SimplePractice vs Practice Better: Cost and Billing

SimplePractice vs Practice Better: Cost and Billing

ChoosingTherapy.com is user supported. We may earn a commission if you sign up for a service through our links, at no cost to you. Our reviews and comparisons are based on independent research.

Both platforms cover the everyday basics: scheduling, charting, telehealth, a client portal and payments. The real difference is what each one is built around. SimplePractice is US practice-management software used by about 250,000 mental health practitioners. Practice Better was built in Toronto, serves more than 50,000 practitioners across 40 countries, and adds nutrition tools and online programs. SimplePractice submits insurance claims itself. Practice Better uses a separate Claim.MD account and offers program and course tools that SimplePractice does not.

Try SimplePractice free for 30 days or start a Practice Better trial

ChoosingTherapy.com may earn a commission from the companies whose services are linked on this page.

Side by side

We checked both products on their own pricing and support pages on 22 September 2026. The SimplePractice claim fees below are the rates that take effect on 1 October 2026.

Every SimplePractice clinician also pays a $20 annual fee for AMA CPT codes.

Choose SimplePractice if

SimplePractice makes the most sense when insurance billing and talk-therapy documentation sit at the center of your practice. It is especially useful when:

· You bill insurance for most sessions and want claims and ERAs inside the same system. Every plan includes them, with no separate clearinghouse subscription.

· You want treatment planning and assessments designed for therapy. Wiley Treatment Planners are included from the Essential tier up, along with ICD-10 autocomplete, measurement-based care and Good Faith Estimates.

· You want to test the software before paying, without entering a card.

· You run a solo or small talk-therapy practice and want a client app people already rate highly. The client portal app has a 4.9 iOS rating from more than 37,000 ratings.

· You want a website and directory listing included. Both come with every plan.

Choose Practice Better if

Practice Better is geared toward nutrition, wellness and program-based care. It also costs less per practitioner as a group grows.

· You are a dietitian, nutritionist, health coach, naturopath or functional-medicine clinician. Meal planning through That Clean Life, a 600,000-food database, barcode scanning, food and mood journals, and Fullscript, WholeScripts, Rupa and Evexia integrations have no equivalent in SimplePractice.

· You sell programs, courses or group coaching. Fixed-date, self-paced, evergreen and email-only programs can include modules, quizzes and group chat.

· You are growing a group. Two clinicians cost $155 rather than $173, and Team includes unlimited admins.

· You want lower payment fees. Practice Better charges 2.9% plus 30 cents online, compared with 3.15% for SimplePractice, and it offers ACH at 0.8%. Its AI notes are billed by hours used rather than at one flat monthly rate.

· You serve clients in Canada, the UK or the EU and want the vendor to state PIPEDA or GDPR compliance.

· You are a student or new graduate. The free Sprout plan covers three clients.

Start a SimplePractice trial or see Practice Better’s plans

Pricing

SimplePractice bills its solo plans monthly and does not offer an annual option. Starter rose from $29 to $49 in March 2025.¹ Practice Better’s tiers fall to $25, $62 and $89 with annual billing. Those prices followed a July 2025 increase that added $10 to every tier and raised the per-practitioner add-on from $35 to $50.2 Legacy pricing lasts only until you upgrade, downgrade or switch plans.

SimplePractice allows additional team members only on Plus. Practice managers cost $39, while billers and schedulers are free. Practice Better’s Team plan includes two licenses, adds practitioners at $50 each, and offers volume discounts and custom packages for teams of ten or more.

Practice Better charges the last tier you selected when the trial ends. Choosing “I need more time” during cancellation offers a 14-day extension. You can also pause the account for $10 a month and keep your data.

SimplePractice does not prorate subscriptions or issue refunds.² Practice Better reviews refund requests case by case. Practice Better must be cancelled in a browser, not in the app. SimplePractice links a BAA from its site and gives you about 60 days to export records after cancellation. Practice Better keeps your data until you request deletion, then starts the deletion process 30 days later.

Insurance billing and claims

Insurance is the clearest dividing line. SimplePractice includes its Insurance Essentials package on every plan: eligibility, primary and secondary electronic claims, ERAs, payment posting, claim rules and corrected-claim workflows. Starting 1 October 2026, claims cost 39 cents each on every plan, dropping to 33 cents after 1,000 claims a month. The free monthly claims on Essential and Plus also end.³ This lowers the fee for Starter users but raises it for Plus users, who previously paid 25 cents after 35 free claims. Insurance Navigator is optional at $1.79 per claim and adds benefit verification, an AI claim assistant and phone access to insurance specialists. Forty claims a month costs $15.60 in fees on Essentials, on top of the subscription.

