Reviewed April 2026, with 2026 pricing changes baked in: primary care has moved decisively to AI scribes for routine documentation, and the cost gap versus human scribes has widened to roughly 20:1 at the entry tier. Solo and small primary care practices can run a chart-ready AI scribe for $39 to $150 per provider per month. Enterprise systems on Epic still pay for deep-embed platforms like Nuance DAX Copilot and Abridge. We tested nine medical scribe services against the same primary-care rubric (high visit volume, broad chart breadth, less coding complexity than specialty) and ranked them below.
The full ranking
- Starting price
- $39/mo per provider (Starter, billed annually)
- Top tier
- Premier $119/mo (or $104/mo annual)
- BAA
- Yes; HIPAA compliant
Key features
- AI ambient scribe that captures the visit in real time
- Browser-based EHR push (one-click to any web EHR)
- ICD-10 coding suggestions and referral letters on Premier
- Group/clinic plan with admin dashboard, SSO, account manager
- Telehealth-ready with Zoom integration
Pricing details
| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|
| Starter | $39/mo per provider (annual) | Trying out AI scribing on a single panel |
| Core | $79/mo per provider | Solo PCPs with unlimited notes |
| Premier | $119/mo (or $104/mo annual) | Practices that want EHR push + ICD-10 coding |
Best for: Solo and small primary care groups (2-50 clinicians) wanting a self-serve, low-IT-overhead AI scribe with affordable per-provider pricing.
Notable pro: Lowest entry price among well-reviewed AI scribes, with strong primary care SOAP note quality at chart-ready level out of the box.
Notable con: EHR push is browser auto-fill rather than native API write-back, and unlimited notes plus EHR push require the higher tiers.
Why it ranks #1 for primary care: the per-visit economics work for the panel sizes most primary care offices actually run. A family medicine doc seeing 20-25 patients a day on Core pricing pays under $1,000 per year for unlimited chart-ready notes, versus roughly $35,000 a year for an on-site human scribe. The browser push extension means you can deploy on athenahealth, Epic, eClinicalWorks, NextGen, or any web-based EHR without an integration project. The Premier tier adds ICD-10 suggestions and patient referral letters, which matter more in primary care than most specialty settings because of the volume and breadth of referrals PCPs generate.
Get Freed AI
- Starting price
- Free tier ($0/mo, capped Pro Actions)
- Clinician plan
- $150/user/mo (billed yearly)
- BAA
- Yes; org-wide BAA on Enterprise
Key features
- AI ambient scribe with deep template customization
- Push-to-chart integrations: athenahealth Marketplace, Epic SmartSections, eClinicalWorks via Vim
- Heidi Evidence — citation-backed clinical decision support, new in 2026
- Heidi Comms for AI patient communications, also new in 2026
- SSO and multi-team management on Enterprise
Best for: Primary care practices that already use athenahealth, Epic, or eCW and want push-to-chart with custom templates.
Notable pro: Generous free tier for trial, plus native marketplace integrations with three of the top primary care EHRs covered in one tool.
Notable con: Clinician plan at $150/mo is more expensive than Freed equivalent, and operator reports surface app reliability issues and slow support response.
Heidi earns the second slot because it has the best mid-tier marketplace footprint of any AI scribe in the category. Most AI vendors integrate with one EHR well; Heidi is one of the few with first-class push-to-chart in athenahealth, Epic SmartSections, and eClinicalWorks (via Vim). For a primary care group running mixed EHRs across locations, that breadth matters. The free tier is genuinely useful for trial: capped Pro Actions, but enough for a clinician to test note quality on a half-day of visits before committing. Where Heidi loses ground for primary care: complex multi-problem visits, the bread-and-butter of internal medicine, where reviews report weaker accuracy than DAX or DeepScribe.
Get Heidi Health
- Starting price
- $149/user/mo flat (or $1.25 per visit alternative)
- Free trial
- Yes
- BAA
- Yes; HIPAA
Key features
- Native eClinicalWorks integration, built by eCW directly
- AI ambient scribe with custom templates and fields
- iOS, Android, and iPad mobile app support
- Free trial available
- Used by 100k+ clinicians per the vendor's own claim
Best for: Primary care and family medicine practices already on eClinicalWorks who want first-party AI scribe integration.
