PatientNotes vs Heidi Health
Both record the consultation and write the note. The real differences are price, what happens after the note is written, and whether the app survives a bad signal.
Heidi pricing and plan contents verified from heidihealth.com on 20 August 2026. We have tried to be straight about where Heidi is the better choice — those sections are below, not buried.
TL;DR — PatientNotes vs Heidi in 2026
- •Price: PatientNotes is $70/user/month, or $50/user/month billed annually ($600/user/year). Heidi Clinician is $150/user/month, or $110/user/month billed yearly($1,320/user/year). On annual billing that is $720 per user per year less.
- •Heidi has a free tier and we do not. Heidi Free is $0 with unlimited transcription and clinical evidence with citations. If your budget is zero, Heidi wins outright.
- •After the note: PatientNotes extracts follow-up tasks in the clinician’s own language, suggests ICD-10 and CPT codes for US billing, and writes patient instructions. Heidi does not advertise these as distinct features.
- •Mobile resilience: PatientNotes records offline and keeps recording with the screen locked, syncing when the connection returns. That matters on home visits and in older buildings.
- •Where Heidi is ahead: a free forever tier, clinical evidence with citations, SSO and broader EHR integration on Teams, and a 14-day trial against our 7.
Pricing, side by side
Both companies publish their per-seat prices, which makes this an unusually clean comparison. Heidi’s figures exclude applicable sales taxes.
| PatientNotes | Heidi | Better | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | None — 7-day free trial instead | $0 forever, unlimited transcription | Heidi |
| Free trial | 7 days, no credit card | 14 days on Clinician | Heidi |
| Paid, billed monthly | $70 / user / month | $150 / user / month (Clinician) | PatientNotes |
| Paid, billed annually | $50 / user / month ($600 / user / year) | $110 / user / month ($1,320 / user / year) | PatientNotes |
| Annual saving vs monthly | $240 / user / year (29%) | $480 / user / year (27%) | Even |
| Team / enterprise tier | Same per-seat price, no sales call | Custom — "Talk to us" | PatientNotes |
What that means over a year
| Scenario | PatientNotes | Heidi Clinician | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo clinician, annual billing | $600 / year | $1,320 / year | $720 / year |
| Solo clinician, monthly billing | $840 / year | $1,800 / year | $960 / year |
| 3-clinician practice, annual billing | $1,800 / year | $3,960 / year | $2,160 / year |
| 10-clinician practice, annual billing | $6,000 / year | $13,200 / year | $7,200 / year |
Heidi Teams is custom-priced, so a like-for-like enterprise comparison is not possible from published figures. The rows above compare PatientNotes against Heidi Clinician at list price.
Why the iPhone price is higher
Subscribing inside the iOS app costs $79.99 per month or $699.99 per year, against $70 and $600 on the web. That is not a different product and it is not a mobile surcharge we invented — Apple takes a commission on every in-app purchase: 15% under the App Store Small Business Program, and 30% once a developer passes $1 million in annual App Store revenue. The App Store price carries that cost.
How to avoid it: subscribe on the web at $70 or $600, then sign in on the iOS app. You get the same product, the same account and the same offline recording, at the web price.
Feature comparison
Where a row says “not advertised”, it means we could not find the capability described on Heidi’s public pages as of 20 August 2026 — not that it definitely does not exist. Check with them if a specific feature is decisive for you.
Documentation
Ambient recording and structured notes
PatientNotes
Yes
Heidi
Yes, including on the free tier
Both products do the core job. This is not where the decision gets made.
Custom note templates
PatientNotes
Yes, on every paid plan
Heidi
Clinician plan and above
Heidi’s free tier is limited to standard templates.
Specialty-specific templates
PatientNotes
37 specialties
Heidi
Broad specialty coverage advertised
Heidi publicly lists family medicine, specialists, nurses, mental health, allied health, dentists, veterinarians and trainees.
Output languages
PatientNotes
14 (EN, EN-GB, DE, FR, ES, IT, PT, NL, ZH, JA, KO, RU, AR, HI)
Heidi
Extensive multilingual support advertised
Our note language is set per user, so a German clinician gets German notes and German tasks.
