SimplePractice Pricing 2026: Plans, Fees, What Coaches Pay

SimplePractice pricing, as listed in October 2026, is $49 a month for Starter, $79 a month for Essential and $99 a month for Plus, billed monthly with no annual discount on the pricing page. On top of that, card payments cost 3.15% + $0.30 each, and each additional practitioner on Plus adds $74 a month. There is no free plan, though a 30-day trial runs without a card.

Those numbers are clear enough. The harder question for a coach is whether to pay them at all, because SimplePractice is built for therapists and health practitioners, with clinical notes, insurance claims and e-prescribing at its center. This guide lays out every plan and fee, works out what three different coaching practices would pay each month, and shows what you would still need to buy beside it. We make Coachful, a competing platform, so we recommend it here and say plainly where SimplePractice is the better purchase. We read the published pricing pages and did not test these products hands-on.

What are the SimplePractice plans and prices?

SimplePractice has three published plans for solo practices, and its Plus plan also covers groups of up to five practitioners. The table below shows every plan as listed in October 2026. The annual column is empty because the pricing page offers no annual billing.

Two things stand out. The plans are not priced by client count, and the plan data we have lists no client cap, so a coach with 8 clients and a coach with 80 pay the same subscription on the same plan. And the headline numbers you see first on the page are promotional: in October 2026 the page shows half-price rates for three months ($24.50, $39.50 and $49.50) if you begin a paid account within 7 days of starting the trial. After those three months the price goes to the standard rate.

If you came here to compare a shortlist rather than study one vendor, our SimplePractice alternatives for coaches roundup covers twelve options.

What does each SimplePractice plan add?

The clearest documented step between plans is group work and team features, which arrive with Plus. Beyond that, the page sends you to a separate feature list, so check that list against your own workflow before choosing a tier.

Starter at $49 a month

Starter is the entry plan, described on the pricing page as the core SimplePractice features. It suits one practitioner seeing clients individually. The cards collapse the detailed feature comparison behind a "See all features" link, and our source data does not itemize Starter's contents, so we will not guess at them. If appointment reminders or a particular client-portal feature matters to you, read that list on the day you sign up.

Essential at $79 a month

Essential costs $30 a month more than Starter and is the middle tier for solo practitioners. The one line we can state with confidence is its group-session term: group sessions are an extra $20 a month on this plan. That detail matters because of the arithmetic in the next section.

Plus at $99 a month

Plus is the only tier whose highlights are spelled out on the pricing page: group appointments, group telehealth, a premium support phone line, advanced analytics and the ability to add practitioners. It is also where the trial starts. The page says the 30-day trial begins on the Plus plan, which means you spend the trial using features that may vanish if you then choose Starter or Essential.

The Essential or Plus decision comes down to $0

Here is the sum worth doing. Essential at $79 plus the $20 group add-on is $99, exactly the Plus price. So if you run any group sessions, Plus costs the same and also brings the support line and analytics listed above. Essential only makes sense when you are sure you will not run groups.

What fees does SimplePractice charge on top of the plan?

The main fee is 3.15% + $0.30 on every card payment, and for a working coach it often outgrows the subscription itself. The rest are add-ons and per-use charges, most of them aimed at clinical work a coach does not do.

A few notes on reading this table. In October 2026 several add-ons also show temporary half-price offers: Care Aide at $29.50, Note Taker at $17.50 and ePrescribe at $24.50, and Care Aide and Note Taker show free opening periods of 45 and 30 days. Budget on the standard prices, because those are what you pay once the offer ends.

CPT codes are the standardized codes used to report medical services for billing. That one line tells you how far this fee sits from a coaching practice. Our data does not confirm whether an account that never uses CPT codes can avoid the charge, so ask support before you commit.

How much does the card fee cost in practice?

On a $500 coaching package, the fee is $15.75 plus $0.30, or $16.05. The crossover point is what deserves attention: 3.15% of about $1,556 is $49, so once you take roughly $1,600 a month by card, your processing costs pass the Starter subscription. A coach collecting $5,000 a month pays more than $157 in percentage fees alone. Every platform has processing costs, so this is not a mark against SimplePractice in itself, but it does belong in your budget. Use the package pricing calculator to see how fees and packages interact at your rates.