Notable pro: Best-in-class eClinicalWorks integration because it's first-party — affordable flat $149/mo with no long-term commitment.
Notable con: Tied closely to the eCW ecosystem, so less compelling for non-eCW shops; the $149 price is quoted as limited-time and renewal pricing isn't published.
If your primary care practice runs on eClinicalWorks (and a meaningful share of independent PC shops do), Sunoh is the path of least resistance. eCW built it, so it lives inside the eCW workflow rather than bolting on through a marketplace. The $1.25-per-visit option is interesting for low-volume providers (locums, part-time clinicians) who'd struggle to justify a flat $149/mo. The flip side: if you're considering switching off eCW or running multi-EHR, Sunoh becomes a sunk-cost anchor. Verify renewal pricing in writing before committing, since the $149 promotional rate has been live long enough that operators are watching for the post-promo number.
Get Sunoh.ai
- Starting price
- $299-$399+ per provider/mo
- Enterprise
- Custom pricing
- BAA
- Yes
Key features
- Ambient documentation plus voice-driven dictation in one product
- Deep API integrations with Epic, Cerner, athenahealth, MEDITECH, eClinicalWorks
- ICD-10 and HCC coding assistance
- Clinical Q&A — ask patient-specific chart questions in natural language
- Order staging from conversation (prescriptions, labs)
Best for: Mid-to-large primary care groups wanting voice-first ambient + dictation with chart Q&A and order staging.
Notable pro: Combines voice command + ambient in one product, with broad EHR integration including all the top primary care platforms; order staging cuts post-visit clicks meaningfully.
Notable con: Most expensive ambient scribe in the comparable tier, and there's no self-serve sign-up — every deployment goes through the enterprise sales cycle.
Suki's case for primary care is the order staging, a feature most pure-ambient scribes don't have. In a typical PCP visit, the clinician dictates "let's add lisinopril 10 milligrams daily and refill metformin," and Suki stages those orders so all the doctor has to do post-visit is co-sign. For a practice running 25 visits a day, that's a meaningful click reduction across labs, prescriptions, and referrals. The chart Q&A is similarly useful in primary care because the chart is broad: "what was her last A1c trend?" is a question PCPs ask more often than specialists. The pricing is the catch: at $299-$399 per provider per month, Suki costs roughly 3-4x what Freed Premier costs, and a single primary care doc has to value the order-staging time savings highly to justify it.
Get Suki AI
- Starting price
- $350-$500 per provider/mo (estimated)
- Sales motion
- Enterprise quote only
- BAA
- Yes; enterprise security
Key features
- Real-time ambient transcription with 98%+ medical-term accuracy
- EHR integrations: Epic, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, AdvancedMD, drchrono, ModMed, NextGen, iKnowMed, OnciEMR
- 98.8 KLAS spotlight score — highest in the ambient AI scribe category
- Specialty-tuned templates (oncology, cardiology, GI, urology, ortho, neuro)
- Real-time chart write-back
Best for: Multi-specialty groups and health systems that include primary care and need broad EHR coverage plus high KLAS-rated accuracy.
Notable pro: Strongest KLAS rating in the ambient AI scribe category, plus the broadest EHR integration list including drchrono and ModMed.
Notable con: No public pricing or self-serve, no free trial, and the specialty tuning prioritizes complex specialties over primary care simplicity.
DeepScribe is a strong product, but it's slightly mis-targeted for pure primary care. The platform was built up around complex specialty workflows (oncology coding, cardiology procedure documentation, GI endoscopy notes) and the KLAS score reflects that depth. For a multi-specialty group where primary care sits alongside cardiology and GI, DeepScribe is a reasonable single-vendor choice. For a stand-alone family medicine practice, it's overkill at the price point. Worth a demo if you're already evaluating it for the specialty side of a multi-specialty group; skip it if you only need a primary care scribe.
Get DeepScribe
- Starting price
- $300/user/mo (Augmedix Go basic)
- Top tier
- Up to $700+/user/mo (Full Service hybrid)
- BAA
- Yes; HIPAA
Key features
- Three tiers: Go (pure AI), Assist (AI + human review with 1hr SLA), Full Service (dedicated documentation specialist)
- Bidirectional FHIR-based athenahealth integration with sectioned write-back
- Epic, Cerner, MEDITECH, athenahealth integrations
- Acquired by Commure in October 2024 — now part of the Athelas/Commure stack
- 35+ specialties supported including primary care
Best for: Practices wanting hybrid AI+human scribe accuracy on athenahealth or Epic, with full pre/during/post-visit support.
