Best AI Scribe for Behavioral Health (2026)
Which AI scribe handles therapy and psychiatry notes? JotPsych, Upheal, Mentalyc, Freed and Ona compared on note formats, session length and 2026 pricing.
For behavioral health, the best AI scribe is the one that writes in your note format and lands where the note has to live. Upheal, Mentalyc and JotPsych are built for this work; Freed is general medical; Ona drafts SOAP, DAP or BIRP inside the chart itself, and nothing leaves until a clinician signs.
Quick answer:
- Keeping your record: Mentalyc from $19.99 per month or Upheal at $1 per session capped at $69 are the cheapest honest answers, and both write therapy formats natively.
- Worried about the payer: JotPsych audits notes against the 150+ payer rules its homepage advertises, but on its pricing page, read on 17 September 2026, the $53 and $135 tiers cap audit suggestions at 10 and 25 a month, and unlimited auditing means JotAudit at $62 or the $269 Everything plan.
- Replacing your record: Ona puts the scribe inside a general ambulatory EHR at $130 per practitioner seat, with telehealth, scheduling, intake, consents and billing already in the seat.
Behavioral health notes are not medical notes
A general scribe is tuned for a twelve-minute visit with an exam and a plan. Behavioral health breaks that shape in four ways, each of them a line item on somebody's pricing page.
Format. The work is written as SOAP, DAP or BIRP, and in some settings as GIRP, PIRP, SIRP or PIE. A scribe that only produces a SOAP-shaped note makes the clinician reformat every session by hand, which is most of the time it was supposed to save.
Length. A 53-minute session, a 90-minute intake and a 2-hour family assessment all have to fit. Several scribes cap recording length by tier, and the cap is printed well below the headline price.
Audience. The note is read by an auditor, not only by the next clinician. Medical necessity, the code billed and the time claimed have to be visible in the document itself. Ona's own behavioral health page puts the segment's problem as "Notes that hold up when the auditor calls".
Sensitivity. The transcript is the session. Where the recording lives, who can play it, and whether the vendor trains on it are clinical questions, not procurement ones.
Five checks before you pick one
1. Is your format on the tier you would actually buy? DAP is usually included everywhere. BIRP and its relatives are often a tier up.
2. What is the session length cap? Ask in minutes, not adjectives, and ask about intakes.
3. Where does the finished note land? Into a record you already run, into the vendor's own record, or into a copy-paste.
4. What has to happen before the note is final? A behavioral health note should not reach a chart without a clinician putting their name on it.
5. What does the note cost after it is written? Claims, eligibility checks, prescribing and auditing are priced separately by most of the market. Compare the stack, not the headline.
How the five compare
One axis only: how much of a behavioral health practice's week sits behind one subscription once the note is written. It is not a quality ranking. Prices are from each vendor's official pricing page, read on 17 September 2026, and most carry a monthly and annual toggle, so confirm the rate at checkout.
| Coverage order | Platform | What it is | Note formats published | Current limits | Best fit | Published price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ona | General ambulatory EHR, CRM and RCM with the scribe inside the record; behavioral health is one served segment | SOAP, DAP, BIRP, functional-medicine timeline, custom, freeform | No payer-rule checking and no CPT or ICD suggestions; web only; one-to-one telehealth; no third-party security certification published | Practices wanting the session, the claim and the balance on one record, solo through multi-location and enterprise | $130 practitioner seat, $45 staff seat; scribe, telehealth, scheduling, intake and consents in the seat; e-prescribing $45, EPCS $25; clearing house from $69 if you bill insurance |
| 2 | Upheal | AI-native record for therapists: notes plus scheduling, client portal, messaging, telehealth and billing | SOAP, DAP, GIRP, BIRP, EMDR, PIRP, SIRP, PIE, psychiatry, Headway-compliant SOAP, medical notes | No e-prescribing published; claims and eligibility priced per action; therapy-shaped rather than general ambulatory | Solo and small therapy practices wanting one cheap subscription for the note and the week around it | $1 per session, capped at $69 per month; billing $0.30 per claim and $0.15 per eligibility check, both waived through September; AI Assistant Pro +$39 |
| 3 | JotPsych | Behavioral health scribe with payer-rule auditing that adds to your EHR or replaces it | 60+ pre-built behavioral health templates, including SOAP, psychiatric intake, follow-up, EMDR, ABA and group notes; custom template builder | Breadth arrives as separately priced modules; billing priced apart from every plan including Everything | Psychiatry and therapy practices whose record is fine but whose documentation and coding are not | $53, $135 or $269 per clinician per month; JotAudit $62, JotRx $62, JotMeet $26; JotBill self-serve $179; prescribing from $69 for JotRx alone with no plan seat, or $115 on Moonlighting plus JotRx inside a 15-note monthly cap |
| 4 | Mentalyc | Documentation add-on that sits on the record you already run | SOAP, DAP and intake on every tier; BIRP, PIRP, GIRP, PIE and SIRP from Pro | Not a record: no scheduling, billing or prescribing; note allowance and session length capped per tier | A therapist keeping SimplePractice, TherapyNotes or Jane and buying documentation help only | $19.99, $39.99, $69.99 or $119.99 monthly; $14.99, $29.99, $59.99 or $99.99 annually; teams from $49.99 per seat |
| 5 | Freed | General medical AI scribe that pushes into the EHR you already run | Specialty-specific templates across 30+ specialties, psychiatry and mental health among them | Not behavioral health native; DAP and BIRP not published by name; EHR push on the top tier only | A prescriber or generalist whose single problem is note time | Starter $39 with up to 40 notes a month, Core $79 unlimited, Premier $104 annually or $119 monthly |
Where each one fits
JotPsych
JotPsych owns this category for a reason. Its homepage on 17 September 2026 carried the headline "The behavioral health AI scribe that defends you from insurance companies" and said every note is checked against 150+ payer rules, with audit risk surfaced before you sign rather than after a denial. That homepage claimed 10,000+ practices and 3.1M+ notes written when we read it on 17 September 2026, traction most of this market does not publish. It also says that it "Works with any EHR. Or replaces it entirely", with setup in five minutes, and ships a mobile recording app.
