SimplePractice pricing in 2026 — what solo and small practices end up paying

Have you looked at your SimplePractice invoice recently and wondered where the number came from?

You picked a plan. Maybe the $49 Starter because you were launching a solo practice and it seemed reasonable. Then you needed your Google Calendar to sync with your appointment book. That feature is not in Starter. It is in Essential, which is $79 (SimplePractice plan comparison). So you upgraded. Then you wanted to color code your calendar by service type — a feature so basic most free calendar apps include it. Color coding requires Plus at $99. And if you wanted AI to help with your session notes, that is a separate $35 per clinician per month on top of whichever plan you landed on (Note Taker FAQs).

That $49 starting price has a lot of stairs behind it.

I want to be straightforward about what this article is. I write for Oli Health. I am going to compare SimplePractice pricing against ours, and I am going to do it with real numbers from both pricing pages, not generalizations. SimplePractice is a not bad product with depth in mental health workflow. But pricing is pricing, and the math either works for your practice or it does not.

What each SimplePractice plan costs — and what it leaves out

SimplePractice runs three tiers: Starter at $49, Essential at $79, and Plus at $99 per clinician per month (simplepractice.com/pricing). The question is not which one you start on. The question is which one you end up on once you need the features you assumed were included.

A solo therapist who needs calendar sync, AI notes, and basic insurance billing is looking at Essential plus the Note Taker add-on: $79 + $35 = $114/month. And they still cannot color code their calendar or add a practice manager.

The calendar sync detail trips people up more than anything else. A clinician running their day between SimplePractice and Google Calendar without sync is manually checking two systems. That is the kind of friction you assume you are paying $49 to avoid. You are not. You are paying $79 to avoid it.

The solo clinician math

If you are a solo practitioner trying to figure out what SimplePractice will cost in practice — not on paper, in practice — the number that matters is not $49.

On Starter ($49), you get online booking, telehealth, and basic documentation. No calendar sync. No insurance filing. No AI notes unless you pay extra. For most clinicians, that is not a usable daily-driver setup. You are going to want your calendar to sync. You are probably going to want to file insurance claims electronically. That moves you to Essential at $79.

Essential at $79 gets you calendar sync, insurance filing, and the features most clinicians consider baseline. Add AI Note Taker at $35 and your monthly is $114. That is the realistic solo clinician number for a practitioner who wants a modern workflow.

If you want calendar color coding — to visually distinguish between, say, intake sessions and follow-ups at a glance — you need Plus at $99. Plus AI documentation, that is $134.

Oli Health is $19.95 per clinician per month. Calendar sync, calendar customization, AI documentation, AI intake, scheduling, telehealth, and payments are all inside that number. There is no second tier to upgrade to because there is no second tier. One plan, one price. The math for a solo clinician: $19.95 versus $79–$134 depending on which SimplePractice features you need.

I am not going to pretend these two products are identical. SimplePractice has mature mental health workflow tooling — measurement-based care with auto-administered PHQ-9 and GAD-7, treatment plan templates tied to CPT codes, and a decade of insurance billing edge cases baked in. If your practice depends on those specific features daily, that is a real consideration. Oli's measurement-based care is newer and the assessment library is narrower. But if your daily workflow is scheduling, notes, billing, and AI documentation, the price gap is hard to justify.

Two clinicians — where the pricing multiplies

This is where SimplePractice pricing becomes a different conversation entirely.

Starter and Essential do not support adding a second clinician. If you are a two-person practice, you must be on Plus at $99 per month. The second clinician seat costs an additional $74 per month (Group practice FAQ). So a two-clinician practice on SimplePractice Plus is paying $99 + $74 = $173 per month before any add-ons.

Add AI Note Taker for both clinicians and the monthly is $173 + (2 × $35) = $243/month.

Need a practice manager to handle scheduling and admin? That is another $39 per month per person on top. A two-clinician practice with one practice manager and AI notes: $99 + $74 + $39 + $70 = $282 per month.

A hypothetical two-person counseling practice in Denver — two LPCs sharing a client load — might look at $243/month on SimplePractice and think about what else that buys. On Oli Health, two clinicians at $19.95 each is $39.90 per month. Practice management, AI documentation, and everything else included.

A five-clinician practice saves over $5,600 a year. That is a part-time hire. Over three years it compounds to $16,920, which is the kind of number that belongs in a practice budget meeting, not buried in a monthly invoice.