Notable pro: Hybrid model yields high reliability versus pure-AI, and the bidirectional sectioned write-back to athenahealth is a real workflow advantage.
Notable con: Premium pricing especially for Full Service tier, with minimum scribe team contracts in some configurations and post-acquisition product roadmap uncertainty.
Augmedix is the right answer for a specific primary care profile: a mid-sized group on athenahealth or Epic that wants the human-scribe accuracy floor without the full human-scribe cost. Augmedix Assist (AI + human review with one-hour SLA) lands in the middle, where you pay more than pure AI but get a human catching the edge cases. The 2024 Commure acquisition added some uncertainty to the roadmap; ask about product direction in any sales conversation. The bidirectional FHIR integration with athenahealth is genuinely differentiated for athena shops, since most AI scribes write back as a single block, and Augmedix sections it properly.
Get Augmedix
- Starting price
- $369-$830+ per provider/mo
- Enterprise scale
- Often $150-$300/mo at volume + implementation fees, 12-month minimum
- BAA
- Yes; Microsoft enterprise security
Key features
- Ambient AI documentation fully embedded in the Epic workflow
- Now part of Microsoft Dragon Copilot (merged with Dragon Medical One in March 2025)
- Multi-EHR support: Epic deepest; athenahealth, MEDITECH via middleware
- Voice command + ambient + documentation in a unified product
- Specialty-tuned templates including primary care
Best for: Large Epic-based health systems and IDNs wanting Microsoft-backed ambient + dictation with the deepest Epic embedment available.
Notable pro: Most mature Epic embed of any ambient scribe, with Microsoft enterprise procurement, security posture, and combined dictation + ambient under one license.
Notable con: Highest price tier, minimum 12-month contracts, implementation fees on top of subscription, and athena/MEDITECH require additional configuration.
For a large health system running primary care on Epic, DAX Copilot is hard to beat on integration depth, but it's overkill for nearly any independent primary care practice. The pricing math only works at scale, where enterprise contracts compress per-provider rates to the $150-$300 range. Below 50 providers, you're paying premium pricing without amortizing the implementation overhead. The March 2025 merger with Dragon Medical One simplified the Microsoft healthcare AI lineup: clinicians who used to license dictation and ambient separately now get both in one product. If your IDN already runs Dragon Medical One, the DAX Copilot upgrade path is the natural one.
Get Nuance DAX Copilot
- Starting price
- Enterprise quote (~$2,500/clinician/year baseline)
- Full deployment
- $250-$800 per provider/mo depending on integration depth
- BAA
- Yes; enterprise security
Key features
- Ambient AI scribe with deep native Epic integration
- Real-time prior authorization via Availity partnership (launched January 2026)
- Nursing documentation expansion
- Revenue cycle intelligence and coding
- Health-system-grade deployment with dedicated implementation
Best for: Large health systems and academic centers running Epic that want the deepest native ambient integration and RCM intelligence.
Notable pro: Among the deepest Epic-native ambient integrations in the market, strong KLAS recognition, and expanding into prior auth and nursing workflows.
Notable con: Enterprise-only sales motion with no self-serve for solo PCPs, no public pricing, and overkill for solo or small primary care practices.
Abridge ranks lower for this niche specifically because it's not built for solo PCPs. The product is excellent: the January 2026 Availity prior auth integration is a genuine workflow win, and the nursing documentation expansion makes Abridge one of the few platforms going beyond physician documentation into the broader clinical team. But if you're a five-doc family medicine office, you'll never get a sales meeting with Abridge, and you wouldn't want to pay enterprise rates if you did. For an academic primary care residency program embedded in a Epic-shop AMC, Abridge is a top-three contender.