What does a coach actually pay at three sizes?

In our three examples, a coach pays about $115, $264 and $737.50 a month on SimplePractice before buying the coaching tools it does not include. These are illustrative practices with example revenue, not customer data. Each assumes one card payment per client per month and no clinical add-ons.

• Solo, 10 clients: $200 a month each, $2,000 collected, individual sessions only, on Starter.
• Solo with groups, 25 clients: $200 a month each, $5,000 collected, running group sessions, on Plus.
• Team of 3 coaches, 60 clients: $250 a month each, $15,000 collected, on Plus with two additional practitioners.

We have not put dollar figures on the last row, because those tools vary too widely and any number from us would be a guess. Replace it with your real invoices: course host, community app, program or habit tracker, email tool, funnel or website builder. That column is where most of the difference between platforms shows up. If you are paying for four separate tools, this is the sum to compare, rather than $49 against another subscription.

Scale also works differently here than you may expect. Going from 10 clients to 25 costs nothing extra in SimplePractice's subscription unless you need Plus features, which is a real strength. Adding people to deliver the coaching is what raises the plan bill, because each one adds a seat. A team of six crosses into custom pricing, where no published figure exists.

What hidden costs and gotchas should coaches check?

Nothing here is secret, since SimplePractice publishes most of it, but several costs are easy to miss when you only look at the plan cards. These are the ones most likely to change a coach's real bill or experience.

• The promotion has a seven-day clock. The half-price rate needs a paid account within the first 7 days of a 30-day trial. Take the full 30 days to evaluate and you pay standard pricing from day one of your subscription.
• The price doubles after month three. A $24.50 Starter becomes $49, and a $49.50 Plus becomes $99. Plan on the second number.
• The trial runs on Plus. Because it begins on the top plan, your impression of the product may depend on features the cheaper plans do not include. Before you pick Starter, check which features you actually used.
• No annual discount. We found no annual option on the pricing page, so you cannot trade a year's commitment for a lower rate. Healthie and Practice Better both offer that trade.
• Seat prices are listed inconsistently. The main page says additional practitioners start at $74, while a comparison table on the site shows $69 to $74. Confirm your rate in writing before adding a team.
• Reminder costs need checking. The pricing page has an FAQ titled "What is the cost for appointment reminders in SimplePractice?" Our data does not include a figure, so we will not state one. Read that answer if text reminders matter to your no-show rate.
• Data export is unconfirmed. We could not confirm the export steps, because they are documented behind a bot check. During your trial, ask support how to export client records so you know your exit route.
• Clinical framing runs throughout. The add-ons describe therapy notes, treatment plans and prescriptions. That is right for a clinician and can feel off for a career or business coach, whose agreement says they are not providing treatment.
• Public reviews are mixed. SimplePractice showed 2.6 on Trustpilot from 1,616 reviews when seen on 29 October 2026. Treat that as a prompt to read recent reviews about billing and support, rather than as a verdict.

Is SimplePractice worth it for your kind of coaching?

SimplePractice is worth paying for when clinical compliance and insurance billing are a real part of your work, and hard to justify when they are not. Our view by type of practice follows.

Licensed clinicians who also coach

Worth it. If you are a therapist with a coaching sideline, you likely need notes, claims and the business associate agreement, which takes effect automatically at signup. Keep your clinical work there. Coachful is not HIPAA-certified and does not offer a BAA, so it is the wrong home for clinical records.

Health and wellness coaches

Sometimes. Under HHS rules, covered entities include health care providers who transmit health information electronically in connection with certain transactions, such as claims. A coach who does not bill health plans is often outside that definition, but contracts with clinics or employers can change the picture, so check with an attorney. Coaching is not medical treatment: stay within your scope, and refer clients to a doctor or licensed clinician for diagnosis, medication questions, or symptoms such as disordered eating or chest pain. If you need a HIPAA setup but not claims, compare Healthie vs SimplePractice, Practice Better vs SimplePractice and our list of alternatives for health coaches. If you do not, look at Coachful for health coaches.

