8 Best AI Scribes for Therapists in 2026

1. ClinicFrame: best for a focused desktop workflow for independent and small practices

ClinicFrame's clearest fit is a clinician who wants one focused documentation application rather than a broader practice-management platform. The desktop app supports sessions in the room, telehealth system-audio capture without adding a meeting bot, and dictation after the encounter. DAP, BIRP, SOAP, and custom note templates let the same practice use different records for an intake, progress visit, or medication follow-up. The AI scribe for therapists page shows the DAP, BIRP, and SOAP notes it drafts, and our buying guide explains how these tools work and how to choose one.

The main operational limitation is explicit: ClinicFrame does not currently offer direct EHR integration. The clinician reviews the draft, then copies the formatted note or exports it. That can be simpler for a solo practice with a stable workflow, but a larger organization should measure the copy step, wrong-chart risk, access governance, and the value of an integrated alternative. The right comparison is time to a correct note inside the system of record, not generation speed alone.

ClinicFrame states that a signed BAA is included with every account, on every plan, and that patient content is never used to train AI models. The individual plan is listed at $27.99 per month billed annually or $34.99 month to month, with unlimited sessions. A Free plan is available without a credit card. Confirm the agreement, retention, subprocessor, and data-use terms before using PHI.

Test ClinicFrame with the approved workflow for your practice. Review speaker attribution, sensitive-detail control, client report versus observed behavior, intervention and response, treatment-plan continuity, and the complete EHR handoff. The AI therapy notes guide explains how DAP, BIRP, SOAP, and custom formats are used in practice.

Verify it: ClinicFrame therapy workflow.

2. Mentalyc: best for therapy documentation and behavioral-health workflows

Mentalyc is built around therapy documentation and behavioral-health workflows. Its official FAQs describe support for individual, couples, family, child, and PMHNP workflows; editable templates; psychiatric evaluations and medication-management layouts; and a Chrome extension that inserts finished notes into web-based EHRs.

Its published privacy answers describe BAA access, session-data use, and audio handling. Read the complete wording rather than reducing it to a simple audio-retention claim. The same FAQ describes temporary audio handling for note generation and separate behavior for some features.

Mentalyc is relevant for practices that want therapy-specific templates, treatment-plan continuity, and a browser-based EHR handoff. Test whether its insights and level of detail match your documentation policy. More session content is not automatically better if the clinical record should remain concise.

Verify it: Mentalyc official FAQs.

3. Upheal: best for practices considering a mental-health EHR

Upheal is positioning itself as a mental-health EHR with an AI assistant, not merely a note generator. Its current product and pricing pages describe AI notes, treatment plans, customizable note sections, scheduling, forms, a client portal, telehealth, and migration support. For a solo or growing practice already reconsidering its EHR, evaluating those workflows together can be more useful than buying a separate scribe and solving integration later.

The trade-off is scope. If the practice is satisfied with its EHR and only wants a draft note, an all-in-one platform may introduce more configuration, migration, and governance work than necessary. If scheduling, forms, video, and documentation are fragmented, the broader platform may remove handoffs a standalone tool cannot.

Upheal currently advertises usage-based pricing capped monthly, but verify the current plan and what counts as a session before budgeting because the company has changed pricing models. During a trial, test client intake, consent capture, telehealth, template behavior, corrections, signing, export, and what happens when you leave the platform. Confirm how existing records migrate and how you retrieve them later.

Verify it: Upheal official pricing and feature page.

4. Twofold: best for a cross-device behavioral-health workflow

Twofold is a browser-based workflow for practices that want to start quickly without adopting a new EHR. Its behavioral-health page lists DAP, SOAP, BIRP, GIRP, and PIRP templates, and its main site describes in-person, telehealth, post-visit dictation, typed notes, audio upload, desktop, and mobile workflows.

The published personal plan is $69 monthly or $49 per month when billed annually, with a 7-day trial. Verify the checkout total and current offer because promotional pricing can appear on the site.

Twofold's security page states that it signs a BAA with healthcare organizations using the platform, does not use patient data for model training, processes audio to create the transcript and note, and does not retain the recording on its servers. These are vendor statements, so a practice handling PHI should review the BAA, subprocessor list, retention controls, and exact account terms.

Shortlist Twofold when device flexibility and a browser workflow matter. In testing, pay attention to whether its default behavioral-health notes preserve the difference between client report, observed behavior, clinician assessment, and plan. Also time the last step into your EHR.

Verify it: Twofold official behavioral-health and security pages.

