AI Notetakers for Therapists: Which Tool Is Right for Your Practice? [2026]

AI therapy notes moved from experiment to routine in a year. In the APA's 2025 Practitioner Pulse Survey, the share of psychologists who had never used AI at work fell from 71% to 44%, and 67% of the same respondents said they worry about data breaches. The two numbers belong together, because the tools split into two categories with different outputs and different HIPAA paths.

The best AI notetaker for therapists depends on the job. Upheal, Blueprint, and Mentalyc draft the clinical note itself, in SOAP, DAP, BIRP, or PIE, ready for the chart. For a HIPAA compliant record of telehealth sessions, supervision, and practice meetings, a general AI assistant such as Fireflies returns a transcript and a summary and leaves the note to you. Either way, a Business Associate Agreement has to be in place before the tool touches protected health information.

This guide covers how to choose between those two categories, the six criteria that decide whether a tool belongs in a therapy practice, and the HIPAA obligations that sit on you no matter which one you pick.

What Should Therapists Look For in AI Documentation Tools?

Six criteria decide whether a tool belongs in a therapy practice. The first two are disqualifying, meaning a tool that fails them cannot touch a client session at all. The other four shape which tool suits your workflow.

HIPAA eligibility and a signed BAA

Any vendor that processes session audio, transcripts, or notes handles protected health information and becomes a business associate under HIPAA, which triggers a written Business Associate Agreement before the first recording. Upheal, Blueprint, Mentalyc, and SimplePractice each publish one. Fireflies offers HIPAA compliance with a BAA on its Enterprise plan.

Client consent before you record

Informed consent covers what gets recorded, where the audio and transcript live, how long they are kept, and how a client withdraws permission. State recording laws differ, and the APA, NASW, ACA, and AMHCA codes each set standards, so your licensing board sets your actual requirement. Blueprint and Upheal both build consent collection into the product.

The note format you bill against

SOAP, DAP, BIRP, GIRP, PIRP, SIRP, and PIE each structure a session differently, and payers recognize specific formats. Blueprint generates more than a dozen named formats including EMDR and psychiatric evaluations. Mentalyc opens BIRP, PIRP, GIRP, PIE, and SIRP at its Pro tier. Upheal limits its free plan to SOAP, DAP, and intake notes.

Where the note lands

Therapy specific tools handle this two ways, and two of them do both. Upheal and Blueprint each run as a full EHR, so the note is drafted inside the system that holds the chart. Both also work beside a system you already pay for. Upheal's Smart Fill drops a note into SimplePractice, TherapyNotes, Jane App, Owl Practice, or Healthie in one click, and Blueprint runs in the browser next to any EHR with a copy step to move the note across. Mentalyc only overlays, sending the finished note into SimplePractice, TherapyNotes, Jane App, and others the same way. General AI assistants keep transcripts and summaries in their own workspace, and moving anything into a clinical record takes Keragon, Zapier, an API, or your own hands.

Accuracy and the review step

Every AI drafted note requires therapist review before it enters the client record, and the clinician carries clinical and legal responsibility for what it says. Fireflies publishes 99% transcription accuracy for English and 95% for other languages. Blueprint's own three step workflow ends at a sign off.

What the vendor does with the audio

Check the training and retention terms in the privacy documentation and the BAA, where those terms are binding. Fireflies runs a zero data retention policy with all vendors and partners, and Fireflies.ai does not use customer data to train any AI models. Blueprint deletes audio permanently after transcription. Mentalyc deletes session audio within three days and strips identifiers from transcripts, and its Super and Team tiers delete the transcripts automatically once the note is ready. SimplePractice is the one to read closely here, since as of June 17, 2026 it may retain de identified transcripts to improve Note Taker unless you opt out.

Category 1: AI Tools Built to Write the Clinical Note

These tools record a session, analyze the conversation, and return a draft note in the format that goes into the client record. That is the whole job. A therapist whose real cost is the hour spent documenting after a full caseload should evaluate this category first.

Upheal: Best for Replacing Your EHR and Your Note Workflow Together

Upheal now calls itself an AI native EHR, and the product backs the label. Scheduling, a client portal, intake forms, secure messaging, payments, and insurance billing now sit alongside the AI notes. It also has a Chrome extension called Smart Fill that drops an Upheal note into SimplePractice, TherapyNotes, Jane App, Owl Practice, or Healthie in one click.