For a broader view across platforms, how practice management software pricing actually compares covers Jane App, Cliniko, and others alongside these numbers.

A brief history of SimplePractice price increases

SimplePractice was not always this expensive. Understanding the pattern helps you plan for what comes next.

In 2021, SimplePractice restructured from two plans to three tiers — Starter, Essential, and Plus. The Starter plan launched at $29 per month and stayed there for several years. Then on March 3, 2025, SimplePractice raised Starter from $29 to $49 — a 69% single-step increase. Essential moved to $79 and Plus to $99. The new prices rolled out to existing accounts on their billing dates starting March 3, 2025 (SimplePractice 2025 pricing live Q&A).

A 69% price increase in one move is not a routine annual adjustment. It is a reanchoring, the kind of move a company makes when they have decided their old price was structurally wrong for their margin targets. Vista Equity Partners took EngageSmart (SimplePractice's parent) private in January 2024, so there are no public earnings to cross-reference. But the trajectory is clear: prices have moved in one direction.

Whether another increase comes is a guess. But a price that moved 69% in one step has no structural resistance to moving again. In SaaS, a base-tier reset that lands without mass churn typically gets followed by another adjustment within 18 to 30 months.

What Oli Health includes at $19.95

I want to be specific about what $19.95 covers because vague comparisons are not helpful for someone making a real decision.

Oli Health is one plan at $19.95 per clinician per month. That includes scheduling with calendar sync, telehealth, charting, AI documentation (AI Scribe, AI charting, AI patient intake), client portal, online booking, billing and payments, client communication, and task management. There is no AI add-on charge because AI is part of the plan, not a separate SKU.

Every clinician gets 2M Oli AI credits for free every month (worth $20), enough for most practitioners' documentation, intake, and charting needs. If you are a heavy AI user and burn through your monthly credits, additional credits are pay-as-you-go at a nominal rate — pennies, not dollars. It does not break your bank. On SimplePractice, AI is a flat $35/month whether you use it for one note or fifty.

The trade-off is transparent: Oli makes less per seat than SimplePractice does after their 2025 reset. The bet is that a flat, all-inclusive price wins the three-year decision — especially once a practice adds a second or third clinician and the per-seat math starts compounding on tiered platforms.

Where SimplePractice is ahead: the depth of mental health specific tooling. Auto-administered outcome assessments, treatment plan templates linked to CPT codes, and insurance billing edge cases that took a decade to refine. Oli's insurance module is coming soon and the outcome assessment library is growing but narrower today. If those specific features are load-bearing in how you see patients every day, that is a real consideration — but if you are not actively using PHQ-9 auto-administration or CPT-linked treatment plans, you are paying for depth you do not touch, and Oli gives you the features you do use at a third of the price.

One thing worth knowing about how Oli operates: the internal conversation is always about how to improve the product while keeping the price flat or reducing it. That is a different posture than a platform that has raised prices three times in five years.

For the architectural argument about why AI-first platforms price AI differently than legacy platforms, traditional vs AI-first practice management goes deeper.

How to think about switching

Switching an EHR sounds like a big disruption, but it does not have to be. Oli provides free switching support — the team helps you migrate your clinical notes and calendar data so you are not starting from a blank screen. Most practices are up and running within a couple of days, not weeks.

A two-clinician practice paying $243/month on SimplePractice and comparing that to $39.90 on Oli is looking at roughly $2,400 a year in savings. Even if the switch takes two or three days of adjustment, the math pays for itself within the first month. A five-clinician practice, the numbers are more dramatic — and the savings do not just disappear into the operating budget.

To put $200/month in savings in perspective: that covers a Netflix Premium ($23), Disney+ ($14), and Max ($17) subscription for every clinician in a two-person practice, every month, with money left over. And because Oli is an AI-first EHR, you might actually get to watch them. Clinicians call it "pajama time" — the hours after dinner spent finishing notes, cleaning up charts, catching up on documentation you could not get to between sessions. With AI handling your notes, intake, and charting in real time, that pajama time goes away. You save the money and you get the evening back.

If you are on SimplePractice Starter at $49 and not using calendar sync, insurance billing, or AI notes, you are still paying more than double what Oli costs for a comparable feature set. Oli at $19.95 includes everything Starter offers plus calendar sync, AI documentation, and more — at less than half the price. The $49 is not a floor worth standing on when the alternative gives you more for less.

For the retention side of this math, what it costs to not switch your EMR breaks down the hidden costs of staying on a platform that is no longer the right fit.