Get Abridge
- Starting price
- On-site scribes from ~$25/hr
- Remote/telescribe
- ~20-30% less than on-site
- BAA
- Yes; HIPAA training program
Key features
- Largest US human medical scribe company, founded 2004 with 3,000+ partners
- On-site and remote (telescribe) options
- EHR-agnostic — scribes trained on Epic, Cerner, athenahealth, eCW, NextGen, Allscripts
- Speke (their AI ambient product) for hybrid AI+human workflows
- All 50 states coverage
Best for: Practices and emergency departments wanting traditional human scribe staffing with optional AI augmentation; high-volume EDs and large groups.
Notable pro: Highest reliability — humans handle ambiguity and edge cases that trip up AI, plus EHR-agnostic trained scribes who work in any system.
Notable con: Far more expensive than AI-only options at scale ($32-42k/yr per provider equivalent), with staffing/turnover overhead and AI competitors gaining share in primary care.
ScribeAmerica is the legacy market leader, and increasingly that's the problem. The economics that made human scribes attractive in 2018 don't hold in 2026 for primary care: AI is good enough at routine documentation to displace the volume work, and at $25 per hour, on-site human scribes are roughly 20-30x the per-month cost of a Freed AI Premier seat. The defensible use case for ScribeAmerica is high-acuity, high-volume settings (emergency departments, hospitalist services, complex chronic-care primary care panels) where edge cases benefit from human judgment. For routine ambulatory primary care, the value proposition has shifted decisively toward AI.
Get ScribeAmerica
Frequently asked questions
How much does a medical scribe service cost for a primary care office in 2026?
AI-only scribes for primary care run $39 to $150 per provider per month at the self-serve tier (Freed AI Starter $39/mo, Sunoh $149/mo flat, Heidi Clinician $150/mo). Mid-market AI tools like Suki ($299-$399/mo) and DeepScribe ($350-$500/mo) sit in the middle. Enterprise options like Nuance DAX Copilot ($369-$830/mo) and Abridge (estimated $250-$800/mo) carry implementation fees and 12-month minimums. Human scribes via ScribeAmerica run roughly $32,000-$42,000 per provider per year, six to ten times the cost of a self-serve AI tool.
Is an AI medical scribe accurate enough for primary care visits?
For routine primary care visits (annual physicals, follow-ups, single-problem acute visits), AI scribes from Freed AI, Heidi, and Sunoh produce chart-ready SOAP notes with minimal editing. DeepScribe reports 98%+ medical-term transcription accuracy and holds the highest KLAS spotlight score in the category at 98.8. Where AI scribes still struggle: dense multi-problem visits with five or more active issues, heavy psychiatric content, and visits with significant patient interruption or background noise. For those edge cases, a hybrid model like Augmedix Assist (AI plus human review with a one-hour SLA) closes the gap.
Which medical scribe integrates best with my EHR?
EHR alignment is the single biggest selection driver in primary care. eClinicalWorks shops should look first at Sunoh.ai, which is built by eCW and offers first-party integration. Epic-based primary care groups have the deepest options in Nuance DAX Copilot (most mature Epic embed) and Abridge (deep native Epic integration plus prior auth via Availity). Athenahealth users get bidirectional sectioned write-back from Augmedix and marketplace integration from Heidi. For browser-based EHRs without a native partner, Freed AI's one-click push extension works with any web EHR.
Should a solo or small primary care practice still hire a human scribe?
Rarely worth it in 2026 unless you have a specific reason: high-acuity multi-problem panels, heavy team-based care models, or local labor economics that favor a hired scribe over software. The math is hard to justify. ScribeAmerica on-site coverage at roughly $25 per hour runs $32,000-$42,000 per provider per year, while Freed AI Premier costs about $1,250 to $1,400 per year. AI scribes also remove the staffing and turnover overhead that comes with human scribe programs. The exception is hybrid: Augmedix Full Service or ScribeAmerica's Speke product give you AI speed with a human safety net for ambiguous content.
How long does it take to onboard an AI medical scribe?
Self-serve tools (Freed AI, Heidi, Sunoh) are usable on day one. Sign up, sign the BAA, configure templates, start dictating in your next visit. Full proficiency with custom templates and EHR push typically takes one to two weeks. Mid-market AI (Suki, DeepScribe) requires a sales call and a one to four week deployment, including EHR integration setup. Enterprise platforms like Nuance DAX Copilot and Abridge involve a multi-month implementation with IT, security review, EHR integration, and clinician training. Plan on 60 to 120 days for a full health-system rollout.