Summary
Six questions, in this order. Will they sign a BAA. Are you legally allowed to record where you practise. Does it support your EHR by name, today. Which tier are the letters and coding on. What happens to the audio. And what does your evening actually consist of.
The last one decides whether any of this helps. The only randomised trial found the best product saved about 41 seconds a note and none reduced after-hours work.2 If your evening is letters and results, a faster note is not your purchase.
Letters, coding, cited answers and the briefing on every plan, not a tier above.
Book a demoAsk them in this order
Start with the BAA, because it is a yes or a no and a no ends the conversation. Any vendor handling your audio, transcript or draft note is a business associate under 45 CFR 160.103 and must sign one.33A vendor handling PHI is a business associate under 45 CFR 160.103 and must sign a BAA. Sixteen US states require all-party consent to record. In the NHS, any summarising tool needs at least MHRA Class I registration and a current DTAC. If their BAA reserves the right to use your patients' data for their own purposes, that is also a no.
Then the recording law, because it is the one that reaches you personally. Sixteen states require every person in the room to consent and some carry criminal exposure for the clinician rather than a fine for the practice. In the NHS the question is different again and any summarising tool needs at least MHRA Class I registration and a current DTAC, and deploying a non-compliant product is your liability rather than the vendor's.
Then your EHR by name, in general availability, today. Not on a roadmap and not in beta. Ask whether it reads as well as writes, because a push-only integration cannot tell you a result came back on Thursday.
Then the tier. Freed puts letters and coding on its $119 Premier tier while the note is $79. Heidi gates EHR push above its entry plan.44Tier gating as at July 2026. Freed puts referral letters, patient instructions and ICD-10 coding on Premier at $119. Heidi gates EHR push-to-chart to Practice tier and above. Confirm with each vendor. The number you were quoted is often not the number that includes the thing you wanted.
Then the audio. Kept for how long, deletable on your terms, used for training or not, stored where. Nabla never stores the encounter at all, which removes the question rather than answering it.
The question that decides it
Write down what you did after your last clinic. Not what you think you do. What you actually did on Tuesday.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. Nabla cut note-writing time 9.5 percent. DAX Copilot showed no significant change. Neither reduced after-hours EHR time.
For most clinicians the list is letters, codes, results, messages and calls. Physicians spend close to two hours on documentation and desk work for every hour of direct patient care and that has not moved since 2016.11Sinsky C, Colligan L, Li L, et al. Allocation of physician time in ambulatory practice. Ann Intern Med 2016;165:753-760. The note is a small part of it. Every ambient scribe on the market reaches the note.
If your evening is genuinely only notes, buy the smallest subscription that signs a BAA and supports your EHR. Freed at $39 is a real answer and we would tell you to take it.
If your evening is the rest of it
WA\ covers the consultation, the front desk and the patient record on one system. The briefing opens before the patient sits down and is assembled from the chart, so it knows the screening is overdue whether or not anyone mentions it. The letters draft from the consultation and the chart together. The coding attaches to the right problem. The phone is answered by something that can see what happened in the room.
The answer depends on your Tuesday
Write down what you did after your last clinic. If the list is notes, buy the smallest subscription that signs a BAA and supports your EHR. The number no scribe on this page reaches is the code. Up to 19 percent of E/M visits are undercoded at roughly $37 each, and Medicare Advantage downcoding runs a reported $28,000 to $74,000 a physician a year without ever showing as a denial.
If the list is letters, codes, unactioned results and calls you promised to return, no product in the ambient scribe category reaches any of it, and the price comparison you were about to run is the wrong comparison.
What we are not claiming
We have no randomised evidence and Nabla does. We have no Best in KLAS and Abridge does. We have no free tier and Heidi does. If any one of those is your deciding question, you already have your answer and it is not us.
Availability
WA\ Clinician runs a 14-day free trial with no minimum term. WA\ Admin runs as a 90-day pilot reporting revenue, hours saved and patients cared for. Pricing is on one page.
Frequently asked questions
What should I look for in an AI medical scribe?
Ask in this order. First the BAA, because any vendor handling your audio, transcript or draft note is a business associate under 45 CFR 160.103 and a refusal ends the conversation. Then the recording law where you practise, because sixteen states require all-party consent and some carry criminal exposure for the clinician personally. Then your EHR by name, in general availability today rather than on a roadmap. Then which tier the letters and coding sit on. Then the audio retention and training position. Then what your evening actually consists of.
What is the most important question to ask an AI scribe vendor?
Whether they will sign a business associate agreement, and whether their BAA reserves the right to use your patients data for their own purposes. Both are yes or no and both can end the conversation before you look at a single feature. After that, the most useful question is what your evening consists of, which is a question for you rather than the vendor. Physicians spend close to two hours on documentation and desk work for every hour of direct care, the note is a small part of it, and every ambient scribe on the market reaches the note.
Which AI scribe is best?
There is no single answer and any page claiming one is selling you something. Nabla holds the only randomised win and never stores the encounter. Abridge holds Best in KLAS in 2025 and 2026 and the deepest Epic integration. Freed is the smallest published subscription at $39 and signs you up in four minutes. Heidi has the only real free tier. If your evening is genuinely only notes, buy the smallest subscription that signs a BAA and supports your EHR. If your evening is letters, codes, results and calls, no scribe reaches any of it.
Write down what you did after your last clinic.
Start the trial and run it on your own list for a fortnight. If it works, the 90-day pilot reports revenue, hours saved and patients cared for from your clinic. If it does not, you have lost a fortnight.
About this article. Written and published by WA\, which sells one of the products discussed and has said where competitors are the better purchase. Regulations, trial data and tier structures are cited in the margin and were current at the updated date above. Pricing and tier gating in this category change frequently, so confirm directly with any vendor, including us. This is general information and not legal advice. WA\ has no peer-reviewed clinical trials published to date and does not claim any. All names are marks belonging to their owners. We have priced and assessed every competitor on this page from their own published material or independent reporting, including the places where they beat us. We would rather you had the whole picture and chose someone else than had half of it and chose us.