The cost of that breadth is the shape of the bill. Prescribing is JotRx at $62, video is JotMeet at $26, unlimited auditing is JotAudit at $62, and Everything bundles the three at $269 per clinician per month. The cheapest published way to prescribe is well below that: a supervising or collaborating physician who only prescribes takes JotRx alone at $69 a month with no plan seat, and a prescriber who stays inside the 15-note monthly cap pairs Moonlighting at $53 with JotRx at $62, so $115. Billing sits outside every plan: JotBill is $179 per clinician per month self-serve, or 6% of insurance collections with a $299 monthly minimum. Buy it when the denial letter, not the clock, is ruining your month.
Upheal
Upheal is the value answer for a therapy practice. It bills at $1 per session with the total capped at $69 per month, so a part-time caseload pays part-time money. The paid plan carries the widest published format list of the five, including GIRP, BIRP, EMDR, PIRP, SIRP, PIE, psychiatry and a Headway-compliant SOAP, and there is a 30-day full trial with no credit card and a free plan to fall back to.
It is also more than a scribe: scheduling, a client portal, secure messaging, telehealth, forms and payments come with it, and insurance billing is priced per action at $0.30 a claim and $0.15 an eligibility check, both waived through September on the pricing page we read on 17 September 2026. What it does not publish is e-prescribing, so a psychiatric practice still needs a second system for scripts.
Mentalyc
Mentalyc is the cleanest add-on here, and at $19.99 per month the cheapest entry point. It states you do not need to change your EHR, install software or migrate data, and names SimplePractice, TherapyNotes and Jane App among the systems it works alongside.
Read the tier table, because two limits move together. Mini and Basic cover SOAP, DAP and intake and cap a session at 75 minutes. Pro at $69.99 per month, or $59.99 billed annually, raises the cap to 130 minutes and unlocks 100+ templates including BIRP, PIRP, GIRP, PIE and SIRP, modality-specific note types for EMDR, play and psychiatry, client types for children, couples and families, and auto-computed CPT codes. Note allowances run 40, 100, 160 and 330 per month across the four tiers. Teams start at $49.99 per seat billed annually.
Freed
Freed is the general-medicine scribe in this list and says so: 30+ specialties, with psychiatry and mental health among them, specialty-specific templates rather than named therapy formats, and a 7-day free trial with no credit card. Starter is $39 for up to 40 notes a month, Core $79 for unlimited, Premier $104 billed annually or $119 monthly.
The tier that matters is Premier, because that is where EHR push, dictation, visit summaries and ICD-10 and CPT coding live. Below it, the note comes out of Freed and goes into your record by hand. For a therapist who writes BIRP, it is the wrong tool at any price.
Ona
Ona is not a scribe you bolt on. It is a general ambulatory EHR, CRM and RCM on one record, and the scribe is a feature of the chart rather than a visitor to it. Its own site puts its range as from solo clinics to enterprise systems, cash-based or insured; behavioral health is one of nine published specialties. The honest exclusion is inpatient and hospital work.
The ambient scribe records in the room or on a telehealth call behind a per-visit consent banner that is configurable by jurisdiction and logged with a timestamp, separates speakers and timestamps every turn, and also takes an uploaded MP3, M4A or WAV up to 100MB. Recordings are encrypted in transit and at rest inside your own tenant, playable only by users with chart access, and Ona states it never trains models on your audio.
Charting drafts against your own template, SOAP, DAP, BIRP, custom or freeform, with placeholder fields pulling medications, allergies, vitals and history into the right slots. Every draft lands in a review state: accept it, edit inline, or diff it against the transcript, then sign. Nothing is finalized until you do, which matters when the note is the evidence.
