SimplePractice vs TherapyNotes: Should You Switch in 2026?

Solo therapists running SimplePractice have two new reasons in 2026 to ask whether it’s time to switch to TherapyNotes: the monthly bill went up again, and a privacy controversy is now attached to the client portal where intake forms and session notes live.

The stakes here are not trivial. An EHR migration means moving years of client records, billing history, and clinical notes — and a botched one can mean re-collecting signed consent forms from every active client on the caseload.

The quick answer: for most insurance-billing solo and small-group practices, the real switching argument is the price and fee changes, plus the private-equity ownership pattern behind them — not the AI note-taking add-ons. Neither SimplePractice’s Note Taker nor TherapyNotes’ TherapyFuel is, on its own, a reason to move an entire practice. The pixel-tracking issue is worth understanding, but as of this writing it is an attorney-solicited mass-arbitration campaign, not a proven or adjudicated lawsuit, and SimplePractice publicly disputes that tracking pixels touch the client-facing product.

What follows is the pricing, the complaints, and the actual cost of moving.

SimplePractice vs TherapyNotes: 2026 Pricing & Feature Snapshot

Pricing on both platforms is tiered, add-on-heavy, and subject to change without much notice — every figure below should be verified at signup rather than treated as locked in.

All figures are current as checked in September 2026 and should be confirmed on each vendor’s pricing page at signup — both companies have changed pricing structures mid-year before, and the per-claim figures above come from a single practitioner’s account on r/therapists, not either company’s official documentation.

The direction of travel is what matters more than any single number. SimplePractice’s fee structure is becoming more a la carte — a base tier plus a stack of per-feature and per-transaction charges. TherapyNotes’ structure has stayed comparatively flat: one number per clinician, telehealth included, no per-check billing line.

What Actually Changed in 2026 (and Why This Question Is Suddenly Trending)

Two separate things happened this year, and conflating them leads to bad decisions.

First, SimplePractice’s pricing rose substantially in the years following its acquisition by private equity. The exact percentage increase has not been independently confirmed and should be treated as approximate rather than an official published figure. What is documented is the October 1, 2026 fee change: manual insurance eligibility checks now cost $0.15 each on Starter and Essential, and the free claims previously included on Essential and Plus were replaced with volume-based claim pricing.

Second, and unrelated in origin, pixel-tracking allegations surfaced. ClassAction.org and a blog authored by attorney Robin Levick, both published in April 2026, allege that Meta, Google, and TikTok tracking pixels embedded in SimplePractice’s platform could identify individuals using the client portal — a population for whom identification carries real privacy and safety risk.

SimplePractice’s chief marketing officer, Doug Scott, responded directly in r/SimplePractice: no pixels run in the clinician or client-facing portal, he said, only on the public marketing site at simplepractice.com. There is no class-action sign-up page associated with this campaign as of this writing. It is an attorney-solicited mass arbitration effort — not a filed, certified, or adjudicated class action.

The two issues deserve different weight. The price increases are a real, provable reason to shop around; the fee schedule is public and dated. The pixel allegations are a reason to ask the vendor a direct written question about tracking scope — not, on current evidence, a reason to call the platform compromised.

SimplePractice in 2026: Pricing, the AI Note Taker, and the Catches

A fully loaded example illustrates where the a-la-carte pricing lands: two clinicians on the Plus tier, both using Note Taker, run to roughly $240 or more per month before card processing fees and the annual CPT code license fee — figures that should be verified directly against current published pricing.

A change effective June 16, 2026 adds another wrinkle. SimplePractice may retain de-identified, decoupled session transcripts to improve its AI features. An opt-out exists, but it is not the default, and clinicians report the toggle is not framed prominently during setup.

Complaints across the App Store and r/therapists cluster around three themes: the private-equity ownership pattern paired with what users describe as fee stacking, a data-retention toggle that cannot be fully disabled, and support response times that have slowed. One App Store reviewer described the retention setting directly: “There is a toggle that says it is retaining de identified client data. Even though I do not use their AI and there is no way to turn it off.” A Google Play reviewer connected the pattern to ownership: “Simple Practice is continuing to raise rates for the same features and nickel and diming clinicians… I recently realized they were bought by private equity a few years ago and they have gone downhill since then.”

The platform’s strengths are real and worth stating plainly. SimplePractice remains the market-share leader in this category, and its client-facing polish — customizable intake and assessment forms, the ability to load a previous note as a starting point, a clean client portal — is genuinely stronger than TherapyNotes’ equivalent. One long-time user on r/therapists put it simply: “I love simple practice. I love all the assessments and being able to customize the templates… loading my previous note helps me save time… I see 25-30 clients a week… I love it!”

