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For independent clinicians
Gale autonomously runs your office, 24/7.
No monthly fee. $1.99 per completed visit. Card payments go straight to your own Stripe account.
You sign every note, claim and prescription.
What Gale does while you see patients
Fill the calendar
Your booking page takes requests day and night, offers a free consult if you want one, and books patients who ask from a health article.
You: Set your hours and prices once.
Before the visit
Checks insurance, holds the card if you ask, and sends reminders inside quiet hours.
You: Choose the rules.
At the visit
A video room, a note drafted as you talk, and codes suggested from the words in the note.
You: Edit and sign the note.
After the visit
Files the claim, posts the payment, sorts denials and drafts the appeal.
You: Approve and sign each claim.
Between visits
Tracks licenses and payer enrollment, brings in your old records, and hands prescriptions to your prescribing tool in one tap.
You: Sign every prescription.
Gale Care Inc. texts your clients for you: appointment reminders and check-in links, only with the client's agreement, and STOP is honored at once. How the texts work
One price. No monthly fee.
- $0
- a month
- $1.99
- a completed visit: cash, insurance or $0-fee
- $0
- Gale fee on card payments. Stripe charges its own rate to your account.
Already on Stripe
Connect your account. Payments land in it and Stripe pays your bank.
New to Stripe
Gale opens one for you. Stripe checks your ID once.
What practice software costs, from a visit to a hospital system.
- Gale charges for visits that happen. A month with no visits costs nothing.
- SimplePractice charges by the month, then adds fees for notes, prescribing and card payments.
- Epic publishes no price. One vendor estimates six figures to set up a small clinic.
Where each company sits
How to read this: the further along a mark sits, to the right or lower on a phone, the more you commit before your first patient, from nothing to a monthly bill to a hospital-scale project. Each mark is the company's own published price where one exists, with the year it is from. No public price means the company publishes none. Gale is the only mark with no fixed cost and no share of your payments.
Side by side
| Cost | Gale | SimplePractice | Epic |
|---|---|---|---|
| How you pay | $1.99 for each completed visit. Nothing else. | A monthly subscription, plus paid add-ons.[1] | Quoted. Through a hospital host or a hosted offer.[2] [3] |
| Monthly fee | $0. | $49, $79 or $99 at list price. The page shows half off for the first 3 months.[1] | No public price. One vendor estimates hosted access from about $200 per user a month.[3] |
| Notes drafted | Included. Drafted as you talk. | Care Aide, $59 a month for the owner and $49 for each added clinician. Note Taker alone is $35.[1] | Not published.[4] |
| Prescribing | Hands each prescription to your prescribing tool in one tap. You sign it there. | ePrescribe, $49 a month plus $89 once.[1] | Not published.[4] |
| Insurance claims | Filed, tracked and appealed by Gale. You approve and sign each claim. | Insurance Navigator, $1.79 per claim. The page marks it coming soon.[1] | Not published.[4] |
| Card payments | Stripe's own rate, charged to your own account. Gale adds nothing.[5] | 3.15% + 30 cents per transaction, from its support articles as quoted by a third party. Confirm in your account.[6] | Not published.[4] |
| Setup | No setup fee. | The pricing page shows $89 once, for ePrescribe.[1] | A vendor blog estimates $100,000 to $300,000 for a standalone small clinic. Epic publishes no price.[3] |
| A month with no visits | $0. | The monthly plan still bills.[1] | Not published.[4] |
| Where they are stronger | A newer product with a short record. Strongest today in primary care and behavioral health. | An established product, with a patient directory called Therapy Finder.[7] | Used by large health systems and the practices affiliated with them.[2] |
Figures read 2026-10-28. Where a company publishes nothing, the cell says so.
Also on the spectrum: athenahealth, Tebra, Alma, Headway, Grow Therapy
| Company | How you pay | What it publishes | What it does not |
|---|---|---|---|
| athenahealth | A share of collections | Its 2013 annual report: services revenue is typically 2% to 8% of a practice's total collections, and in almost all cases priced as a percentage of collections.[8] | The current rate (athenahealth has been private since 2019). |
| Tebra | Quote-only subscription | Electronic prescribing for controlled substances setup about $75 per provider, once. Prescription-monitoring integration $500 per facility, once, plus about $50 per user a year.[9] | Base monthly price for any plan. Setup. Contract terms. |
| Alma | Monthly membership | Its page says it charges a monthly membership fee and shows no amount.[10]$125 a month, or $95 a month billed yearly, as of October 2026.[11] | The amount, on its own page. |
| Headway | Free to join, a share of each insurance payment | No joining fee. From November 2026, $9.99 on each session with a new client who found you through its marketplace. 2.95% of the session rate when a private-pay client pays by card.[12] | The share it keeps from each insurance payment. |
| Grow Therapy | Free to join, a share of payments | No fee to join or stay. The only published fee is 5% of cash-pay sessions.[13]Its own provider page shows no price.[14] | What it keeps from insurance claims. |
Example, not a quote
80 visits a month at $150 each is $12,000 collected.
- Gale
- 80 visits at $1.99 is $159.20 a month, plus Stripe's own fee, paid to Stripe.[5]
- SimplePractice
- Essential $79 + Care Aide $59 + ePrescribe $49 is $187 a month, plus $89 once, before card fees. Its card rate costs about $0.38 more on each $150 payment than Stripe's published rate.[1] [6] [5]
- athenahealth
- 2% to 8% of $12,000 is $240 to $960, from its 2013 filing.[8]
Where it flips. At $1.99 a visit, Gale costs less than that SimplePractice bundle below about 94 visits a month and more above it. It costs more than Essential alone ($79) above about 40 visits. Gale includes claims, insurance checks and video visits in that fee.
Add up your own monthGale vs SimplePracticeGale vs EpicGale vs HeadwayGale vs AlmaGale vs athenahealthGale vs TebraWhy Gale
Sources, read 2026-10-28
- 1.SimplePractice pricing page Company page. Read 2026-10-28.
- 2.Baptist Health Jacksonville, Epic Community Connect page Company page. Read 2026-10-28.
- 3.Topflight Apps, Epic EHR cost (a vendor blog, 2026-10-08, its own estimates) Third party. Read 2026-10-28.
- 4.MedicalRecords.com, Epic pricing (checked 2026-10-16: no public list price verified) No price published. Read 2026-10-28.
- 5.Stripe pricing page Company page. Read 2026-10-28.
- 6.SimplePractice support articles, as quoted by Pabau (dated 2026-09-22) Third party. Read 2026-10-28.
- 7.Gale's own SimplePractice comparison Gale page. Read 2026-10-28.
- 8.athenahealth annual report for 2013 (SEC Form 10-K, filed 2014) Regulation or filing. Read 2026-10-28.
- 9.Tebra pricing page Company page. Read 2026-10-28.
- 10.Alma, for providers Company page. Read 2026-10-28.
- 11.ChoosingTherapy, Alma for therapists (updated 2026-10-19) Third party. Read 2026-10-28.
- 12.ChoosingTherapy, Headway for therapists (updated 2026-10-27) Third party. Read 2026-10-28.
- 13.ChoosingTherapy, Alma vs Grow Therapy for therapists (updated 2026-10-19) Third party. Read 2026-10-28.
- 14.Grow Therapy, for providers Company page. Read 2026-10-28.
What stays with you
You sign every note, claim and prescription.
You keep your payer contracts and your Stripe account.
Gale never uses health information for advertising and never sells it.
Common questions
Start your practice.
No monthly fee. $1.99 per completed visit. Card payments go straight to your own Stripe account.
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