What happens after the note
Follow-up tasks extracted automatically
PatientNotes
Yes, in the clinician’s own language
Heidi
Not advertised as a distinct feature
Tasks are generated from the note and written in the user’s note language, not translated afterwards.
ICD-10 and CPT code extraction
PatientNotes
Yes (US coding systems)
Heidi
Not advertised as a distinct feature
ICD-10-CM and CPT are US billing systems. Useful if you bill US insurers; not relevant to UK or EU practice.
Patient-facing visit instructions
PatientNotes
Generated per visit
Heidi
Not advertised as a distinct feature
Clinical evidence with citations
PatientNotes
No
Heidi
Yes — included even on the free tier
This is a genuine capability gap on our side. Heidi’s Evidence product is a real differentiator.
Mobile
Offline recording
PatientNotes
Yes — audio is captured on-device and synced when the connection returns
Heidi
Not advertised
The visit is created locally and remapped to a real visit once the device reconnects, so a dead signal does not cost you the consultation.
Recording continues with the screen locked
PatientNotes
Yes
Heidi
Not advertised
Background audio capture, with recovery if iOS interrupts the session — a phone call mid-consultation does not end the recording.
Native iOS app
PatientNotes
Yes (v1.7)
Heidi
Yes
Teams and integrations
Team invitations, roles and permissions
PatientNotes
Included at the standard per-seat price
Heidi
Teams tier — custom pricing
Team management on Heidi means a sales conversation. On PatientNotes it is the same $50–$70 seat.
Single sign-on (SSO)
PatientNotes
No
Heidi
Yes, on Teams
If SSO is a procurement requirement, Heidi has it and we do not.
EHR integration
PatientNotes
Semble
Heidi
Yes, on Teams
Our integration coverage is genuinely narrower. If you need deep EHR write-back today, check both carefully.
HIPAA compliance and BAA
PatientNotes
Yes, BAA included at no extra cost
Heidi
HIPAA, plus AU/NZ, Canada, UK and GDPR frameworks
What happens after you stop recording
Most of the comparison between AI scribes gets spent on note quality, which is reasonable but increasingly undifferentiated — both of these write a good note. The gap that shows up in daily use is what the software does once the note exists. Here is the full sequence PatientNotes runs on a single consultation, with nothing left out.
1. Transcription
Audio is transcribed as the consultation runs, in segments, so a long appointment is not waiting on one large upload at the end. On iOS this happens even with no connection — the audio is held on the device and sent when the signal returns.
2. Speaker separation
The transcript is labelled by speaker so you can see who said what. This is a reading aid for the transcript view; the note itself is generated from the full conversation.
3. The clinical note
Written to your chosen template — one of 37 specialty templates, or your own. Output is in your note language, which is set per user rather than per note, so a German-speaking clinician gets German notes without changing anything.
4. Follow-up tasks
Actionable items are pulled out of the note automatically — arrange imaging, send a referral, book a review. They are written in the clinician’s own language, not generated in English and translated, so they read naturally.
5. Billing codes (US practices)
ICD-10 diagnosis codes and CPT procedure codes are suggested from the documentation, for review rather than automatic submission. Worth being precise: these are US coding systems. If you practise in the UK, Germany or elsewhere without ICD-10-CM and CPT billing, this step does nothing for you and should not factor into your decision.
6. Patient instructions and visit summary
A plain-language summary of what was decided, written for the patient rather than the chart, plus a short visit summary for your own records.
Every one of those steps is included in the seat price. There is no add-on tier for tasks, codes or patient instructions.
Switching from Heidi
There is no technical migration involved in moving between ambient scribes — no data to export, no integration to rebuild, because the notes you have already written live in your EHR or your records, not in the scribe.
Run them in parallel for a week
Start a PatientNotes trial while your Heidi subscription is still active and record the same clinics through both. A week of your own consultations tells you more than any comparison page, including this one.
Rebuild your templates, not your history
If you have customised templates in Heidi, you will need to recreate them. That is the only real switching cost, and it is a one-off afternoon rather than a project.
Cancel whichever you do not keep
Heidi lets you cancel at any time and keep access for the period you have paid for. PatientNotes has no contract and no cancellation fee. Neither of us can lock you in, which is how it should be.
