Most AI scribes were built for general medicine, and it shows in the note. A therapy session produces almost no exam findings, so a SOAP note comes back with a thin Objective section and the intervention buried in Assessment. The tools worth comparing for a mental health practice are the ones that produce DAP and BIRP, protect session audio, and will sign a BAA with a solo clinician.
We make one of these tools, so read this with that in mind. Where a competitor is genuinely stronger, it says so below. Every vendor claim here was verified in July 2026 against the vendor's own documentation, and vendors change terms: confirm before you sign anything.
The comparison
| Tool | Built for | DAP / BIRP | Session audio | Trains on patient content | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ClinicFrame | Therapy, psychiatry and general medicine | Both, built in | Never stored | No | $34.99 / user / month |
| Mentalyc | Therapy only | Yes | See vendor terms | See vendor terms | See vendor pricing |
| Twofold | General clinical, strong compliance posture | Yes | Not stored | No | See vendor pricing |
| Freed | General medicine | Via templates | Temporarily saved until the note is complete | Yes, from de-identified notes | $39 / $79 / $119 per month |
Blank cells are deliberate. Where we could not verify a vendor's terms directly from their own documentation in July 2026, the cell says to check with the vendor instead of guessing.
Mentalyc: the strongest choice if you want therapy-only
Mentalyc is built for therapists and nothing else, and it has the deepest clinical content library of anyone in this list, written by licensed clinicians. If what you want is a tool that never asks you to translate from general medicine, and a vendor whose whole business depends on getting therapy documentation right, this is the honest recommendation. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
Where we would push back: therapy-only becomes a constraint the moment your practice adds a prescriber, or you start seeing clients in a group program alongside individual work.
Twofold: matches us on the guarantees that matter
On the privacy questions that decide this category for behavioral health, Twofold and ClinicFrame land in the same place: a BAA on every account, session audio not stored, and no training on patient content. That is a real answer, not a hedge, and it is worth saying plainly rather than inventing a difference.
Our argument against Twofold is not compliance, it is scope and simplicity. Compare what each of us asks you to learn before your first note is written.
Freed: built for general medicine, and it shows
Freed is a capable general-medicine scribe with real traction, and it does provide BAA coverage for individual clinicians through its platform terms, with a separately signed BAA available. Two things matter for a therapy practice. First, DAP and BIRP arrive through templates rather than as native formats. Second, Freed states that its system learns exclusively from de-identified notes, which means clinical content is used for training after identifiers are removed. Whether that is acceptable is your call, but it is a different answer from "no training on patient content," and in sessions this sensitive the difference is worth knowing.
ClinicFrame: the simple, less expensive option
Our case is narrow and we will keep it that way. DAP and BIRP are built-in formats, not templates you assemble. Session audio is never stored: it is used to write the note and destroyed. Patient content is never used to train models, and that is in the contract. A signed BAA comes with every paid account, without an enterprise plan or a sales call. It is $34.99 per user per month, or $27.99 billed yearly, with unlimited sessions, and every feature is included at that price.
What we are not: the deepest therapy-only content library, and not the choice if you want a vendor that does behavioral health exclusively.
How to decide in five minutes
- Ask for the note formats by name. If DAP and BIRP are "available via custom template," that is not the same as native. See DAP vs BIRP vs SOAP for what you lose in each.
- Ask what happens to the audio, and for how long. "Deleted after processing" and "never stored" are different sentences.
- Ask whether patient content trains the model, including after de-identification, and ask for it in the contract.
- Ask whether the BAA is gated to a higher plan or a sales call. For a solo practice this decides it.
- Run one real session in each before you commit. Every vendor here has a trial.
Where to start with ours
If the formats and the privacy answers above are what you were looking for, the full picture for a mental health practice is on the AI scribe for therapy and psychiatry: how DAP and BIRP are generated, what happens to session audio, the eight kinds of practice it fits, and pricing.