Around it sits the rest of the week: version-controlled consents where each signature carries timestamp, user agent and IP, eligibility on the chart before the session, claims and denials in the same queue, and screening forms that score themselves, with PHQ-9 on 0 to 27, GAD-7 on 0 to 21, the standard bands and a preconfigured flag on item 9, visible to the clinician only.
What Ona does not do
Decide against it now, not three weeks into a migration. Ona does not check notes against payer documentation rules and does not suggest CPT or ICD codes, which is exactly what JotPsych built its product around. It does not sell billing or credentialing as a managed service. Its telehealth is one clinician to one patient. Workspace and portal are mobile-friendly web, with no native app and no practice branding. Human support is in-app chat and email from a primarily business-hours team. Ona's own help centre states there is no cross-patient reporting yet, so each screening result lives on its form. And Ona publishes HIPAA compliance and a BAA with every workspace, while JotPsych, Upheal, Mentalyc and Freed all publish a SOC 2 status; if procurement wants a certificate, ask every vendor for documentation.
What this costs across a year
For one therapist keeping their current record, documentation help is $180 to $840 a year. For a prescriber the arithmetic changes, because a scribe that cannot write a script leaves a second subscription in place: two bills and one note moved between them.
On Ona, one prescriber is $130 for the seat, $45 for e-prescribing and $25 for EPCS, so $200 per month, with the scribe, telehealth, scheduling, intake, consents, screening forms and billing included, and the insurance and eligibility workflow on every plan. Annual billing takes 10% off the whole plan and staff seats are $45. Running claims, ERAs and eligibility checks needs an Ona Clearing House plan, which runs on Stedi with no separate account to open, from $69 per month for 100 claims, 100 ERAs and 200 eligibility checks; cash-pay practices do not need one. Full details sit on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
Which AI scribe is best for therapy notes?
It depends on whether you are keeping your record. If you are, Upheal and Mentalyc write therapy formats directly and cost the least; Mentalyc gates BIRP, PIRP, GIRP, PIE and SIRP behind its Pro tier, while Upheal lists them on its paid Individual plan. If you are replacing the record, Ona drafts SOAP, DAP, BIRP, custom or freeform inside the chart the note already lives in.
Do AI scribes write DAP and BIRP notes?
The behavioral health ones do, but check the tier. Mentalyc publishes SOAP, DAP and intake on every plan and adds BIRP, PIRP, GIRP, PIE and SIRP at Pro. Upheal lists GIRP, BIRP, EMDR, PIRP, SIRP, PIE, psychiatry and a Headway-compliant SOAP on its paid plan. Ona ships SOAP, DAP, BIRP, custom and freeform templates in the practitioner seat. Freed publishes specialty-specific templates rather than named behavioral health formats.
What does an AI scribe for behavioral health cost in 2026?
Documentation alone starts around $20 to $70 per clinician per month: Mentalyc from $19.99 monthly, Freed from $39, Upheal at $1 per session capped at $69. Behavioral health scribes with auditing cost more, with JotPsych's Everything plan at $269 per clinician per month. A full record with the scribe inside it is $130 per practitioner seat on Ona. Prices read from each vendor's pricing page on 17 September 2026.
Can an AI scribe handle a 90-minute session?
Only if its tier allows it, so read the limit before you buy. Mentalyc caps a session at 75 minutes on Mini and Basic and at 130 minutes on Pro and Super. Upheal prices by session rather than by minute and publishes no length cap. Ona's scribe records in the room or on a telehealth call and also accepts an uploaded MP3, M4A or WAV up to 100MB, with no session length published.
Do I need to change my EHR to use an AI scribe?
No, unless you want to. Mentalyc and Freed are add-ons that leave your record alone, and Mentalyc names SimplePractice, TherapyNotes and Jane App among the systems it works with. JotPsych says it works with any EHR or replaces it entirely. Ona has no layering mode: it is the record, so choosing it means a migration, which is free and typically exported and imported within one business day.
Which AI scribe works for psychiatry and prescribing?
Prescribing is where scribe-only tools stop. JotPsych sells prescribing as the JotRx module at $62 per clinician per month, bundled into its $269 Everything plan. Its cheapest published paths are JotRx alone at $69 a month with no plan seat, for a supervising or collaborating physician who only prescribes, and Moonlighting at $53 plus JotRx at $62, so $115 a month inside a 15-note monthly cap; unlimited notes with prescribing is Basic at $135 plus JotRx at $62, so $197. Upheal and Mentalyc publish no e-prescribing. On Ona, e-prescribing runs on embedded DoseSpot at $45 per prescribing practitioner with EPCS at $25, so one prescriber is $200 per month with the scribe, telehealth and billing already in the seat.
Next step
Count the systems, not the subscriptions. If the note is the only thing that hurts and your record is fine, buy the scribe. If you pay separately for a record, a scribe, a video tool and a clearing house, the scribe was never the problem. Related reading: Ona vs JotPsych, best behavioral health EHR software (2026) and behavioral health EHR pricing compared.
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Written by
Ona Health team