A free virtual sand tray, connected to your chart

PlaySpace is a purpose-built digital play-therapy toolkit for children, teens, and neurodivergent adults. CoralEHR is a private-pay EHR with a free, browser-based virtual sand tray. If you want a deep play-therapy suite, PlaySpace fits. If you want a free sand tray that connects to your chart and documentation, CoralEHR may fit better. These are genuinely different product categories, so the right answer depends on whether play therapy is your practice, or whether you want a free tool plus the chart and practice workflow around it.

PlaySpace is a deep, curated play-therapy library: a virtual sand tray, a dollhouse, hundreds of games, more than a thousand worksheets, and an AI Storybook Builder, all wrapped around a secure video room. CoralEHR is a free, no-login virtual sand tray you can screen-share in any telehealth session, plus documentation continuity because the tool lives inside a full private-pay EHR. CoralEHR is not a full play-therapy suite, and the comparison below is honest about that gap.

The quick verdict

Choose PlaySpace when play therapy with children and teens is the core of your practice. PlaySpace positions itself as an all-in-one digital toolkit for therapists working with children, teens, and neurodivergent adults, combining reliable video, customizable virtual playrooms, games and activities, and AI-assisted content creation in one secure platform. If you want a broad, curated activity library built around a secure video room, that breadth is exactly what PlaySpace is designed to deliver.

Choose CoralEHR when you want a free, no-login virtual sand tray that connects to where you actually document. CoralEHR's sand tray runs in the browser, is free for therapists, and can be screen-shared in any telehealth session. It sits inside a full private-pay EHR, so the same login that runs the tool is where your notes, scheduling, and Stripe payments live. A dedicated play-therapy toolkit versus an EHR that ships free interactive tools is a real category difference, not a winner-take-all.

What PlaySpace does well

PlaySpace is a respected, purpose-built platform, and for play therapists it does a lot that CoralEHR simply does not attempt. It is built specifically for children, teens, and neurodivergent adults, and the activities, art, and interactions are designed around that work.

• A deep sand tray. A browser-based, drag-and-drop canvas where clients arrange 3D miniatures in real time. Users can dig, fill, bury, zoom, and rotate, and the therapist can join the client for directive work or let them play on their own for non-directive work. It works face-to-face or online.
• A large miniature catalog. PlaySpace states its Sand Tray library contains over 500 stylized 3D miniatures spanning people, animals, fantasy figures, nature items, buildings, vehicles, cultural and emotion symbols, with backgrounds including jungle, beach, winter, space, and volcano settings.
• AI object generation. An Imagine 3D feature (beta) generates custom objects from a text prompt or an uploaded image.
• Far beyond the sand tray. The platform also includes virtual playrooms, a dollhouse, a whiteboard, a large game library, more than 1,000 worksheets, an AI Storybook Builder, interactive slide decks, PlayStudio, and a content Marketplace.
• A built-in secure video room. PlaySpace is built to be its own secure telehealth video room, so the sand tray screen-shares inside the session without needing a separate video platform. Session media handling is described on PlaySpace's own pages; confirm current details there.
• Stated compliance. PlaySpace states it is HIPAA, GDPR, PIPEDA, and SOC 2 Type II compliant, with data encrypted in transit and at rest.
• Accessible pricing ethos. PlaySpace uses a Pay What You Can model. Its solo plan starts at 25 USD per month with a stated minimum of 20 USD per clinician per month and a recommended price of 100, and every tier gets the same feature access.

If your practice is built around play therapy with children and teens, PlaySpace's library and play-specific tooling go well beyond what CoralEHR offers. That is not a knock on CoralEHR; it is a different product category.

Where CoralEHR fits differently

CoralEHR is not competing to be a deeper play-therapy suite. It solves for two things a play-therapy toolkit structurally is not built around: a free, no-login sand tray, and chart continuity.

• Free and no login. CoralEHR's virtual sand tray runs in the browser, is free for therapists, and the soft email prompt can be skipped. There is no subscription required to use it. PlaySpace's sand tray is part of a paid Pay What You Can subscription with a stated 20 USD per clinician per month minimum, so the two reach a searcher very differently.
• Chart and documentation continuity, the real wedge. CoralEHR's sand tray lives inside an EHR ecosystem. The same login that runs the tool is where your notes, scheduling, and payments live for a private-pay practice. PlaySpace centers on a play-therapy toolkit plus a video room; CoralEHR centers on running the whole practice.
• How clinicians actually use the free tool. Drag miniatures, draw in the sand, and export a PNG of the scene for a progress note or homework reflection, then screen-share it during telehealth. The free tool ships with 50 curated miniatures across eight categories: people, animals, buildings, nature, vehicles, fantasy, feelings, and objects.
• A genuine entry point. Therapists find CoralEHR's sand tray as a free, searchable tool rather than only hearing about it from us. It is a low-commitment front door to the rest of the practice software.

Be clear about the gap. CoralEHR is not a full play-therapy suite. It does not offer a dollhouse, a large game library, an AI Storybook Builder, AI object generation, or PlaySpace's 500-plus curated 3D-miniature catalog. CoralEHR's sand tray is a focused single tool with 50 miniatures; PlaySpace is a broad play-therapy platform. If breadth of play activities is what you need, that gap is real and PlaySpace wins it.

On privacy framing. CoralEHR's free public sand tray does not save scene content server-side unless you export it, and clinicians are told not to enter PHI into the free public tool. That is a deliberate design choice for a free, public tool, not a security claim against PlaySpace, which publishes its own HIPAA and SOC 2 Type II posture above. Inside the CoralEHR product, documentation is handled in the HIPAA-compliant, BAA-backed clinical environment; you can read more on our BAA page. CoralEHR's AI drafts always persist as preliminary until a clinician reviews and signs them, and the AI runs on Anthropic's first-party Claude API with no training on patient data.

Which should you choose?

An honest bridge: many therapists could happily use both. PlaySpace for a full play-therapy practice, and CoralEHR's free sand tray plus EHR for general private-pay documentation. These are not mutually exclusive, and choosing one does not lock out the other.

Free tools you can try right now

Start with the one this page is about: the Virtual Sand Tray. Drag miniatures, draw in the sand, export a PNG, and screen-share it in telehealth, with no login required. CoralEHR's wedge is free, interactive clinical tools rather than static PDFs or single-purpose paid apps. A few more you can use right now, no subscription:

• EMDR Bilateral Stimulation - browser-based BLS for EMDR reprocessing.
• Feelings Volcano - an interactive anger and escalation tool for kids and teens.
• Window of Tolerance - a regulation-mapping tool for sessions and psychoeducation.
• Worry Muncher - a playful externalizing activity for anxious clients.
• CBT Thought Record - a guided cognitive restructuring worksheet.

Curious how CoralEHR stacks up against the bigger practice-management names? See our CoralEHR vs SimplePractice comparison, or read our HIPAA guide for private-practice therapists.