What a Simple Practice Note Taker Costs at 1, 4, and 10 Clinicians

Maya has three notes left and a 4 p.m. intake. She opens Settings, Plan info, and hovers the Simple Practice Note Taker toggle. The badge says $35 a month. That is the solo number. She has three associates. The pricing page does not multiply it for her.

The monthly number you actually pay is the base SimplePractice plan plus $35 for each clinician who has the add-on on. Group seats only exist on Plus. A four-clinician or ten-clinician practice cannot stay on Starter or Essential and bolt AI notes on top. Before you multiply $35 by headcount, put that line on the private practice business plan with the other monthly costs. The badge in Settings is not the plan.

Educational content for licensed therapists and mental-health clinicians. Not legal, billing, or privacy advice. HIPAA, payer, and board rules vary by jurisdiction, contract, and clinic policy. SimplePractice figures below are from public US pages checked September 2026. Emosapien free-tier, write-back, and BAA facts are from official US pages checked September 2026.

The 1 / 4 / 10 clinician cost table

Read each cell as a published unit price or as arithmetic from those unit prices. Where SimplePractice does not print an all-in number, the cell says not published.

Line	1 clinician	4 clinicians	10 clinicians	Official source (Sept 2026)
Base EHR, Starter	$49 / mo	Not available. Extra clinicians require Plus.	Not available. Extra clinicians require Plus.	Subscription plan and pricing FAQs and plan comparison, Sept 2026
Base EHR, Essential	$79 / mo	Not available. Extra clinicians require Plus.	Not available. Extra clinicians require Plus.	Subscription plan and pricing FAQs and plan comparison, Sept 2026
Base EHR, Plus	$99 / mo	$99 owner + 3 additional clinicians at $74 = $321 / mo	Not published on the public marketing pricing page (6+ practitioners go to custom pricing)	Subscription plan and pricing FAQs list additional clinicians at $74 (2 to 5) and $72 (6 to 15). Six-plus custom routing is on SimplePractice’s marketing pricing page.
Note Taker add-on	$35 / mo after trial	$35 × 4 = $140 / mo after trial	$35 × 10 = $350 / mo after trial	Feature comparison ($35 / mo per clinician). Preparing to use Note Taker repeats the per-clinician fee. 30-day trial: Note Taker FAQs.
Care Aide (includes Note Taker)	$59 / mo for the account owner	$59 owner + 3 × $49 = $206 / mo	$59 owner + 9 × $49 = $500 / mo	Introducing Care Aide
Combined: Essential + Note Taker	$79 + $35 = $114 / mo	Not available	Not available	Sum of published Essential and Note Taker unit prices, Sept 2026
Combined: Plus + Note Taker	$99 + $35 = $134 / mo	$321 + $140 = $461 / mo	Not published as a bundle. Support-article unit math would be $99 + 9 × $72 + $350 = $1,097 / mo, but the public pricing page does not print that total.	Plus and Note Taker sources above. Do not treat $1,097 as a quote.
Unknowns	Note Taker annual rate: not published. Promo $17.50 / mo for 3 months may still show on the pricing page; duration after those 3 months is the $35 rate. Sales tax: not published as a single figure. AMA CPT annual fee sits outside this add-on.	Whether every associate must be enabled, or only some: published as a per-clinician toggle, not as a required all-seats purchase. Whether owner Plus is recast at the $74 band: not published; FAQs describe $99 Plus plus additional clinicians.	10-clinician all-in on the SimplePractice pricing page (September 2026): not published (custom pricing for 6+). Whether a sales quote replaces the $72 additional-clinician support figure: not published.	Unknowns are gaps in public pages, not estimates.

Vendor figures are based on public US pages checked September 2026. Promotional strikethrough prices, taxes, and sales quotes can change after publication. Do not treat arithmetic from unit prices as a contract.

The $35 line is the Simple Practice Note Taker itself. Care Aide is a different add-on. It includes Note Taker plus Session Sidekick, a treatment planner in beta, and client summaries. Do not add $35 and $59 on the same clinician.

If you are weighing whether to leave SimplePractice rather than add AI notes to it, start with a SimplePractice alternative comparison written for that switch, not for this add-on math.

What the 30-day trial actually starts

The trial is a clock, not a note bank. A Simple Practice Note Taker trial does not publish a note cap.

Note Taker FAQs (updated July 2026) say the 30 days begin when the feature is toggled on. If you turn it off, the clock keeps running and ends 30 days after that first toggle. You do not get a pause.

Account owners turn it on per clinician at Settings, Practice, Plan info, then Manage access next to Note Taker. A group can enable Maya and leave an associate off. That is how the $140 four-clinician add-on line becomes $70 or $105 if only some seats need drafts.

What the trial includes, as published:

• Note Taker on the plans you already pay for. It is an add-on on Starter, Essential, and Plus, not a hidden Plus-only feature.
• Live transcription on SimplePractice Telehealth, in-person capture in the clinician app, dictation, and file upload for a draft.
• A requirement to review and edit every draft before you save it.

What those same pages do not publish:

• A session cap or a note cap during the 30 days. Not published.
• Whether the trial auto-converts to paid if you forget to toggle off. Not published on the Note Taker FAQ pages checked in September 2026. Confirm in Plan info before the banner hits zero.
• A separate trial for Care Aide versus Note Taker when you already pay for Note Taker. Care Aide docs say existing Note Taker billing continues during a Care Aide trial and you are not charged an extra Care Aide amount while that trial runs. Read that against your own invoice.

