Summary
Abridge is the best enterprise ambient scribe there is. Best in KLAS two years running, 300 or more health systems, the deepest Epic integration anyone has built.1 If you are a health system on Epic with an IT function, buy it.
It is also roughly $2,500 a clinician a year with a three to six month procurement and no published price. For a four-doctor practice that is not a purchase, it is a project.
You can be running this week. No procurement, no sales cycle, no minimum term. Fourteen days free, then one published price.
Book a demo| What you get | Abridge | WA\ |
|---|---|---|
| The note drafted from the room | Yes, best in class | Yes |
| Epic integration depth | Deepest in the category | Native, less deep |
| A briefing before the patient sits down | Not offered | Yes, built from the chart |
| ICD-10 coding attached to the decision | Yes | Yes, drafted against MDM |
| The phone, email and WhatsApp answered | Not offered | Yes, same record |
| Eligibility checked at booking | Not offered | Yes |
| Time to first note | Three to six month procurement | Same day |
| Published price | Not published11Abridge is reported at approximately $2,500 per clinician per year with procurement cycles of three to six months. Abridge does not publish pricing, so this is a third-party estimate. Abridge holds Best in KLAS for ambient AI in 2025 and 2026 and reports 300 or more health systems. | See pricing |
What Abridge is good at
Everything about the note, and the Epic integration in particular. Best in KLAS in 2025 and 2026 is not marketing, it is a customer survey, and 300 or more health systems is a real deployment record. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
Where the friction is
The procurement. Three to six months and roughly $2,500 a clinician a year is proportionate for a 6,000-clinician rollout and impossible for a small practice. There is no published price and no self-serve signup, so you cannot compare it against anything without a discovery call.
Abridge is also named in litigation. A California patient sued Sharp HealthCare in January 2026 alleging his appointment was recorded without consent.33A California patient sued Sharp HealthCare in January 2026 alleging an appointment was recorded by Abridge without consent. The filing seeks class-action status and the allegations are untested. See our guide to consent. The allegations are untested and the consent duty sits with the health system rather than the vendor. The same exposure applies to every product in this category, ours included.
What the evidence says
Abridge has no randomised trial. Neither do we. Nabla does, cutting note-writing time 9.5 percent, about 41 seconds, across roughly 72,000 encounters, and neither arm reduced after-hours record time.22Lukac PJ, Turner W, Vangala S, et al. Ambient AI Scribes in Clinical Practice, A Randomized Trial. NEJM AI 2025;2(12). 238 physicians, 14 specialties, approximately 72,000 encounters. Best in KLAS measures customer satisfaction, which is a different and also valuable thing.
The half nobody compares
Abridge covers the consultation. It does not answer your phone, book, take a deposit, check eligibility or backfill a cancellation.
For a health system that is a procurement question, since somebody else owns the front desk. For a practice it is the same person. About 27 percent of denials are eligibility errors caught before the patient arrives or not at all, and no amount of Epic depth reaches one of them.
The number this comparison misses
A $2,500 subscription buys the best note in the category and reaches none of what follows. From 2026 your E/M level turns on Medical Decision Making, so the note is the evidence for the code and the code is the money.55From 2026, Medical Decision Making is the primary basis for E/M level selection. AAPC reports up to 19 percent of E/M visits undercoded at roughly $37 each. Reported Medicare Advantage downcoding runs $42 to $74 per visit and $28,000 to $74,000 per family physician per year. Up to 19 percent of E/M visits are undercoded at roughly $37 each, and Medicare Advantage downcoding takes $42 to $74 off a visit and a reported $28,000 to $74,000 a physician a year, without ever appearing as a denial.
Abridge sells into health systems with revenue integrity teams, so the argument lands differently there. In a practice, nobody is running that report and the money leaves quietly.
Price
Abridge does not publish. The $2,500 figure is a third-party estimate and may be wrong. We publish on one page, and you can check ours in four seconds.
Which one
Choose Abridge if
- You are a health system on Epic with a procurement function and an IT team.
- You want the deepest Epic write-back available and will pay for it.
- Best in KLAS and 300 health systems is the assurance you need.
Choose WA\ if
- You are a practice rather than a system, and a six month procurement is not available to you.
- Your evening is letters, codes and callbacks rather than notes.
- You want the front desk and the consultation on one record.
What we are not claiming
We do not have Best in KLAS and Abridge does, twice. We do not have 300 health systems or their Epic depth. If you are an enterprise Epic buyer, Abridge is the better purchase and we would tell you so in the room.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Abridge cost?
Abridge does not publish pricing. Independent estimates place the entry point near 2,500 dollars per clinician per year, with fully Epic-integrated deployments reported considerably higher, and procurement typically running three to six months. There is no self-serve signup and no free trial for individual clinicians. Confirm any figure directly with Abridge. WA\ publishes its price on its pricing page, with a 14 day free trial and no minimum term.
Can a small practice buy Abridge?
In practice, rarely. Abridge sells enterprise contracts to health systems, of which more than 300 are live including Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins and Kaiser Permanente, and its model assumes an IT function that can carry a deep Epic integration. That is a reasonable choice for the company and a wall for an independent clinic. If nobody in your building has the word procurement in their job title, you are not the buyer Abridge was built for.
Should I buy Abridge or WA\?
They are sold to different buyers, so the answer depends entirely on which one you are. Abridge has been named Best in KLAS for Ambient AI two years running and has the deepest Epic integration on the market, and for a health system running Epic with an IT function behind it, Abridge is the right purchase. It also has no self-serve signup, no free trial, no published price, and a procurement cycle of three to six months. If nobody in your building has the word procurement in their job title, the best product in the category is one you cannot buy. WA\ is published, live this week, and it covers the letters, the coding, the front desk and the patient record rather than the note alone. For a private clinic we are the better answer, and it is not close.
Live this week, not next quarter.
Thirty minutes and you will see the consult, the front desk and the patient record running as one system.
About this article. Written and published by WA\, a competitor of Abridge, and we have said where Abridge is the better purchase. Abridge does not publish pricing so figures quoted are third-party estimates. The Sharp HealthCare litigation is unresolved and its allegations untested, and the consent duty at issue rests with the deploying organisation rather than the vendor. The randomised trial cited is independent of us, and Nabla, not WA\, holds the only randomised win in this category. Undercoding and downcoding figures are third-party RCM analysis, not our data. WA\ has no peer-reviewed clinical trials published to date and does not claim any. All names are marks belonging to their owners.