Upheal

AI notes, telehealth, and practice tools — all in one.

4.5/ 5

The best value AI scribe for therapists who also need telehealth — usage-based pricing and a permanent free tier make it uniquely accessible.

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Pros and cons

What Upheal does well

The free tier is a real product, not a trial

Most "free tiers" in this category are either time-limited, capped at a handful of uses, or stripped to the point of being unusable. Upheal's free tier is different: unlimited AI notes, HIPAA-compliant telehealth video calling, a client portal, and basic scheduling — with no time limit and no credit card required.

In our testing, a solo therapist starting a new practice could run on the free tier indefinitely for the core clinical documentation workflow. Notes generate from session audio in under 60 seconds. The telehealth quality is solid — comparable to purpose-built video platforms, with session capture handled via the browser rather than requiring a separate app.

The free tier has real limitations: you lose billing, payment processing, treatment plan generation, and the full template library. But for a therapist whose practice manages billing through a separate system, the free tier covers the actual clinical work without cost.

This matters most for two groups: newly licensed therapists building a caseload who cannot justify $70/month before they have consistent income, and part-time practitioners (one or two days per week in private practice alongside another role) for whom per-session pricing on the paid tier is more honest than a flat monthly fee.

Usage-based pricing rewards low-volume practitioners

The $1/session model is the most unusual pricing decision in this category, and it is genuinely beneficial for the right user.

A therapist seeing 20 sessions per month pays $20. Forty sessions: $40. At 69 sessions, the cap kicks in and the price is fixed at $69 regardless of volume. A therapist seeing a full 100-session month pays the same $69 as someone seeing 70.

The practical implication: Upheal is cheaper than every competitor for therapists seeing fewer than 69 sessions per month. Mentalyc's lowest paid plan ($19.99/month) includes only 40 notes — at that volume, Upheal's $1/session model costs the same and includes telehealth and billing. At 30 sessions, Upheal costs $30 versus $19.99 for Mentalyc's most basic plan. The crossover point is around 20–25 sessions per month, below which Mentalyc's Mini plan is marginally cheaper.

The 30-day money-back guarantee on the paid plan removes the risk of committing to the $1/session model before seeing how it behaves with your actual session volume.

Telehealth, scheduling, billing, and notes in one platform

Upheal is the only tool in this review set that bundles video calling, AI notes, scheduling, client intake, and payment processing under a single subscription. For a therapist currently paying separately for a telehealth platform, a CRM or scheduler, and a documentation add-on, consolidating to Upheal can meaningfully reduce both cost and administrative overhead.

In our testing, the full workflow — client books via the scheduling portal, attends a telehealth session, receives the AI-generated note in under 60 seconds, pays via the integrated billing module — ran without gaps. The session capture happens automatically during the telehealth call; there is no separate recording step. For in-person sessions, audio capture via phone microphone works equivalently.

The compliance checker is worth calling out specifically. After note generation, Upheal flags documentation gaps that could create problems in an audit: missing diagnoses, incomplete treatment plan references, CPT code mismatches. We ran a set of intentionally incomplete notes through it and caught four issues that would have been legitimately problematic. That is a genuinely useful clinical risk-management feature, not a marketing bullet point.

Migration from other platforms is built-in

Upheal supports direct migration from SimplePractice, TherapyNotes, Carepatron, Sessions Health, JaneApp, and Owl Practice. In our testing with a SimplePractice export, client records and appointment history imported cleanly. This is not trivial: most AI documentation add-ons require manual re-entry of client context, which creates a switching cost that keeps therapists on their existing tools even when the new platform is better. Upheal removes that barrier.

What Upheal doesn't do well

Note format depth is narrower than Mentalyc

Upheal's 30+ templates cover the common formats well — SOAP, DAP, BIRP, GIRP, and PIRP are all solid. Where it falls short is specialty modality coverage.

Mentalyc supports supervision notes, group therapy documentation for four or more participants, EMDR-specific templates, play therapy formats, and intake assessments as first-class note types. Upheal's group session handling is functional but not as clinically tailored. For therapists whose caseload skews toward specialty modalities — play therapists, EMDR practitioners, supervisees — Mentalyc's depth is genuinely superior.

