SimplePractice Pricing in 2026: What It Actually Costs a Solo Therapist

The email always comes on an ordinary Tuesday. You're between sessions, coffee going cold, and there it is in the inbox: We're updating our pricing. Such a gentle little sentence. It doesn't say your software bill is about to jump 69%. It doesn't have to. You'll do that math yourself, tonight, at the kitchen table — which is exactly where thousands of therapists did it in February 2025, when SimplePractice's letter landed.

Here's the plain truth about EHR pricing pages: the sticker price and your bill are two different numbers. The sticker says $49. Your bill is the sticker plus the add-ons, the metered claims, and the features that used to be included and quietly aren't anymore. This post does the whole math out loud — the plan prices, where the 2025 increase came from, the add-on costs, and what a real solo practice really pays.

One disclosure before the numbers: I'm a clinical psychologist, and I also built Practice Harbor, an EHR that competes with SimplePractice. I'll keep the two conversations separate — the SimplePractice numbers below are just the numbers, verifiable against their own pricing page and support docs.

The three plans in 2026

Those are per-clinician prices. If you bring on an associate or a second clinician, the subscription scales with headcount — which is worth knowing before you build a group practice on it.

The 2025 price increase, briefly

In March 2025, the Starter plan went from $29 to $49. Not over three years — in one step, with about a month's notice. Essential went to $79, Plus to $99. If you want to understand why, one date does most of the work: January 2024, when SimplePractice's parent company was bought by Vista Equity Partners, a private-equity firm. I won't tell you private equity is evil. I'll tell you it's predictable: prices rise faster, included features become add-ons, and the invoice grows quicker than the product. That's not a prophecy — it's just the last two years of their own pricing history, and it's the most consistent complaint about SimplePractice on every therapist forum you can name.

The add-on math (where the real bill comes from)

• AI progress notes (Note Taker): a paid add-on on top of your plan, not an included feature — and its data-use terms have drawn criticism because there's no opt-out for AI training on the notes it processes. If AI notes are your main reason for choosing an EHR, price this in first. (More on how these tools work in our AI note taker comparison.)
• Group appointments + group telehealth: included on Plus, but on Essential it's a $20/month per clinician add-on. If you run even one weekly therapy group, that's $240/year for the privilege of scheduling it. (If you're weighing whether groups are worth running at all — they usually are — see our guide to starting a therapy group.)
• Insurance claims: metered. Lower tiers include a small monthly allotment, and additional claims are billed per claim. A full insurance caseload burns through the included claims quickly.
• Payment processing: card fees on top of everything, at rates comparable to the rest of the industry — not unique to SimplePractice, but part of your real monthly cost.

Is it worth it?

Honestly: for a lot of practices, yes. SimplePractice is mature, broad, and familiar; if your practice is stable, your workflows are built around it, and the price doesn't bother you, switching costs are real and inertia is a legitimate reason to stay. The people who should run the numbers are (1) pre-licensed clinicians and new practices, for whom $1,300+/year is real money, (2) group-therapy practices paying an add-on for a core workflow, and (3) anyone whose main draw is AI notes, which are priced as an extra on top of an already-premium plan.

For a full tour of the alternatives — including the ones that are honestly better for specific situations — see our SimplePractice alternatives guide and the head-to-head SimplePractice vs TherapyNotes comparison.

How Practice Harbor prices the same things

Since I build the competing product, here's our side stated plainly rather than smuggled in: Practice Harbor is free for pre-licensed clinicians (unlimited clients, no card, no trial clock), $19/month once you're licensed, and $39/month for an established practice — with AI notes, group appointments, group telehealth, e-claims, and the client portal included rather than sold back to you as add-ons. The honest caveat: SimplePractice has been around longer and is broader in places. The honest arithmetic: our top tier costs less than their bottom tier.