Maya’s honest test is one fictional session in the format she already uses, recorded or dictated on the trial, then timed for edit. If the draft still has to land in SOAP or DAP, keep a progress note template hub next to the chart so the format does not drift while you time the edit. Live PHI stays out until consent, retention, and the BAA story on the exact add-on match the workflow.

Recording, consent, and what is retained

Cost is only half of “where it stops.” The other half is audio, consent, and how long a transcript lives.

SimplePractice’s Preparing to use Note Taker guide (June 2026) says Note Taker uses audio to generate a transcript in real time and does not create or store a recording of your session. Transcript retention FAQs (June 2026) repeat that the audio is deleted immediately after the transcript is generated.

The identifiable transcript stays available up to 7 days, or until the note is signed and locked, whichever comes first. If you miss that window, SimplePractice says the transcript and draft are deleted and you write the progress note yourself.

From June 17, 2026, a second copy can exist. If you are opted in, SimplePractice retains a de-identified and de-coupled version of the transcript after that review window, to improve Note Taker and related AI features. Defaults matter:

• Clinicians who already used Note Taker before June 17, 2026: opted out unless they opt in.
• Clinicians who enable Note Taker on or after that date: opted in by default, with opt-out at clinician, client, or session level.

SimplePractice states it is not training an AI model with retained transcript data and is not building an AI therapist. The published distinction is product improvement (prompts and evaluation) versus model training (changing the underlying model). That is their wording. It is not a claim you should repeat as a legal conclusion without reading the Addendum to SimplePractice Terms of Service for Add-On AI Products against your own counsel.

Consent is your job, not a badge on the add-on. Two-party recording states still need client consent before you hit Record audio. SimplePractice ships a Consent for Use of AI Tools with De-Identified Transcript Retention form. Clients do not see a special indicator on their side of Telehealth when you record. That makes the form, not the UI, the disclosure.

Note Taker is built for SimplePractice Telehealth. The FAQs say it does not work with an external telehealth platform. If your sessions run on Zoom for Healthcare or another bridge, the in-chart recorder is not the path those pages describe. Dictation and file upload still exist. Confirm the capture method you will actually use before you budget $35 against a Zoom-only week.

On insurance: SimplePractice says Note Taker has instructions meant to align with standard insurance guidelines, and you still have to review and edit every draft against your contracts. That is not a promise that a payer will accept an unedited AI draft. No official page checked here states that Note Taker notes are automatically suitable for every insurer.

Buy the add-on, or keep the EHR and add a separate layer

You already have a chart. The decision is whether AI notes should live inside that chart as a SimplePractice SKU, or beside it.

Question	Buy the SimplePractice Note Taker	Keep SimplePractice and add a separate notes layer
What stays	Scheduling, billing, portal, claims workflow, the chart	The same EHR. You do not migrate the record to test notes.
Extra monthly cost (published)	$35 per enabled clinician after the 30-day trial, on top of the base plan in the table above	Emosapien publishes a standing free tier of 10 AI-generated sessions per month, with no payment card and no countdown clock, then paid Solo and Practice plans, on the pricing page (September 2026). Those prices are Emosapien’s, not SimplePractice’s.
Where the draft lands	Inside the SimplePractice appointment note	Draft in the separate tool. SimplePractice structured write-back is live on the integrations page (September 2026); you still review and sign.
Recording	SimplePractice Telehealth or the clinician app, plus dictation and upload	Whatever that second tool publishes. Do not assume SimplePractice’s “no stored recording” rule applies to another vendor.
Consent and retention	SimplePractice AI consent form, 7-day transcript, optional de-identified retention with a date-based default	Separate consent, BAA, and retention terms on the plan you will actually use. Emosapien publishes a BAA on Professional and Enterprise, not on Free or Starter, on the security page and the pricing page (September 2026).
Where it stops	Per-clinician toggle. Transcript gone from the account after 7 days or lock. Add-on does not replace your review. External telehealth is out of scope on the FAQ.	The separate layer does not become your billing system, your payer portal, or your chart of record. If you need to replace SimplePractice itself, that is a different decision.

Maya should not treat this as a feature bake-off. If the chart, claims, and portal already work, ripping out SimplePractice to chase a cheaper note draft is the expensive move. The cheaper question is whether $35 a seat inside the chart is worth it versus a layer you can trial on fictional sessions without touching every associate’s SKU.

If you want a therapy-built notes shortlist rather than this SimplePractice add-on math, use the 2026 AI therapy notes comparison and run the same fictional vignette through each tool.

What Emosapien is, and is not, if you already run SimplePractice

Emosapien free-tier, write-back, and BAA facts below are from official US pages checked September 2026.

Emosapien is a clinical AI layer for licensed therapists: progress-note drafts in SOAP, DAP, BIRP, GIRP, and PIE, with optional in-session support on paid plans. SimplePractice is live for structured note write-back on the integrations page. You review and sign. Session content is not used to train public models.

Emosapien is not a SimplePractice replacement. It is not your scheduler, your insurance claims engine, your client portal, or the chart of record. It does not file a claim. It does not promise that a payer will accept a draft. The free plan is 10 AI-generated sessions a month with no payment card and no countdown clock, as published on the pricing page. Free and Starter do not include a BAA. Keep identifiable client material in the current record until a signed BAA covers the plan you land on. BAA availability is on Professional and Enterprise on the security page.

If the in-chart Simple Practice Note Taker is the fit, buy it from SimplePractice and skip the second tool. If you want to keep the EHR and test drafts without attaching $35 to every seat, start on the free plan and run this test yourself: one fictional 45-minute follow-up in the format you already chart, timed for edit, exported or written back into a dummy SimplePractice appointment.