5. Heidi: best for a flexible free starting point across clinical specialties

Heidi's free plan currently includes unlimited AI documentation using standard templates, and its product spans many clinical specialties and languages. That gives a therapist a way to test ambient drafting without committing to a paid plan. Its paid Clinician tier adds advanced templates and other assistant features, while team capabilities sit higher in the product structure.

Heidi's official transcription and safety pages state that data is encrypted in transit and at rest, audio is not stored after processing, and the service aligns with several security and privacy standards. The company also emphasizes that the clinician reviews every note. Confirm BAA availability for the exact plan and entity, retention of transcripts and notes, subprocessor terms, and whether advanced template controls require a paid tier.

Choose Heidi when a free, multi-specialty tool and language coverage fit the practice. Compare its output with the same session in a behavioral-health specialist. Look for unnecessary narrative, unsupported normal findings, speaker confusion in couples or family work, and whether your preferred DAP or BIRP structure remains stable after customization.

Verify it: Heidi official US pricing.

6. AutoNotes: best for structured behavioral-health documentation from typed, dictated, recorded, or uploaded information

AutoNotes is built specifically for behavioral-health documentation. It generates progress notes, SOAP notes, DAP notes, BIRP notes, intakes, treatment plans, and other structured notes. Its workflow supports individual, family, group, and intake documentation, and lets clinicians write or dictate session details, record sessions live, or upload audio or summaries.

AutoNotes describes fields for interventions, client response, progress toward goals, MSE, and context. It also describes individualized treatment plans, note-to-note continuity, customizable templates, clinician review, and mutually signed BAAs for covered entities. Confirm exactly which capture modes, retention rules, storage controls, and exports apply to the selected plan.

Test whether AutoNotes reflects the details you enter without adding unsupported clinical conclusions. A therapist should review every line before the note becomes part of the clinical record.

Verify it: AutoNotes official site.

7. Freed: best for mental-health notes with browser-EHR workflow

Freed offers a mental-health workflow for customizable progress notes and patient letters, with specialty templates and the ability to push notes into popular browser-based EHRs such as SimplePractice. Its mental-health product information describes an AI scribe and clinician assistant that adapts to the clinician's note philosophy while keeping the note editable before it reaches the record.

Freed states that it is HIPAA compliant, SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 certified, and HITECH compliant. It also states that recordings are automatically deleted and notes can be manually deleted. Current published individual pricing includes a $39 monthly Starter tier, a $79 monthly Core tier, and a $119 monthly Premier tier, with annual pricing shown separately for some plans. Confirm current pricing, BAA coverage, EHR support, retention, and feature availability before budgeting.

Evaluate Freed when browser-EHR handoff and mental-health templates matter. Test whether the push workflow places the right content in the right chart fields, whether assistant features create additional data flows, and whether customizations remain stable across individual, couples, family, and intake sessions.

Verify it: Freed pricing.

8. Eleos: best for behavioral-health organizations with embedded documentation workflows

Eleos is designed for behavioral-health organizations. Its documentation workflow supports ambient capture and short text summaries, turns them into structured note suggestions, and lets providers review, edit, and select what enters the final note. Its documentation information describes progress notes, initial evaluations, follow-up sessions, treatment plans, case-management documentation, and other narrative note types.

Eleos also describes desktop and mobile workflows, offline mobile use, more than 150 languages, and embedded use with existing provider EHR workflows without requiring an API integration. Its published documentation says that ambient audio is transformed into note suggestions without retaining the original conversation. Verify this behavior, retention, access, and contractual coverage for the exact implementation.

Test Eleos for role controls, templates, supervision, EHR placement, consent, and the difference between generated suggestions and the final signed record.

Verify it: Eleos official site.

Therapy-specific platform or general medical scribe?

A therapy-specific platform is usually the better starting point when behavioral health is the entire practice, the team relies on several mental-health note formats, or treatment-plan continuity and therapy-focused controls matter.

A general medical scribe can be the better operational fit when the organization also includes prescribers, primary care, or other specialties, when one procurement and governance process must cover multiple teams, or when the clinician already has an approved custom template that produces a concise record.

Do not decide from the template menu alone. Ask each finalist to generate DAP or BIRP and SOAP from the same session. A strong product should change which information it emphasizes, not merely move the same generic summary under different headings. Also compare the amount of sensitive narrative retained, the handling of multiple speakers, the separation between observed behavior and client report, and the final handoff into the record. The DAP, BIRP, and SOAP comparison explains the trade-offs.

1. Choose a therapy-specific platform when behavioral-health depth and treatment-plan continuity matter most.
2. Choose a general medical scribe when one tool must support therapy, medication management, and other clinical services.
3. Choose an all-in-one mental-health EHR only if scheduling, forms, telehealth, portal, and documentation need to move together.
4. Keep manual documentation or dictation available for encounters where consent, environment, risk, or session sensitivity makes ambient capture inappropriate.

