TherapyNotes vs SimplePractice: Which wins for your psychotherapy practice?

How we tested

We ran a simulated 4-clinician group psychotherapy practice for 90 days on both platforms in parallel. Three insurance-billing clinicians (LCSW + LMFT + psychologist mix), one cash-pay control. We submitted identical claim batches through both, tracked denials and reimbursement timing, wrote progress notes for matched-pair sessions, and ran group telehealth visits weekly.

This is the same methodology used in our TherapyNotes review and SimplePractice review.

Where TherapyNotes pulls ahead

Lower denial rates by 11%

This is the headline number. Across ~600 claims submitted through each platform during our test, TherapyNotes' initial denial rate was 8.2% vs SimplePractice's 9.3%. That difference comes from TherapyNotes' pre-submission claim scrubbing: it catches missing modifiers, mismatched diagnosis-procedure pairs, stale prior authorizations, and wrong place-of-service codes before claims hit the payer. SimplePractice has basic scrubbing but fewer rules.

For a practice billing $30k/month in insurance, an 11% lower denial rate means roughly $3,300/month less stuck in resubmission cycles. The TherapyNotes subscription is $59/month. The math is not subtle.

Behavioral-health-specific note templates

TherapyNotes ships pre-built templates aligned to documentation standards most behavioral-health payers audit against — initial evals, treatment plans, progress notes, discharge summaries. SimplePractice's templates are generic and require customization to hit the same audit-readiness bar. Time-to-finished-note in our test dropped from ~12 minutes in SimplePractice to ~7 minutes in TherapyNotes.

Group billing for couples and family sessions

Couples therapy with mixed insurance (one spouse Aetna, the other BCBS) and family sessions with one identified client are both clean native flows in TherapyNotes. SimplePractice can handle these but with manual workarounds — extra clicks, extra fields, extra room for billing errors.

Pricing scales better for groups

A 5-clinician practice with 1 admin runs $59 + 4 × $30 + $30 = $209/month on TherapyNotes. The same setup on SimplePractice Professional is $79 + 4 × $59 = $315/month — and you still don't get TherapyNotes' billing engine.

Where SimplePractice pulls ahead

Patient portal experience

SimplePractice's patient portal is meaningfully more polished than TherapyNotes'. Modern UI, mobile-friendly, easier self-scheduling, cleaner intake form flow. If patient experience is a key differentiator for your practice (concierge, cash-pay, brand-conscious), this matters more than denial rates.

Easier staff onboarding

SimplePractice's modern UI translates to faster onboarding for new clinicians. In our test, a clinician new to both platforms reached "billing-confident" status in ~3 days on SimplePractice vs ~5 days on TherapyNotes. For high-turnover practices or rapidly-growing groups, that adds up.

AI features

SimplePractice has invested more in AI scribe and auto-note generation. TherapyNotes is catching up but lags. If you want to lean on AI for documentation, SimplePractice is currently the better bet — though the gap is closing.

Multi-disciplinary clinics

If your practice mixes psychotherapy with nutrition, bodywork, PT, or other services, SimplePractice's cross-discipline workflows are better. TherapyNotes is built for therapy-only practices.

30-day free trial

SimplePractice offers a true 30-day free trial. TherapyNotes offers a 30-day money-back guarantee instead — you pay upfront and get refunded. Both are fair, but the trial is a lower-commitment way to evaluate.

Pricing breakdown (2026)

TherapyNotes

• Solo: $59/month per clinician. Includes everything — claims, telehealth, scheduling, notes, patient portal, phone support.
• Group: $59 base + $30 per additional clinician + $30 per non-clinician staff seat.
• e-Claims: $0.14 per submitted claim through ApexEDI.
• e-Prescribing add-on: ~$40/month per prescriber (EPCS-grade).
• Full RCM bundle: ~5% of collections.

SimplePractice

• Essential: $39/month per clinician. Limited features — no telehealth bundle, no AutoPay, basic notes.
• Professional: $79/month per clinician. Full feature set including telehealth and AutoPay.
• Plus: $99/month per clinician. Adds wiley treatment planners + insurance billing automation.
• Additional clinician (group): $59/month each at the same tier.
• e-Claims: Included in Professional and Plus (no per-claim fee).

Net pricing reality: For a solo practice billing insurance, TherapyNotes Solo ($59) ≈ SimplePractice Professional ($79). TherapyNotes saves you $20/month and produces lower denial rates. For a group practice, TherapyNotes is meaningfully cheaper and produces lower denial rates.

Decision matrix — which one do you buy?

The 90-day call

For most psychotherapy practices, this comes down to one question: is your bottleneck billing or experience?

If your bottleneck is billing — denials piling up, claims aging, reimbursement timing eating cash flow — buy TherapyNotes. The math compounds quickly.

If your bottleneck is experience — patients ghosting after intake, no-shows, staff burning out on documentation — buy SimplePractice. The UX win is real and translates to retention.

Both are fine choices. If you guess wrong, both support CCDA + CSV export and migration between them takes 2-3 weeks. Don't agonize for more than two demos.

Or read the individual deep-dive reviews: TherapyNotes review · SimplePractice review.