Life, business, career and executive coaches

Usually not. You would pay for an insurance and clinical system and use its calendar, payments and notes. SimplePractice has no coaching programs, courses or community features, so the work that happens between sessions needs another tool. Life coaches, business coaches and executive coaches have better-fitting options, including tools aimed at them such as those in CoachAccountable vs SimplePractice and Paperbell vs SimplePractice.

Fitness and nutrition coaches

Usually not. Nothing in the documented plans covers workout building, set logging or meal plans for coaching clients. The Fitness & Nutrition pack in Coachful has a workout builder, logging, nutrition targets and form-check video, though coaches attach their own demo videos and it does not sync with Garmin, Fitbit or Whoop.

Group and cohort coaches

Only partly. Plus handles group appointments and group telehealth, which covers the call. It does not cover the program around the call: cohort spaces, weekly content, habits, a course or a community. See group coaching software for what that fuller setup includes.

Small coaching teams

Do the seat math first. At $74 per added practitioner, three coaches pay $247 a month before card fees, and six need a custom quote. Look at team plans and at client-priced tools too, since their costs scale differently.

How does SimplePractice pricing compare with alternatives?

Criteria: one login for the whole client journey, delivery between sessions, total stack cost and setup effort. On those criteria Coachful leads for most coaches, while SimplePractice leads only when clinical billing is a requirement. Vendor prices are as listed in October 2026 and shown monthly, with annual rates in brackets where offered.

Read across the row and a pattern appears. For a solo coach, SimplePractice is rarely the cheapest entry, and Healthie's Stripe rate is a quarter of a percentage point lower on card payments, which comes to $12.50 a month on $5,000 collected. The bigger gap is what the price buys. Healthie and Practice Better both serve clinical or wellness practitioners, and Practice Better adds programs, so they are the natural comparison if you need a health-oriented system. CoachAccountable is a coaching tool whose price rises with your roster, with unlimited coach and admin accounts at no extra cost. Our comparison hub covers more pairings, including SimplePractice vs Simply Coach and Delenta vs SimplePractice.

Pick SimplePractice over Coachful if you bill insurance, need e-prescribing, or need a signed BAA for clinical records. Those are hard requirements that Coachful does not meet.

What is Coachful, and what does it not do?

Coachful is a coaching platform where one subscription covers booking, payments, contracts, program delivery, courses, a community, a website with funnels and email, and an AI assistant. It gives the coach one login and the client one branded app. It is built for coaches who deliver programs, not just sessions, for solo coaches growing into a small team, and for coaches replacing 4 to 6 tools.

Set against the fee table above, the difference is in where the money goes. Payments run through your own Stripe Connect or Razorpay account, with a 0% Coachful platform fee, so you pay only the processor's charges. Plans are flat and monthly: lower plans cap the number of clients, Pro is unlimited and team plans add seats (Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients; Solo: $49/month for up to 20 clients; Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients; Studio: $199/month with unlimited clients). Monthly plans cancel in one click.

These are all included in your Coachful membership:

• Booking: booking pages with availability rules, buffers and time-zone detection, two-way Google, Apple and Outlook calendar sync, and built-in video or auto-created Zoom, Meet and Teams links.
• Payments: one-time charges, subscriptions and payment plans, coupons, refunds, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and an invoice per transaction.
• Agreements: coaching contracts with e-signature sent before the first call and stored on the client record.
• Programs: multi-week programs with weekly goals, daily tasks, habits, morning and evening check-ins, goals with progress bars and streaks.
• Courses and community: modules, drip and completion tracking, a community feed, group chat and cohort groups created automatically on program enrollment.
• Marketing: a website builder with 30 designed homepage templates, booking and checkout funnels, email lists and multi-step sequences.
• AI: Michelle, the built-in assistant, works from live practice data. Questions and planning are included; confirmed builds and changes use AI credits.
• Credentials: ICF hour tracking that counts coaching hours and distinct clients against ACC, PCC and MCC thresholds.

Here is how a program looks to build in Coachful, which is the part of the job SimplePractice leaves to another tool.

What Coachful does not do matters just as much in this comparison. It is not HIPAA-certified and offers no BAA, and it is not for clinical record-keeping or insurance billing. It has no PayPal and no permanent free plan. The client app ships under the Coachful listing with your branding, not under your own App Store account. There is no Garmin, Fitbit, Whoop or Oura sync, and no stock exercise videos.