Practice Better does not charge a per-claim fee because it is not the clearinghouse. Electronic submissions and ERA tracking go through a separate Claim.MD account that Claim.MD bills directly. Without Claim.MD, you can still create superbills and export CMS-1500 forms. Secondary insurance is entered as coordination-of-benefits data on the primary claim rather than sent as a second submission. Any claim that pays zero appears as “Denied”, including deductible cases. Our Claim.MD review explains what the clearinghouse costs and does.

Charting, telehealth and programs

SimplePractice is designed around therapy documentation. It includes progress notes, psychotherapy notes, load-previous-note and a template library, although Starter limits template customization. Its Note Taker add-on drafts progress notes from a recorded or dictated session. Care Aide adds session preparation, a treatment planner and client summaries.

Practice Better supports SOAP, ADIME, DAP, BIRP and custom formats. Its mental health template library includes GAD-7 and PHQ-9, along with a medication and supplement tracker and the ability to attach labs to notes. The AI Charting Assistant is priced by audio hours per practitioner: 20, 60 or 120 hours for $10, $20 and $40, with extra minutes at two cents each. Session preparation, a writing assistant and session insights launched in 2026 with no listed charge.

SimplePractice keeps telehealth inside its own app, which clients rate 4.8 on iOS from more than 390,000 ratings. Practice Better handles one-to-one video itself, but group sessions use its Zoom integration. Your Zoom plan therefore determines the participant limit and cost.

Practice Better’s program builder supports email sequences, media and done-for-you templates on Plus. SimplePractice offers session packages but does not list a course or program feature in its plan comparison.

Practice Better connects with 26 tools, including Zapier from Professional, Zoom, Google and Apple calendars, Dropbox, Google Drive, Cronometer, Oura, Fitbit, Garmin, Apple Health, Claim.MD and Office Ally. Its Connector Hub covers HubSpot, Mailchimp, QuickBooks and Xero on Plus and Team at an unpublished price. SimplePractice has no public API or eFax and lists a shorter set of integrations: calendar sync, Stripe, ePrescribe, Wiley and a state health information exchange. Practice Better also includes fax on Plus and Team, at 150 or 300 pages a month, plus broadcast messaging to thousands of clients.

What users say

The review scores tell a mixed story. SimplePractice has 4.6 from 2,827 Capterra reviews and 2.8 from 1,612 Trustpilot reviews. Practice Better has 4.8 from 97 Capterra reviews and 3.8 from 74 Trustpilot reviews.⁴ Practice Better asks customers to leave Trustpilot reviews, while SimplePractice does not, so the Capterra scores are more comparable.

Praise for SimplePractice usually centers on its intuitive interface, editable templates, telehealth links inside reminders and insurance billing that dietitians and therapists describe as the easiest part. The most common criticism is price, especially repeated increases with little notice. The 2026 claim-fee change and the AMA fee draw the same response. Reviewers also mention an AI chat layer before they reach a person, email waits of several days for billing problems and telehealth links that sometimes need to be re-sent. The phone line covers only account setup, login and telehealth troubleshooting, with a premium line on Plus.

Practice Better reviewers often like that it can replace several tools at once. They also praise the customization of notes, forms and portal menus, and a client app that clients find easy for journaling and tasks. In 2026, the most common complaints focus on the time it takes to learn the software, and many reviewers describe the interface as dated. Practice Better says the redesign now reaching accounts is intended to address that. Pricing by client count is the next recurring complaint because clients who have stopped booking still count toward the tier. Therapists also say the templates feel nutrition-first. Most 2026 reviewers describe support as quick and helpful, although one older review reports a two-week wait for a call. There is no inbound phone line, and you reach a person by asking the AI agent to connect you.

If neither fits

A clinic that combines therapists with chiropractors, physiotherapists or massage therapists may outgrow both platforms. Jane App costs $79 a month, charges $35 for each additional full-time practitioner and includes unlimited free admin staff. It includes one-to-one telehealth and superbills on every plan, and card processing costs 2.85% plus 25 cents. There is no free trial. US insurance claims require a $20 add-on plus Claim.MD, so Jane is best suited to cash-pay groups. Our SimplePractice review and Practice Better review cover each platform in more depth, and the SimplePractice alternatives guide compares the wider field.

Start with SimplePractice or start with Practice Better