TherapyNotes in 2026: Pricing, TherapyFuel, and What You Give Up

TherapyNotes bundles more into its base price: unlimited clients and notes, storage, EMR import, the client portal, Basic Telehealth, and 24/7 phone and email support are all included without separate line items.

TherapyFuel, the AI add-on, runs about $40/clinician/mo for either a summary-expansion mode or full-transcription Scribe mode — roughly $5 more per month than SimplePractice’s Note Taker.

The tradeoffs are documented on r/therapists. TherapyNotes requires a mandatory monthly password change, a friction point several users flagged as outdated. Its intake and treatment-plan forms are less customizable than SimplePractice’s. And at least one long-time user reported that an earlier switch to the ClaimMD clearinghouse caused payment processing issues.

Against that, the praise clusters around billing workflow and support access. One user contrasted the treatment-plan template structure directly: “I liked that TN had 1 tx plan template that we as clinicians can adjust. On SP there are multiple options that can only be adjusted by admins… TN has great customer support with an email address readily available.” Another described comparing the two platforms head to head: “I tested both with a free trial when I was looking for an EHR and landed on Therapy Notes based on features, pricing, customer service, and how the workload worked with my brain.” A third tied the choice explicitly to ownership: “Simple practice is owned by private equity. Therapy notes has excellent and friendly 24/7 customer service and is private owned. I recommend therapy notes.”

TherapyNotes is not a strictly better product. It trades customization and client-facing polish for pricing predictability and a stronger insurance-billing workflow — a trade that matters more to some practices than others.

Is the AI Note-Taking Add-On Actually Worth $35-40/Month?

Both add-ons do the same underlying job: transcribe a session and generate a draft SOAP, DAP, or BIRP note for the clinician to review and edit. Neither claims to finalize notes without review, and neither has published data showing a meaningful reduction in documentation time for clinicians who already chart efficiently.

There is also a hidden cost that rarely makes it into the pricing comparison: consent overhead. Recording or transcribing a session for AI processing typically requires a separate written consent form, a process for handling clients who decline, and a documented policy on how the transcript is stored and deleted. That is administrative work layered on top of the subscription fee, not eliminated by it.

Marketing claims about data handling also do not always match practice. One person working in healthcare documentation, posting on r/askatherapist, pushed back directly: “My side gig is in healthcare documentation… I hear doctors tell their patients every day ‘it’s deleted immediately after the documentation is generated,’ and that’s not true… As a therapist myself, I do not use it and I will not use it.”

At $35 to $40 per clinician per month, either add-on runs $420 to $480 per year per clinician — a real cost for a marginal time savings if the clinician already writes efficient notes. For clinicians who genuinely struggle with documentation load, the tool may earn its keep. For everyone else, it functions as another subscription tier rather than a fix for the actual documentation burden.

Clinicians evaluating this category on its own merits, independent of which EHR they use, should look at AI note-taking tools built for therapists directly rather than defaulting to whichever add-on their EHR happens to sell.

The verdict: treat the AI note-taker as an upsell to evaluate on its own, not a documentation-burden fix that should influence the EHR decision.

What Migrating Actually Costs You (Time, Data, Headaches)

SimplePractice exports clinical notes as PDFs, not structured data. One user described the practical result on r/therapists: “SP exports notes as PDFs, not structured data, so the next EHR will basically have a giant PDF archive.” The same account flagged clunky scheduling, poor claim-status visibility, support response times measured in days, and per-claim fees that stack up over time.

SimplePractice’s acquisition history adds a documented precedent for forced, messy migrations. After acquiring Luminello, the company shut the platform down and moved its users over regardless of prior assurances. One affected clinician recounted: “When simple practice bought luminello they promised that nothing would change and suddenly they shut down luminello and forced migration to simple practice. The migrations were a mess. I decided not to do business with those people…”

TherapyNotes advertises free EMR data import, but real migrations still involve manually recreating recurring schedules and cross-checking outstanding claims against the old system — import tools rarely capture everything cleanly on the first pass. Practices moving records should set a hard cutover date and stop entering new charting into the old system on that date, rather than running both systems in parallel indefinitely.

A migration is also a natural point to audit the rest of the admin stack — practices re-evaluating their EHR often end up re-evaluating credentialing software for small practices and patient communication tools for independent practices in the same pass, since those systems tend to be tied to the same billing and scheduling data.

Our Take: Who Should Actually Switch

For solo private-practice therapists trying to identify the best EHR for their caseload in 2026, the decision splits cleanly along two lines, and the AI add-on belongs in neither of them.