The free plan is the most useful thing about it. Unlimited notes in SOAP, DAP, and intake formats cost nothing, and so does HIPAA compliant telehealth calling. On the free plan those notes come from dictation, a typed summary, or a recording you upload. Paid access runs $1 per session and stops at $69 a month regardless of how many sessions you hold, which defuses the usual anxiety about per session pricing. Premium unlocks GIRP, BIRP, PIRP, SIRP, PIE, EMDR, psychiatry, and medical formats, along with a template builder drawing on more than 170 preset note sections.

Sessions come in from almost anywhere, and in 35 languages. Upheal captures its own telehealth calls, records in person sessions through a browser or the mobile app, integrates with Zoom, and accepts uploaded recordings or typed observations. It detects the spoken language on its own, handles English and Spanish mixed in one session, and writes the note in any of seven language variants including Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, and Italian. Audio deletes automatically once the note is generated, unless you choose to keep it.

Upheal holds HIPAA, PHIPA, PIPEDA, GDPR, and SOC 2 Type II compliance, and every covered entity agrees to its published BAA at signup. Students and associate level therapists get 50% off the first 12 months. The trial runs 30 days, no card, with a 30 day money back guarantee behind it.

Blueprint: Best for Keeping the EHR You Already Have

Blueprint solves the problem of already being committed. A browser extension puts it next to whatever system you use, so you pull client context in and paste the finished note into your chart without migrating anything. Its all in one EHR carries scheduling, billing, and insurance, and every new signup starts with 30 days of free sessions and no card required. Direct connectors are coming for individual accounts, and it already offers direct EHR integrations to organizations.

Blueprint charges by the session, on credits that never expire, with no monthly minimum and no contract. Its Alongside plan runs next to your current system at $0.99 per session, or $69 per seat each month for unlimited sessions. The all in one EHR costs $1.49 per session and includes scheduling, telehealth, forms, a client portal, payments, and insurance billing. Neither plan asks for a card up front. Alongside starts with five free sessions, and the all in one EHR comes with a 30 day trial. The AI is the same either way, and the per session model suits a caseload that changes from month to month.

Blueprint names 13 built in formats: Intake, SOAP, BIRP, DAP, GIRP, EMDR, SIRP, PIE, PIRP, case management, couples, psychiatric initial evaluation, and psychiatric follow up, plus custom formats built for an organization. Couples work gets a detail nobody else publishes. Blueprint produces three separate notes from one session, one for each partner and a third covering relational dynamics, so you can decide which to bill against.

The security posture holds up. AES 256 encryption in transit and at rest, SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA and PHIPA compliance, a published BAA, and permanent deletion of audio once transcription finishes. Blueprint also assists with collecting client consent, which few tools in either category bother to do.

Mentalyc: Best for Format Range and Supervision Notes

Mentalyc is the only one of these four that writes a note for the supervision session itself, which matters if you supervise associates or sit on the other side of that relationship. Upheal added supervisor co-signing on progress notes in August 2026, which is a different thing. Supervision notes arrive at the Pro tier, and supervisees get free read access on any plan. Group therapy documentation, with a separate note for each member, comes at the Super tier.

Pricing runs on note credits. Each plan buys a fixed number of notes a month: 40 on Mini at $14.99 billed annually, 100 on Basic at $29.99, 160 on Pro at $59.99, and 330 on Super at $99.99. Team plans lift the cap under a fair usage policy at $49.99 per seat per month billed annually, a new team rate marked down from $99.99. Forty notes covers roughly 10 clients a week, so the entry tier fits a part time caseload and not much beyond it.

SOAP, DAP, and intake notes come on every plan. BIRP, PIRP, GIRP, PIE, and SIRP open at Pro, along with more than 100 custom templates, EMDR and play therapy modalities, couples and family client types, and automatically computed CPT codes. Session length caps at 75 minutes on the two lower tiers and 130 minutes above them, worth checking against a 90 minute couples or EMDR session.

Mentalyc also leaves your EHR where it is. A Chrome extension sends a finished note into SimplePractice, TherapyNotes, Jane App, ICANotes, TheraNest, or Valant.

Privacy defaults are tight. Mentalyc captures audio only, holds the recording for up to three days before deleting it automatically, and stores transcripts with real identifiers stripped out. A BAA and HIPAA agreement come with every plan, including the cheapest, alongside SOC 2 Type 2 and PHIPA compliance. The trial runs 14 days with full Pro access and 15 notes, no card required.

SimplePractice Note Taker: Best for Therapists Already on SimplePractice

SimplePractice runs a practice management platform with 250,000 practitioners on it, and by its own count those practitioners saw 10.4 million clients in 2025. AI notes arrived as an add on called Note Taker, so the real question for most therapists here is arithmetic.