When to choose each
We sell one of these, so read the right-hand column with that in mind — but it is there because it is accurate, and because a comparison that concludes we win at everything is not worth reading.
Choose PatientNotes if you…
- ✓You are paying for a scribe out of your own pocket and the difference between $600 and $1,320 a year matters.
- ✓You want team management without a custom quote or a sales call.
- ✓You record on a phone in places with unreliable signal — offline capture and locked-screen recording are built for that.
- ✓You bill US insurers and want ICD-10 and CPT codes suggested from the note.
- ✓You want follow-up tasks pulled out of the note automatically, in your own language.
- ✓You want to know the price before you talk to anyone.
Choose Heidi if you…
- ✓You want to spend nothing. Heidi’s free tier is genuinely free and includes unlimited transcription — we have no equivalent.
- ✓Clinical evidence with citations matters to your workflow. That is Heidi’s Evidence product and we do not have anything comparable.
- ✓You need SSO or enterprise governance for procurement.
- ✓You need a specific EHR integration that we do not support — our integration list is short.
- ✓You want longer than a week to evaluate. Heidi gives 14 days, we give 7.
Questions people actually ask
How much does Heidi Health cost?
Heidi has three published tiers. Free is $0. Clinician is $150 per user per month billed monthly, or $110 per user per month billed yearly — $1,320 per user per year, which Heidi shows as a $480 annual saving. Teams is custom-priced and requires contacting their sales team. Prices exclude applicable sales taxes and were taken from heidihealth.com/en-us/pricing in USD.
Is PatientNotes cheaper than Heidi?
Yes, substantially. PatientNotes is $70 per user per month billed monthly, or $50 per user per month billed annually ($600 per user per year). Against Heidi Clinician that is $80 per month less on monthly billing and $60 per month less on annual billing — $720 per user per year. For a three-clinician practice on annual billing the difference is $2,160 a year.
Does Heidi have a free plan?
Yes, and it is a real one. Heidi Free costs $0 and includes ambient documentation, clinical evidence with citations, and healthcare-grade security, with unlimited transcription. PatientNotes has no free tier — we offer a 7-day free trial with no credit card required. If your budget is zero, Heidi is the better answer and we would rather say so.
Why does PatientNotes cost more on iPhone than on the web?
Because Apple takes a commission on in-app purchases — 15% under the App Store Small Business Program, and 30% above $1 million in annual App Store revenue. Our iOS prices are $79.99 per month and $699.99 per year against $70 and $600 on the web. Subscribing on the web and signing in on the app avoids the difference entirely.
What can Heidi do that PatientNotes cannot?
Three things worth knowing about. Heidi has a permanently free tier; we do not. Heidi has clinical evidence with citations through its Evidence product; we have no equivalent. Heidi offers SSO and broader EHR integration on its Teams tier, while our integration coverage is limited to Semble. Heidi also gives 14 days to trial against our 7.
Does PatientNotes work offline?
On iOS, yes. Audio is recorded and stored on the device, the session is created locally, and everything syncs and is remapped to a real visit once the connection returns. Recording also continues while the screen is locked, and recovers if iOS interrupts the audio session mid-consultation.
Do I need a sales call to get team features?
Not with PatientNotes. Team invitations, roles and member management are included at the standard per-seat price, so a three-person practice pays three seats. Heidi puts team templates, session sharing and centralised management on its Teams tier, which is custom-priced and starts with contacting their team.
Can I switch from Heidi to PatientNotes?
Yes. There is no contract or setup fee on either side of the move — start a 7-day PatientNotes trial while your Heidi subscription is still running, and cancel whichever you do not keep. Heidi lets you cancel at any time and retain access through the period you have paid for.
Other comparisons
PatientNotes vs Freed
Another solo-clinician favourite, compared on price and features.
PatientNotes vs Nuance DAX
What DAX Copilot really costs, including implementation fees.
PatientNotes vs Abridge
Enterprise ambient documentation compared with a per-seat tool.
Best AI medical scribes in 2026
The full field, ranked, with pricing for each.
Try both. Keep the one that fits.
PatientNotes is free for 7 days with no credit card and no sales call. Heidi’s free tier costs nothing to try alongside it. Run a week of real consultations through each and let the notes decide.
No credit card required · HIPAA compliant · BAA included free