Switch to TherapyNotes if the practice is insurance-billing heavy, solo or small-group, and the SimplePractice fee stack — tier price, AI add-on, per-claim charges, and the new October 2026 eligibility-check fees — has pushed the real monthly cost noticeably above TherapyNotes’ flatter structure. Practices in this category should also compare TherapyNotes against dedicated insurance billing platforms for therapists before committing, since some insurance-heavy practices are better served by a billing-first platform than by either general EHR.

Stay on SimplePractice if the practice is private-pay heavy, depends on the client-facing polish, and the migration cost would outweigh the savings. The long-time SimplePractice user quoted above running “25-30 clients a week” and relying on customizable templates and note-cloning is a representative case for staying put. A more mixed account on r/therapists captured the risk of switching without weighing the tradeoff carefully: “a lot of folks who leave SimplePractice realize they miss the client facing polish, customizable forms and note cloning and end up losing time which eats the savings fast. TherapyNotes is solid for insurance and reports but definitely more rigid and less client friendly.”

Neither the AI note-taker nor TherapyFuel should tip this decision in either direction — evaluate that add-on independently of the EHR choice. And before treating the pixel-tracking allegations as a dealbreaker, practices should get SimplePractice’s answer in writing on the specific scope of tracking on the client portal, rather than relying on a mass-arbitration solicitation as the final word.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is SimplePractice’s Note Taker worth it versus TherapyNotes’ TherapyFuel?

Both are marginal improvements at comparable price points, and neither is worth choosing an EHR over. The real added cost isn’t just the $35-40 monthly fee — it’s the AI-consent paperwork and opt-out handling that comes with either one.

Does the 2026 SimplePractice price increase change the math against TherapyNotes?

Yes, for claim-heavy insurance practices. The new October 1, 2026 per-check and per-claim charges stack on top of existing tier pricing, while TherapyNotes bundles more of that functionality into its base price. Current numbers should be verified directly at signup before deciding.

Is the pixel-tracking class-action campaign a legitimate reason to switch?

It’s legitimate enough to ask direct questions, but it is currently an attorney-run mass-arbitration solicitation, not a certified class action or a court ruling, and SimplePractice denies that pixels operate in the client-facing product. Treat it as a trust and ownership signal worth investigating, not as proven wrongdoing.

How disruptive is migrating records and billing mid-practice — is it worth it?

SimplePractice’s PDF-only note exports and its documented forced migration of Luminello users both point to real friction. Budgeting dedicated admin time and setting a hard cutover date makes the process disruptive but manageable for most solo and small-group practices.

Which platform actually reduces documentation burden more?

Neither meaningfully reduces it through the AI add-ons alone. TherapyNotes has an edge on claims tracking and billing workflow; SimplePractice has an edge on customizable clinical note templates for practices that control their own admin account.

The Math, Not the AI, Should Decide This

The AI features are a rounding error in this decision. What should actually move a practice is the price stacking, the new 2026 fee structure, and the ownership and trust questions sitting behind SimplePractice’s pricing pattern.

The practical next step: pull the last three months of SimplePractice invoices, including AI add-on charges and per-claim fees, and run the same client volume through TherapyNotes’ published pricing. Compare the delta against the real cost of a migration — admin hours, a hard cutover date, and re-collecting any forms that don’t transfer cleanly.

Don’t switch EHRs because a vendor sold a good AI note-taking demo. Switch because the math, or the trust, finally stopped working for the practice.

References

1. r/therapists — thread on SimplePractice’s Luminello acquisition and forced migration
2. r/therapists — thread on SimplePractice PDF note exports, claim status visibility, and per-claim fees
3. r/therapists — thread comparing TherapyNotes’ single adjustable treatment-plan template and support responsiveness to SimplePractice
4. r/therapists — thread describing a side-by-side free-trial comparison of SimplePractice and TherapyNotes
5. r/therapists — thread recommending TherapyNotes over SimplePractice on ownership and support grounds
6. r/therapists — thread weighing client-facing polish lost after switching from SimplePractice to TherapyNotes
7. r/askatherapist — thread from a healthcare documentation professional on AI scribe data-retention claims
8. Apple App Store — SimplePractice app review on the de-identified data retention toggle
9. Google Play Store — SimplePractice app review on pricing increases and private-equity ownership
10. r/therapists — long-time SimplePractice user review on templates, note-cloning, and caseload volume
11. ClassAction.org — article on SimplePractice tracking pixel allegations, April 2026
12. Robin Levick (attorney) blog — post on SimplePractice pixel-tracking allegations, April 2026
13. r/SimplePractice — SimplePractice CMO Doug Scott’s response on pixel tracking scope
14. SimplePractice official pricing page — checked September 2026
15. TherapyNotes official pricing page — checked September 2026