The 170 clinically approved sections sounds impressive, but in practice it means you are assembling a note from components rather than choosing a pre-built format matched to a specific therapy type. For a therapist who sees a standard adult individual caseload in SOAP or DAP, this is fine. For a supervisee who generates both session notes and supervision notes weekly, the workflow is more cumbersome in Upheal than in Mentalyc.

Alliance Genie equivalent does not exist

Mentalyc's Alliance Genie — a session-level therapeutic alliance score derived from transcript content — has no equivalent in Upheal. Upheal tracks goal progress longitudinally via its Golden Thread feature, which is useful for treatment planning, but it does not surface a session-by-session relationship quality signal.

For therapists who care about quantifying the therapeutic relationship without adding questionnaires to intake, this is a meaningful gap. It is not a flaw — Upheal never claimed to have it — but it is a feature worth knowing you are giving up when choosing Upheal over Mentalyc.

Payment processing fee adds up at volume

Upheal's payment processing uses Stripe at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. At $150/session (a common solo therapy rate), that is $4.65 per session in processing fees. A therapist processing 60 sessions per month through Upheal's billing module pays roughly $279/month in processing fees on top of the $69 platform cap.

This is not specific to Upheal — Stripe's rates are industry standard — but therapists who already have a preferred payment processor or use insurance billing predominantly will not benefit from the integrated payment module and may prefer to keep their existing billing workflow.

Pricing breakdown

The free tier covers the core clinical workflow with no expiry. The Individual plan at $1/session (capped at $69/month) is the right choice for most solo practitioners seeing 25–100 sessions per month. Below 25 sessions, the free tier with manual billing is worth considering. Above 69 sessions, the cap means you pay $69 regardless of volume.

Group practices pay $69/provider/month with the same $1/session model per provider. The Group plan adds multi-provider management and shared scheduling. Enterprise pricing is custom via sales — relevant for practices that need open API access, custom note development, or volume discounts across large teams.

The 30-day money-back guarantee applies to the first billing cycle of the Individual plan, which is a genuine risk-reduction mechanism for therapists switching from another platform.

Who it's for

Upheal is the right choice for therapists who:

• Are starting a new practice and want a no-cost entry point with real clinical functionality
• See 25–100 sessions per month and want usage-based pricing that scales proportionally
• Currently pay separately for telehealth, documentation, and scheduling and want to consolidate
• Are migrating from SimplePractice or TherapyNotes and want migration tooling included
• See a standard adult individual caseload and do not need deep specialty modality templates

Who it's not for

Therapists with high specialty modality needs — play therapy, EMDR, group supervision — will find Mentalyc's template depth more appropriate. Therapists who specifically want the therapeutic alliance scoring that Alliance Genie provides should look at Mentalyc.

Practices with 100+ sessions per month that also need open API access or custom integrations should evaluate the Enterprise tier, which requires a sales call and comes with pricing uncertainty.

Alternatives

Mentalyc is the closest competitor. It offers more note format variety, Alliance Genie therapeutic alliance scoring, and deeper specialty modality support. Mentalyc's pricing is flat monthly (starting $19.99/month) rather than usage-based, which favors high-volume practices but disadvantages low-volume ones. See our full Mentalyc review for the detailed comparison.

For a side-by-side breakdown of exactly where each tool wins and loses, read our Mentalyc vs Upheal comparison.

For a broader overview of every tested AI documentation tool for therapists — including HIPAA guidance and pricing comparisons — see our best AI tools for therapists guide.

The verdict

Upheal earns its 4.3 rating by being the most accessible AI documentation platform for therapists. The permanent free tier is genuinely usable, the usage-based pricing model is fair, and the all-in-one platform replaces a multi-tool stack that most solo therapists pay for separately.

The gap versus Mentalyc is real but specific: note format breadth and Alliance Genie. If those features matter to your practice, Mentalyc is worth the premium. If they do not — if you see a standard individual adult caseload, want telehealth included, and value price flexibility over documentation depth — Upheal is the better choice.

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