Note Taker costs $35 a month on top of a plan, and plans start at $49 for Starter, $79 for Essential, and $99 for Plus. The floor for AI notes on SimplePractice is therefore $84 a month. Care Aide bundles Note Taker with Session Sidekick, a treatment planner in beta, and client summaries for $59 a month for the account owner and $49 for each additional clinician, which puts that path at $108. Both add ons run free for 30 days.

Note Taker records live only inside SimplePractice Telehealth, and in person through the SimplePractice for Clinicians app. A session held on Zoom gets a note only if you upload the recording afterward or dictate a summary. And since June 17, 2026, SimplePractice may keep a de-identified copy of the transcript to improve Note Taker once the review window closesTherapists who enabled Note Taker before that date are opted out by default, therapists who enable it after are opted in, and either setting can be changed at the clinician, client, or session level. SimplePractice says the retained text refines the instructions given to the model and never trains the model itself. Note Taker transcribes in 14 languages including Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese. SimplePractice also carries HITRUST certification on top of HIPAA and security compliance.

That gives SimplePractice the highest entry cost for AI notes among these four. For a therapist already running scheduling, billing, insurance, and records inside it, that can still be the right call.

Category 2: HIPAA Compliant AI Notetakers for Telehealth, Supervision, and Practice Meetings

These tools join a call, transcribe it, and return a searchable transcript with an AI summary. The output is reference material. You read it while writing the clinical note, and the note stays yours.

That makes the category useful in four situations a therapy practice actually has. Telehealth sessions where you want an accurate record of what was said alongside the note you write. Group supervision, where a two hour discussion covering six cases is hard to reconstruct from memory. Team meetings inside a group practice, covering caseload reviews, intake assignments, and policy decisions. And administrative conversations that carry protected health information without being clinical sessions.

Fireflies: Best for HIPAA Compliant Telehealth Transcription and Group Practice Meetings

Fireflies is the #1 AI Assistant for meetings, email, Slack, CRM, and work, and inside a therapy practice its strongest use is everything a practice records besides the clinical note. The AI Notetaker joins Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams calls, transcribes what is said, and returns AI meeting notes with time stamped sections and action items. Accuracy runs 99% for English and 95% for other languages. Transcription covers more than 100 languages, which matters when a client or supervisee is more precise in a language other than English. Fireflies for Healthcare, launched in September 2025 and included on the Enterprise plan, adds note formats in SOAP, DAP, BIRP, GIRP, and PIRP, 15 healthcare AI Skills, a web recorder for in person and telehealth sessions, and EHR sync through Keragon. It names therapists as one of its three audiences.

Fireflies HIPAA compliance sits on the Enterprise plan, arrives with a Business Associate Agreement, and is provisioned on request. The BAA takes effect only once Private Storage is switched on, and Private Storage is itself an Enterprise feature, so the full path is Enterprise plan, signed BAA, and Private Storage together. The free plan carries no HIPAA compliance, and neither does Pro or Business. Enterprise runs $39 per seat per month billed annually, which makes it a group practice or organizational purchase more often than a solo one.

On data handling, Fireflies runs a zero day retention policy with all vendors and partners, and Fireflies.ai does not use customer data to train any AI models. That policy reaches the vendors too. For protected health information, Fireflies has signed BAAs with its vendors that bar them from using ePHI for AI training or keeping it on their servers. Encryption is 256 bit AES at rest and TLS in transit. SOC 2 Type II and GDPR apply on every tier, the free one included.

Three Enterprise controls map onto HIPAA obligations directly, and they are the reason this is the only tier worth considering for clinical use. Transcript and Summary Only Mode discards the audio and video and keeps the text, which speaks directly to the minimum necessary standard. With custom data retention, how long anything is kept follows your practice policy. Private Storage holds your organization's data in dedicated cloud storage, and it is also the switch the BAA depends on.

For group supervision, the recording limit matters. Enterprise allows four hour meetings, enough for a long supervision block. AskFred searches everything captured, so a question such as which sessions covered a safety plan returns answers drawn from months of transcripts. Fireflies carries more than 100 integrations, and Keragon, Zapier, or the API can push transcripts and notes toward an EHR system, though that takes configuration work. Fireflies for Healthcare covers the wider clinical context.

What comes back is a transcript and a summary, and on the healthcare offering that summary can take SOAP, DAP, or BIRP shape. The clinical note that enters the record is still yours to write, and the transcript sits behind it as the record of what was said.

