft, and whether the original draft is kept.
5. What does the AI cost for a part-time practitioner who sees six patients a day?
6. If I cancel, how do I export every note?

A vendor who struggles with question three or six has told you something. If you are still undecided after that, score each option on the same sheet, so the choice rests on evidence rather than the best demo.

If you would rather work through the shortlist with someone, that is what my AI implementation consultation covers; the contact page is the way in. Whatever you choose, trial it on a small slice of the clinic for two weeks before you commit the whole team.

Questions before you switch clinic software

Does Cliniko have AI features?

Not of its own that I could find on its pricing or features pages in November 2026. Cliniko says it has never charged extra for features beyond optional SMS. Its connected-apps directory lists third-party AI scribes and AI receptionists, so check how your chosen tool gets notes into Cliniko, what it costs and what its data terms say before you buy.

Is an AI scribe the same as AI in the software?

No. A scribe turns a recorded or dictated session into a draft note. Broader AI would also help with letters, reminders, replies or scheduling. Many products only offer the first, which is useful but narrow, so ask which tasks the AI covers.

Do I need patient consent for an AI scribe?

Treat it as yes. Tell patients before recording, explain what is kept, and let them opt out without any effect on their care. Your professional body and insurer may have specific expectations, so read their guidance before the trial.

How do I test a scribe without disrupting the clinic?

Run two practitioners for two weeks on a free tier or trial, on routine follow-ups only. Time the note before and after, and have each practitioner mark every draft as unchanged, edited or rewritten. Decide from those numbers, not from the demo.

Further reads

• AI for Physiotherapists: Employer and Workplace Contract Proposals — Pitching workplace contracts with an AI-drafted proposal.
• How Dental Practices Use AI for Recalls and Appointment Reminders — Recall and reminder ideas from another clinic type.
• AI Appointment Scheduling for Small Businesses: Tools and Setup — Booking tools and set-up for appointment businesses.
• Questions to Ask Before Buying AI That Touches Client Data — Vendor questions when the tool touches client data.
• Jane App for Counsellors: AI Scribe Cost, Consent and UK Data Location — Jane's scribe from a counselling practice's side.
• Marketing a Physio Clinic With AI: Posts, Tips, and Newsletters — Posts and newsletters once the admin is sorted.
• What to Do Before You Buy Any AI Tool: A 10-Point Checklist — General checks before paying for any AI tool.
• 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.
• Best AI Scribe for Physical Therapy: Four Tools Compared — Four AI scribes for a physical therapy practice compared on per-clinician cost, BAA, treatment-note fit and timed-billing detail, with examples.
• Cliniko Pricing in the UK: Practitioner Plans and Text Costs — A two-practitioner Cliniko bill worked out line by line: the $95 plan, text credits, reminder timing and where SMS spend creeps up.
• Dermatology EHR With AI: What Is Real for a Small Clinic — Dermatology EHRs sorted into real AI (ambient notes, code suggestions) and marketing (diagnosis from photos), with a cost sum for a small clinic.
• Osteopath Software: Which Packages Add AI and What to Check — A seven-part checklist for osteopaths comparing practice software that advertises AI, with verified vendor prices and a scoring sheet.
• AI Scribe for Physiotherapists in the UK: A Consent and GDPR Checklist — A twelve-step checklist for a UK physio clinic adopting an AI scribe: consent, DPIA, vendor contract, data location, retention and HCPC standards.
• Best AI to Help With PT Documentation: Avoiding Cloned Notes — Use AI for PT documentation without cloned notes: what auditors look for, a per-visit detail checklist, prompts and a therapist review step.
• Physical Therapy Billing: AI Checks for Claims and Time Entries — A pre-submission check for PT claims: spreadsheet rules for minutes and units, AI reading of notes against billed lines, and denial pattern review.
• Physical Therapy Patient Retention: AI Messages Between Visits — A message cadence by visit number for a PT clinic, with AI-drafted wording, drop-off signals to watch and opt-out handling that respects the patient.
• Physical Therapy Prior Authorisation: Track Visits With AI — A draft-and-track workflow for PT prior authorisation: a request template, a visit tracker with expiry alerts, and clinician sign-off before anything is sent.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Jane pricing (USD view), AI Scribe feature and guide pages; Cliniko pricing, features, connected-apps and SMS reminder help pages; Splose pricing page; Zanda pricing page, all read in November 2026.