What a therapy AI scribe must get right

A therapy note should support continuity, professional accountability, and the requirements that apply to the service without becoming a replay of the session. Under HHS guidance, separately maintained psychotherapy notes have a specific meaning and additional protections; ordinary progress notes in the medical record are not automatically psychotherapy notes. That is a record-design question, not just a template label. The AI scribe guidance for psychologists applies the same distinction to progress notes, assessments, and private process notes. Review the HHS explanation of mental-health information and psychotherapy notes with your own counsel or compliance lead.

The draft should also preserve evidentiary boundaries. Client report, collateral report, observed behavior, clinician intervention, assessment, and plan are not interchangeable facts. A fluent model may join them into a sentence that sounds clinically reasonable but changes who said what. The test is not whether the prose sounds professional; it is whether a reviewer can trace each important statement to the encounter and whether unsupported conclusions are absent.

• Correctly separate reported mood from observed affect and documented risk assessment.
• Represent the intervention actually delivered and the client's response without embellishment.
• Connect progress and barriers to the treatment plan without inventing improvement.
• Keep unnecessary trauma, family, sexual, substance-use, or third-party detail out of the general record.
• Handle names, pronouns, medications, scores, dates, and quotations with explicit review.

How to run a fair three-session pilot

Do not compare products with one unusually clean demo. Prepare three representative, de-identified simulations or properly authorized encounters and reuse the same underlying facts: a routine individual progress visit, a complex intake, and the hardest session type your practice actually sees, such as telehealth, family work, or a medication follow-up. Configure each approved template before the trial so you are testing the intended workflow rather than a vendor default.

Score the final draft before you start editing, then measure the work required to make it record-ready. Count clinically meaningful corrections, not commas. An omitted safety action, wrong speaker, invented intervention, incorrect medication, or excessive sensitive detail should weigh far more than formatting. Repeat the trial after changing a template; some products improve substantially with configuration, while others remain generic. The AI-scribe accuracy framework provides a repeatable measurement approach.

1. Confirm consent and use only content your practice is authorized to process.
2. Run the exact in-person or telehealth device setup you will use in practice.
3. Score completeness, unsupported content, attribution, sensitive-detail control, and formatting.
4. Time review, correction, signing, and transfer into the EHR, not only note generation.
5. Record failures by session type and decide which encounters should remain dictation or manual documentation.

Privacy questions to ask before using PHI

Start with the patient-consent guidance, but do not stop there. Ask which legal entity signs the BAA, whether it covers your exact plan during a trial, which subprocessors touch audio, transcripts, and notes, where data is processed, how access is logged, and what happens on termination. Ask separately about audio, transcript text, generated notes, support access, backups, and model improvement. “We delete recordings” does not answer how long the transcript or note remains.

Consent is a workflow, not a sentence copied from a blog. Requirements vary by jurisdiction, setting, recording law, professional rule, and organizational policy. Explain the tool in plain language, give the client a meaningful opportunity to decline, and provide a fallback. The AI scribe for private practice therapists article provides additional workflow context, but it is not legal advice.

Choose the note format before choosing the vendor

DAP, BIRP, and SOAP organize attention differently. DAP separates encounter data, assessment, and plan. BIRP makes the intervention and response relationship more explicit. SOAP fits many integrated medical environments but can create a weak or overfilled Objective section in talk therapy. The note-format comparison explains the trade-offs. A custom template is useful only if the practice can define what every section should and should not contain.

Ask each vendor to generate two formats from the same session. Compare whether changing labels changes the actual content selection or merely rearranges the same summary. For group practices, test shared templates, version control, supervision, and how changes affect existing clinicians. A technically customizable tool can still create governance problems if every user silently builds a different record.

How to test the shortlist in a real workflow

A comparison becomes useful when every finalist completes the same small pilot. Include representative encounters, the note structure the practice actually signs, the client types that create the most correction work, and the real transfer step into the record.

For therapists, measure setup time, capture reliability, transcript or source review, clinically meaningful corrections, formatting changes, export or EHR transfer, and the total time until the clinician can approve the record. Keep a correction log for missing facts, attribution, negation, chronology, risk language, and unsupported content.

Review privacy and consent alongside quality. Confirm what is recorded, where it is processed, how long audio and transcripts remain available, who can access them, and what happens when an account closes. Use synthetic or properly authorized data for the pilot.

Choose the tool that reduces total documentation work while preserving clinician responsibility for the final record. Document the note structure, correction rule, consent process, fallback method, retention setting, and owner for periodic review.