HIPAA Requirements for AI Tools in Therapy Practice

A vendor that records a session, transcribes it, or drafts a note from the audio is creating, receiving, and storing protected health information on your behalf. Under HIPAA that makes the vendor your business associate. HHS gives the example directly. A vendor whose app provides transcription services to a physician is a business associate, and so is a cloud provider that processes or stores electronic PHI. The therapist stays the covered entity, and the therapist stays responsible for what enters the chart.

The tool entries earlier in this article tell you what each vendor offers. HIPAA asks four things of you regardless of which one you pick.

Business Associate Agreement

HIPAA lets a covered entity hand PHI to a business associate only after getting written assurance that the vendor will safeguard it. That written assurance is the Business Associate Agreement. Using a cloud or AI vendor to process or store electronic PHI without one is a violation of the HIPAA Rules, in HHS's own words. The Office for Civil Rights points to its own enforcement on the point. Oregon Health & Science University paid $2.7 million in July 2016 to settle findings that included storing records for more than 3,000 people on a cloud server with no agreement in place.

The BAA has to reach down the chain too. HHS requires a business associate to sign its own BAA with any subcontractor that touches the PHI, which is why Fireflies' signed agreements with its transcription and AI vendors matter and why it's worth asking any tool who sits behind it.

A page that says "HIPAA compliant" is a marketing claim. The signed agreement is the compliance. Upheal, Blueprint, and Mentalyc each bind every account to a BAA at signup, and SimplePractice publishes one for the whole platform. Fireflies works differently. Its BAA takes effect only on the Enterprise plan with Private Storage switched on. Private Storage is enabled from Settings, the BAA is signed separately, and the Security Checklist in Team Settings shows when both are complete. Fireflies' own setup guide states that a plan downgrade or a storage change disables HIPAA compliance immediately.

Data storage and retention

HIPAA sets no fixed retention period for session audio or transcripts. It does require you to know where your ePHI is, who can reach it, how long it stays, and what the vendor may do with it, and it expects you to understand the vendor's environment well enough to run your own risk analysis. Those answers belong in the BAA and the privacy documentation, and the homepage version is usually shorter than the real one.

Four questions cover it. Is the audio stored after transcription, or deleted? How long do the transcript and summary stay? Does the vendor train on session content? Do the vendor's own subprocessors keep a copy?

Across the five tools here, the answers run from Blueprint's permanent audio deletion after transcription and Fireflies' zero day retention policy with all vendors and partners, through Mentalyc's three day audio window and Upheal's default deletion once the note exists, to SimplePractice, which creates no recording at all but may now keep de identified transcripts for product improvement unless you opt out. One clause deserves a close read in any BAA. Blueprint's privacy page says client data never trains AI models, and its BAA permits de identified data for analytics and product development. Both are true, and only one of them is in the contract.

Minimum necessary standard

The Privacy Rule requires reasonable efforts to limit uses, disclosures, and requests for PHI to the minimum needed for the purpose. The standard does not apply to disclosures between providers for treatment, but the vendor is not your treatment partner, so it applies in full to what you send an AI tool and what the tool keeps. Business associates carry direct liability for it as well, listed by HHS among the 10 violations it can enforce against them.

The practical question is how much of the session needs to survive once the note exists. A signed progress note rarely needs the raw audio kept behind it. A full transcript is useful for supervision or for checking what was said, and it is also more PHI than a summary. Tools that delete audio by default, which is Blueprint, Upheal, and Mentalyc among the therapy specific options, shrink the stored recording without settling how long the transcript lives. On Fireflies Enterprise, Transcript and Summary Only Mode discards audio and video and keeps the text, and custom data retention sets how long the text stays. Write the practice's retention rule first, then choose the vendor setting that matches it.

Client notice

HIPAA requires most providers to give clients a Notice of Privacy Practices written in plain language, covering how the practice uses and discloses PHI, the client's rights, the practice's legal duties, and whom to contact. Every use or disclosure for treatment, payment, or operations has to be consistent with that notice, and a practice that makes a material change to its privacy practices has to revise the notice promptly, post the new version, make it available on request, and give it to new clients at first service.

HHS does not define which changes count as material. A practice that begins sending session audio to a new vendor has changed where PHI is created and stored, and the safe assumption is that the notice should say so. At minimum that means naming the class of vendor, what it produces, where the output lives and for how long, and that the vendor is bound by a BAA.

