SimplePractice Cost & Fees Explained (2026)

Introduction: The Sticker Price Isn't the Real Price

Search "SimplePractice cost" and almost every answer stops at one line: the subscription. But the number on the pricing page is not the number on your bank statement. For a working private-pay therapist, the real monthly cost is a stack — subscription, plus payment processing, plus whatever optional features you switch on, like AI notes, ePrescribe, or insurance claim filing.

This is the honest, line-by-line teardown of that stack. We itemize every component, explain why each fee exists, and then build a fully worked example — 25 private-pay sessions a week — with the math shown. Then we do the thing most "save money by switching" articles never do: we tell you exactly how much of that bill you can actually eliminate by switching, and how much you can't.

Spoiler, because it's the most important point: card processing is not a saving when you switch. You will still take cards, you will still pay a processor. The defensible difference is much smaller and more modest than the marketing suggests. We lead with that honesty because it's the whole point of researching costs in the first place.

A note on sourcing: SimplePractice's own support host blocks automated access, so a few fees below are triangulated from its support pages as reported by third parties and aggregators. We flag every one of those and tell you to verify current pricing directly with SimplePractice before you budget. This is general information, not legal or financial advice.

The Subscription Tiers (What You Pay Before You See a Client)

SimplePractice has three plans, priced per clinician on monthly billing. The current numbers took effect on billing dates on or after March 3, 2025:

Plan	Price	Who it targets
Starter	$49/month	Solo clinicians who want the basics
Essential	$79/month	Most solo therapists (adds reminders, secure messaging)
Plus	$99/month	Group practices and insurance-heavy workflows

Source: SimplePractice "New Packages & Pricing FAQs," distributed via the American Psychological Association (March 2025), confirming Starter $49 / Essential $79 / Plus $99; corroborated directly by the SimplePractice pricing page, accessed June 2026.

Two details matter for budgeting. First, the Starter plan was $29/month before this restructure — SimplePractice notified accounts on February 3, 2025 and migrated them starting March 3, 2025, taking Starter from $29 to $49 (the $29 figure is widely reported by third parties; the $49 destination is confirmed on SimplePractice's own pricing page today). Second, the gap between Starter and Essential is bigger than $30 of price: Starter omits general appointment reminders (email, text, voice) and secure client messaging — features most solo therapists treat as non-negotiable. A single no-show often costs more than the upgrade, which is why most solo practitioners actually run on Essential at $79, not the headline $49.

The Plus plan adds group-practice management and included insurance status checks. Additional clinicians on Plus are tiered by practice size: $74/clinician for 2–5 clinicians, $72 for 6–15, and $69 for 16+ (SimplePractice pricing FAQ PDF via APA, March 2025).

Commentary (industry pattern, not a SimplePractice statement): Private-pay solo therapists rarely use the insurance-heavy machinery that justifies the Plus tier. If you don't file claims, you're usually choosing between Starter and Essential — and almost always landing on Essential for the reminders.

Payment Processing: The Fee Most Therapists Forget

This is the line that's missing from nearly every "how much does SimplePractice cost" answer, and it's usually the biggest one. SimplePractice's listed rate for online payments is 3.15% + $0.30 per successful transaction, processed through Stripe and applied to major credit, debit, FSA, and HSA cards.

As reported from SimplePractice's online-payments support pages (the support host is not publicly fetchable; this figure is triangulated across multiple 2026 sources and matches SimplePractice's own indexed support text). One outlier source listed 2.7% + $0.30, but the majority and most recent show 3.15% + $0.30. Verify the current rate directly with SimplePractice before budgeting.

Here's why it dominates: it's charged on volume, not as a flat monthly fee. On a single $175 session, the fee is $175 × 3.15% + $0.30 = $5.81. That feels small per session. Multiply it across a full caseload and it becomes the dominant cost in your stack — which is exactly the math we walk through below. Because it scales with revenue, a thriving practice pays more in processing than a slow one, even on the same subscription.

The AI Note Taker Add-On

SimplePractice's AI Note Taker is an optional add-on at $35/month per clinician, available on every plan, with a 30-day free trial (SimplePractice Note Taker FAQs, June 2026). It is powered by Anthropic's Claude and drafts progress notes in SOAP, DAP, or BIRP formats.

