Ranked, with our position declared
The best AI scribe tools for doctors
If you are a solo clinician or a small practice and you want to know the price before you talk to anyone, Freed is the answer — it is the only one of the five that publishes a complete price list, at $39 to $119 a month. If you want to try ambient scribing for nothing, Heidi’s free tier includes unlimited transcription. If you are a health system, Abridge is the most widely deployed and Suki names the most EHR integrations. Nabla sits between the two, with an API-first route for organisations building their own.
§Our position, stated. We do not appear in this ranking, and that is deliberate: Scriben’s clinical console is in preview and not available to buy, so it does not belong in a list of things you can purchase today. Every figure below was read off the vendor’s own page on 15 September 2026. Where a vendor publishes no price, this page says so rather than repeating a third-party estimate — two of the round-ups we checked disagreed with each other by hundreds of dollars a month.
The ranking
5 scribes, in order, and why.
01 / Freed
Individual clinicians, self-serve · $39/mo Starter
- Pricing — Starter $39/mo (40 notes); Core $79/mo (unlimited notes); Premier $119/mo, or $104/mo billed annually
- Into the chart — EHR push at Premier only. Coding: icd-10 and cpt at premier only.
- Worth knowing — The only scribe here that publishes a complete price list. Residents, students and trainees get Core free.
- Against it — The two features a practice usually needs — pushing the note into the EHR, and coding — are both behind the top tier, so the real price for most clinics is $119 a month, not $39.
02 / Heidi
Clinicians and practices, self-serve · Free tier
- Pricing — Free (unlimited transcription, standard templates); Clinician and Practice tiers exist but no price is published — 14-day trial, then "Talk to us"
- Into the chart — Not stated on the pricing page. Coding: listed as excluded from the free tier.
- Worth knowing — The free tier includes unlimited transcription, which no other scribe here offers without a card.
- Against it — You cannot find out what the paid tiers cost without contacting them, so you cannot budget from the website.
03 / Suki
Clinicians, organisations and platform partners · Not published
- Pricing — No published pricing. "Chat with our Sales team" is the only route
- Into the chart — Names four: Epic, Oracle Health, athenahealth and MEDITECH. Coding: part of the assistant, not separately priced publicly.
- Worth knowing — The only one of the five that names its EHR integrations explicitly on the homepage, and it offers a developer toolkit for partners.
- Against it — Same problem as Nabla and Abridge: no published price, so evaluation starts with a sales call.
04 / Nabla
Clinicians and organisations · Not published
- Pricing — No pricing page. The site offers "Try it for free" and "Talk to our team"
- Into the chart — "Reliable integrations" stated, no detail or cost given. Coding: not stated.
- Worth knowing — Offers an API-first route and an embeddable product (Nabla Connect) for organisations building on top of it.
- Against it — Nothing about cost is published, so a solo clinician cannot evaluate it without a sales conversation.
05 / Abridge
Health systems only · Not published
- Pricing — No published pricing and no self-serve purchase. "Contact Us" is the only route
- Into the chart — Deep health-system integrations; enterprise deployment. Coding: part of the enterprise offering.
- Worth knowing — "Trusted by 300+ health systems" — the most widely deployed enterprise option of the five.
- Against it — Not sold to individual clinicians at all. If you are a solo practitioner or a small practice, this is not a product you can buy.
Side by side
The same facts, in a table.
- Freed
- $39/mo Starter — Individual clinicians, self-serve. EHR push at Premier only. Source: getfreed.ai/pricing
- Heidi
- Free tier — Clinicians and practices, self-serve. Not stated on the pricing page. Source: heidihealth.com/pricing
- Suki
- Not published — Clinicians, organisations and platform partners. Names four: Epic, Oracle Health, athenahealth and MEDITECH. Source: suki.ai
- Nabla
- Not published — Clinicians and organisations. "Reliable integrations" stated, no detail or cost given. Source: nabla.com
- Abridge
- Not published — Health systems only. Deep health-system integrations; enterprise deployment. Source: abridge.com
All figures checked on 15 September 2026 against each vendor’s own site. Three of the five publish no pricing at all; where that is the case this table says “not published” rather than quoting an estimate. Prices change — check theirs before you buy, and tell us if anything here has gone out of date.
Before any of them
Consent, records and the thing nobody can certify.
Recording a patient encounter is governed by state law, by your professional obligations and by your employer’s policy, and the tool you choose does not change any of them. Fourteen US states require every party to consent; where you and the patient are in different states, assume the stricter rule. Our guide to recording people lawfully sets out which applies where you are. There is no such thing as HIPAA certification, so no vendor on this page holds one and none can — what you should ask for instead is a signed Business Associate Agreement, and confirmation of where audio is processed and how long it is kept. This is general information for practitioners, not medical or legal advice.
Where this comes from
What we make, and why it is not ranked above.
Scriben is a real ballpoint pen that records the room to its own storage for up to 18 hours with no phone and no network. Scriben’s clinical console is in preview and not yet available to buy. The pen ships today at $129; the healthcare workflows described on healthcare.scriben.ai are not live yet. Every tool ranked above is built for the consultation itself; a pen reaches the conversations around it — the corridor handover, the call from the car, the family meeting — which is the part none of them capture. If that is the gap you have, join the healthcare preview; if you need a scribe in the exam room today, buy one of the five above.