Two distinctions matter here. HIPAA itself does not require client consent to use PHI for treatment, payment, or operations. Consent to record a session is a separate obligation that comes from state recording law and from the professional codes, and it is the therapist's to satisfy before the first recorded session. Blueprint and Upheal build consent collection into the product, and Mentalyc and SimplePractice publish consent templates, which helps with the paperwork and does not replace a licensing board's rules.

HIPAA also gives extra protection to psychotherapy notes, the therapist's own process notes kept apart from the medical record. Except for the originating therapist’s own use in treatment, using psychotherapy notes for treatment, payment, or operations requires the client's authorization under 45 CFR 164.508(a)(2). Where an AI transcript or summary sits under that definition is a question for counsel, and it is worth asking before the first session is recorded.

Comparison: Therapy Specific Tools vs. HIPAA Compliant AI Notetakers

Therapy specific tools write the clinical note and Fireflies documents everything around it. This table compares the two categories across the capabilities that decide the purchase, with the therapy specific column covering Upheal, Blueprint, Mentalyc, and SimplePractice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can therapists use AI to write session notes?

Therapists can use AI to write session notes, provided the therapist reviews and approves every note before it enters the client record. Therapy specific tools such as Upheal, Blueprint, and Mentalyc draft progress notes, SOAP notes, and DAP notes from session audio. The clinician carries clinical and legal responsibility for accuracy regardless of what produced the draft. Licensing boards set documentation requirements, so confirm with yours that an AI drafted, clinician approved note satisfies them.

Do I need client consent to record therapy sessions with AI?

You do need client consent to record therapy sessions with AI, and it should be informed consent obtained before the first recording. The conversation should cover what is recorded, where the audio and transcript are stored, how long they are kept, and how a client withdraws permission. Requirements vary by state recording law, by HIPAA, and by professional code, including the APA, NASW, ACA, and AMHCA standards. Verify your obligations with your licensing board before deploying any recording tool. Blueprint and Upheal both build consent collection into the product.

What is the difference between an AI therapy note tool and an AI notetaker?

The difference between an AI therapy note tool and an AI notetaker is what each hands back. Therapy specific note tools such as Upheal, Blueprint, and Mentalyc produce structured clinical documentation in SOAP, DAP, BIRP, and PIE formats, built for the client record and for insurance billing. General AI notetakers such as Fireflies produce transcripts and summaries of calls and meetings. Fireflies can format a note as SOAP, DAP, or BIRP on its healthcare offering but builds no CPT code, risk flag, or supervision note around it, and it offers HIPAA compliance with a BAA on Enterprise for telehealth transcription, group supervision, and practice meetings.

Is Fireflies HIPAA compliant for therapy sessions?

Fireflies is HIPAA compliant for therapy sessions on its Enterprise plan, which includes a Business Associate Agreement, is provisioned on request, and requires Private Storage for the BAA to take effect. The free, Pro, and Business plans carry no HIPAA compliance. Fireflies runs a zero day retention policy with all vendors and partners, and Fireflies.ai does not use customer data to train any AI models. Fireflies returns transcripts and summaries you use as reference material while writing clinical documentation, so it complements a therapy specific note tool.

What is the best free AI tool for therapy notes?

The best free AI tool for therapy notes is Upheal, whose free plan generates unlimited notes in SOAP, DAP, and intake formats and includes HIPAA compliant telehealth calling. Blueprint gives every new signup five free sessions on its alongside plan, then charges $0.99 per session. Mentalyc runs a 14 day trial with 15 notes and no card required. Fireflies has a free plan with 800 minutes of storage per seat and three AI summaries a month, though HIPAA compliance requires Enterprise. Any therapist handling protected health information needs a plan that comes with a BAA.

Is it ethical for therapists to use AI for session notes?

Whether it is ethical for therapists to use AI for session notes turns on consent, review, and disclosure, and the APA, NASW, ACA, and AMHCA codes each speak to those conditions without settling the question outright. The expectations that recur across professional guidance are informed client consent, therapist review and approval of every AI drafted note, and accurate representation of how session data is handled. This article offers no ethical guidance. Consult your licensing board and your ethics committee before adopting any AI tool in clinical work.

How accurate are AI generated therapy notes?

AI generated therapy notes are accurate enough to draft from and never accurate enough to file unread. Fireflies publishes 99% transcription accuracy for English and 95% for other languages, and transcript accuracy is a separate question from the accuracy of clinical reasoning in a note. Every tool covered here ends its workflow at a clinician sign off. The therapist owns the accuracy of what enters the record.