The important clinical guardrail: the AI drafts, the clinician reviews and signs. Nothing files without your sign-off — the tool is an assistant, not an author. (CoralEHR takes the same conservative posture: AI drafts a suggestion, the clinician reviews and signs; no diagnosis, no treatment decisions made by software.)

On data handling, SimplePractice states that session recordings are deleted immediately after transcription, that transcripts are retained for up to seven days or until the note is signed and locked, whichever comes first, that the feature is covered under its existing BAA, and that PHI is never sold (SimplePractice Transcript Retention FAQs, June 2026). SimplePractice continues to update its AI data-retention terms, so confirm the current windows yourself before you rely on exact numbers.

The budgeting takeaway: if you want AI documentation in SimplePractice, your real monthly cost is the plan price plus $35 per clinician. A solo therapist on Essential who wants AI is at $79 + $35 = $114/month before a single card is swiped.

Insurance & Per-Event Fees (If You Bill Claims)

These fees only apply if you submit insurance — a pure private-pay therapist pays $0 of this section. We include it because "the real cost of SimplePractice" genuinely depends on your practice model, and because these per-event charges are easy to overlook at signup.

As reported by third-party pricing aggregators (SimplePractice's own billing support pages are not publicly fetchable, and sources genuinely disagree — some cite a flat $0.25/claim built-in clearinghouse rate, others the tiered structure below), per-claim fees vary by plan:

• Starter: ~$0.50 per electronic claim; insurance status checks ~$0.25 each
• Essential: ~10 free claims/month, then ~$0.35/claim; status checks ~$0.15 each
• Plus: ~35 free claims/month, then ~$0.25/claim; status checks included

Treat these strictly as reported structure and verify the current per-claim and status-check fees directly with SimplePractice.

ePrescribe is a separate add-on for prescribers: as reported, $49/month per clinician plus a one-time, non-refundable $89/clinician setup fee, delivered through DrFirst (SimplePractice ePrescribe support pages, June 2026). Most talk therapists never touch this; psychiatric prescribers should budget for it.

Commentary: This is the heart of why "SimplePractice costs $X" has no single answer. The same platform can cost a private-pay therapist their plan plus processing, and cost a claims-filing prescriber that plus per-claim fees, ePrescribe, and setup. The cost stack is practice-model-shaped.

The Honest Worked Example: 25 Sessions/Week, Private-Pay

Let's build a realistic total. This is an illustrative worked example using verified inputs — not a figure SimplePractice quotes.

Assumptions: Essential plan ($79/month), $175 per session, 25 private-pay sessions/week. Since a month averages 4.33 weeks, that's 25 × 4.33 ≈ 108 sessions/month.

Line item	Math	Monthly cost
Essential subscription	flat	$79.00
Card processing	108 × ($175 × 3.15% + $0.30) = 108 × $5.81	~$627.75
AI Note Taker (optional)	$35/clinician	$35.00
All-in total		~$741.75/month

So a busy solo private-pay therapist using SimplePractice with AI notes is realistically around $741/month — and notice that the $627 processing line dwarfs the $79 subscription by nearly 8×. If you'd only ever priced SimplePractice at "$79 a month," your real cost is off by an order of magnitude. (If you skip the AI add-on, it's ~$707; if you're on Starter without reminders, swap $79 for $49.)

Where the Real, Modest Delta Actually Is

This is the section that matters most, and the one almost no comparison article will tell you honestly.

Switching EHRs does not erase that ~$627 processing bill. You still accept cards. You still pay a processor. The bill doesn't vanish — it moves. Anyone selling you "save $600/month by switching platforms" is either confused or counting on you to be.

What you can change is the rate spread. SimplePractice's listed 3.15% + $0.30 versus a typical 2.9% + $0.30 processor rate is a difference of about 0.25% of charged volume. On a $175 session that's roughly $0.44. Across 108 sessions, that's about $47/month — a real, recurring saving, but a modest one, and the only part of the processing line that switching actually addresses.

