Both sign up in minutes, both work outside the US. The difference shows up in language coverage and in everything downstream of the note.
Heidi is genuinely good software and it earned its international following honestly. It went multilingual and multi-market early, its template system is one of the more flexible in the category, and it is popular well beyond the US — which matters, because most ambient scribes are built for American charting and quietly assume it. Clinicians rate its note quality highly. If you want a well-made scribe with strong templates and you are outside the US, Heidi belongs on your shortlist and we would say so to your face.
How the two products compare as of August 2026. Heidi ships fast — check their site for current pricing and features before you decide.
| Feature | ScribeMD | Heidi |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Scribe, dictation, ICD-10 coding, billing automation, patient intake, clinical Answers, AI phone agent | Ambient scribe, note templates and clinical documents |
| Languages | Notes and transcription across 140+ languages and regional variants; interface in 10 | Multilingual — see their site for the current list |
| Sign-up | Self-serve, no sales call | Self-serve, no sales call |
| Free tier | 10 visits a month, indefinitely | Free tier available — see their pricing page |
| Templates | Specialty templates plus your own, shareable across the practice | Template library and custom templates |
| ICD-10 codes | Suggested from the note and validated against the ICD-10-CM catalogue | Not a core feature |
| Front desk | AI phone agent and patient intake forms | Not offered |
| Clinical question answering | Answers, with primary sources attached — free to try without an account | Not offered |
This is the row people actually come to this page for. ScribeMD's language list runs to more than 140 entries, including regional variants that matter clinically — Canadian French and European French are separate, so are the Spanish variants. If you consult in one language and chart in another, ScribeMD will transcribe in the first and write the note in the second. Check Heidi's current list against your own languages rather than trusting either of our marketing pages; both of us update this often.
Neither product assumes you are in the United States, which puts both ahead of most of this category. ScribeMD runs a separate Canadian deployment with data held in Canada, and publishes region-specific privacy terms. If data residency is a live question for your regulator, ask both vendors where the audio goes, where it is processed, and how long it is kept — and get the answer in writing rather than from a comparison table.
If your requirement is a scribe with excellent templates and nothing else, this is close, and the tie-breaker should be which drafts read better on your own patients. The reason to choose ScribeMD is the coding, billing, intake and phone work that sits around the note. If you will not use those, do not pay attention to them.
The free plan covers 10 visits a month. No card, no setup call, no sales engineer on the line while you try it.
