Two AI scribes aimed at the same clinician. One stops at the note; the other keeps going into coding, billing and the front desk.
Freed is the cleanest onboarding in this category. You sign up, you record, you get a note — no implementation call, no IT ticket, no procurement. It is built for one clinician rather than an institution, its notes read naturally, and its free tier is generous enough to form a real opinion before paying anything. If all you want is a scribe and you want it working in five minutes, Freed is a completely reasonable answer and plenty of clinicians stop there happily.
How the two products compare as of August 2026. Freed ships fast — check their site for current pricing and features before you decide.
| Feature | ScribeMD | Freed |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Scribe, dictation, ICD-10 coding, billing automation, patient intake, clinical Answers, AI phone agent | Ambient scribe and note generation |
| Free tier | 10 visits a month, indefinitely | Free visits each month; see their pricing page for the current allowance |
| Paid plan | $99.99/month for unlimited visits (Small Practice) | Flat monthly price per clinician — see their pricing page |
| Sign-up | Self-serve, no sales call | Self-serve, no sales call |
| ICD-10 codes | Suggested from the note and validated against the ICD-10-CM catalogue | Not a core feature |
| EHR integration | Direct push to Epic, Athena, Cerner, Veradigm and 35+ others, plus a browser extension | Copy-paste and browser workflow |
| Front desk | AI phone agent and patient intake forms | Not offered |
| Devices | Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, Apple Watch | Web and mobile |
If your documentation problem ends when the note is signed, the extra surface area in ScribeMD is weight you are not using, and a simpler product is the better buy. The case for ScribeMD is that for most small practices the problem does not end there — the note has to be coded, the claim has to go out clean, somebody has to answer the phone, and intake has to be collected before the patient walks in. Those are the parts we built after the scribe, and they are the reason to look at us rather than at a very good note generator.
Both products have a free tier you can actually work in, and both paid plans sit in the same neighbourhood for a single clinician. Do not pick on headline price alone: count the things you are currently paying someone else to do. If you already pay for a coding tool, an intake form service or an answering service, the comparison changes shape. If you do not, it does not, and you should buy the cheaper one.
There is no lock-in worth worrying about in either direction. Notes are text; you can leave with them. Run both for a week on the same clinic days and compare the drafts on your own patients — that is a more useful test than any table on a vendor's website, including this one.
The free plan covers 10 visits a month. No card, no setup call, no sales engineer on the line while you try it.