So the defensible savings story has three honest parts:

1. The rate spread — ~$47/month on this example, by moving to a lower-rate processor.
2. Bundled AI — the $35/clinician add-on disappears if the alternative includes AI documentation in-plan rather than as a separate line.
3. Avoiding the next reprice — a softer, forward-looking benefit, not a number you can bank today.

Add the spread and the bundled AI and you're looking at a defensible delta in the low tens of dollars per month — meaningful over a year, but nothing like "$600/month." The honest figure is the spread, the bundled AI, and the reprice you avoid. Be suspicious of any tool that frames the whole processing fee as savings.

Why the Cost Stack Keeps Moving

A bit of ownership context, kept strictly factual. SimplePractice is owned by EngageSmart, which Vista Equity Partners took private in a $4.0 billion deal — announced October 23, 2023 and completed January 26, 2024, with EngageSmart shareholders receiving $23/share in cash and the company delisting from the NYSE (Vista Equity Partners press releases and BusinessWire, Oct 23 2023 and Jan 26 2024). Existing investor General Atlantic rolled over part of its stake — after closing, Vista affiliates held about 65% and General Atlantic about 35%. EngageSmart's verticals include SimplePractice, InvoiceCloud, and DonorDrive. The March 3, 2025 Starter reprice landed about 13 months after that deal closed.

Commentary (industry pattern, not asserted causation): Private-equity-owned SaaS commonly reprices toward margin targets after a take-private. The dates above are verified facts; reading the reprice as caused by the ownership change is interpretation, not something we can prove. We present the timeline and let you weigh it.

For comparison, CoralEHR's pricing commitments are contractual and survive a change of control — a pledge that the price you sign up at can't be quietly re-tiered out from under you. CoralEHR is HIPAA-compliant and signs BAAs.

How CoralEHR's Cost Stack Compares (Brief, Honest)

To close the loop on the math above, here's CoralEHR's stack — stated plainly, including its limits:

• Subscription from $29/month, with a $79 Professional plan that includes AI documentation — note drafting, treatment plans, and a form builder — with no separate $35/clinician AI add-on. On the worked example, that bundling alone removes the $35 line.
• No CoralEHR platform markup on card processing. Be honest about what this means: processor and card-network fees still apply — accepting cards always costs something. What's removed is any platform surcharge on top, and the eliminable rate spread is the modest ~$47/month figure from above, not the whole bill.
• HIPAA-compliant, signs BAAs, 30-day free trial with no credit card. AI drafts, the clinician reviews and signs.
• Honest limitation: CoralEHR does not handle insurance billing. If you file claims, ERA auto-posting and clearinghouse workflows matter, and you may be better served by SimplePractice or a billing-first alternative.

For more, see our SimplePractice vs CoralEHR comparison, the 2026 SimplePractice price increase breakdown, the full SimplePractice alternatives guide, and current CoralEHR pricing. Building a private-pay practice? Our free PHQ-9 depression screening is a good place to start streamlining intake.

The Bottom Line

The real cost of SimplePractice is a stack of four layers, not one number:

1. Subscription — $49 / $79 / $99, with most solo private-pay therapists on Essential ($79).
2. Payment processing — a listed 3.15% + $0.30 per transaction, usually the largest line for a busy caseload (~$627/month on our 108-session example).
3. Optional AI — $35/clinician/month for the Note Taker.
4. Optional insurance/ePrescribe — per-claim fees and ePrescribe ($49/mo + $89 setup, as reported) that pure private-pay practices never pay.

And the one takeaway worth tattooing on your renewal calendar: switching can't erase the processing bill — only the rate spread. The honest, eliminable delta is that ~$47/month spread plus the $35 AI add-on if your next platform bundles AI, plus whatever a future reprice would have cost you. That's a real reason to compare. "Save $600 a month" is not.

Always verify SimplePractice's current pricing and fees directly on its own pages before you decide — figures move, and a few of the numbers above are reported from support pages we couldn't fetch live. Then compare like-for-like.

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Curious what a bundled-AI, private-pay-first cost stack looks like in practice? Try CoralEHR free for 30 days — no credit card, AI documentation included, HIPAA-compliant, and BAA-backed.