Why Coachful stands out: a free white-glove service. On every plan, you can ask the Coachful team to build something inside your own account, from Create > We'll build it for you. That covers a website, funnel, sales page, program, course outline, email sequence, form and more, usually within about 24 hours. For example, a leadership coach with a Squarespace renewal days away got one clean homepage with a repeated "talk with me" button, and a somatic coach leaving Kajabi had the homepage and About page rebuilt and the contact form connected. Nothing gets invented, so gaps are left for you to fill, and it does not include recording videos, logo design, ad management or ongoing marketing. Read more about the white-glove service.

To start, open a free trial, request your first build from the Create page, and have your clients, programs and content imported for you during onboarding. See the full picture on the coaching software page.

How can you save money on SimplePractice?

The biggest saving is the 50% offer, which is worth $73.50 to $148.50 in the first three months, depending on the plan. After that, savings come from choosing the right plan and declining add-ons you do not need. Here is the first-year cost of each plan with and without the offer, leaving out card fees.

1. Prepare before you start the trial. The 7-day window opens when the trial does, so gather your questions and client list first and then evaluate quickly.
2. Pick Plus over Essential plus the group add-on. Both come to $99, and Plus includes more.
3. Check what you really used on the trial. Since it starts on Plus, list the features you depended on. If none are Plus-only, Starter saves $600 a year against Plus.
4. Choose Note Taker or Care Aide, not both. Care Aide already includes Note Taker. If you only want AI notes, Note Taker is $24 a month cheaper.
5. Bundle charges where it suits your clients. The percentage stays the same, but the fixed $0.30 applies per payment. One charge for a $1,200 package costs $0.60 less in fixed fees than three installments, a small sum that adds up across a roster.
6. Remove seats you are not using. Each idle practitioner costs $888 a year at $74 a month.
7. Ask about the AMA fee. At $20 per clinician per year it is small, but there is no reason to pay for CPT access you never use if support can remove it.
8. Set your prices with fees in mind. Our guide to raising package prices without losing trust helps when processing and software costs start to squeeze margins.

The largest saving may be outside this list. If you do not bill insurance and already pay for several other tools, consolidating them is likely to save more than any SimplePractice setting. Add up your current invoices and compare that total with one plan on our plans page.

Frequently asked questions about SimplePractice pricing

How much does SimplePractice cost per month?

As listed in October 2026, SimplePractice costs $49 a month for Starter, $79 for Essential and $99 for Plus. Each additional practitioner on Plus starts at $74 a month. Card payments add 3.15% + $0.30 each. A half-price offer can reduce the first three months if you begin a paid account within 7 days of starting the trial.

Does SimplePractice have a free plan?

No. There is a 30-day free trial with no card required, which begins on the Plus plan, but no permanent free plan. If you must start at no cost, Practice Better lists a $0 Sprout plan limited to 3 clients and 1 practitioner.

Is there an annual discount on SimplePractice?

The pricing page shows no annual billing option in October 2026. Starter and Essential are listed as monthly only. The only discount we found is the 50% off for 3 months offer, which is time-limited.

What are SimplePractice's transaction fees?

Card payments cost 3.15% + $0.30 each, and insurance claims cost $0.39 each. There is also a $20 per clinician annual fee for AMA CPT code access. On a $500 package, the card fee comes to $16.05.

How much does it cost to add a practitioner?

Additional practitioners go on the Plus plan, with the first at $99 and each additional one starting at $74 a month. A comparison table on the site shows $69 to $74, so confirm your rate. Groups of six or more practitioners get custom pricing, and that price is not published.

Do coaches need SimplePractice to be HIPAA compliant?

Coaches who do not bill health plans are often not covered entities, but your contracts and clients can change that, so check with an attorney. SimplePractice's BAA takes effect automatically at signup, which is valuable if you do handle protected health information. Coachful is not HIPAA-certified, so keep clinical records in a clinical system.

Is SimplePractice good for life coaches?

It can handle sessions, notes and card payments, but life coaches pay for a clinical system and get no coaching programs, courses or community features. Most will be better served by a coaching platform. Our alternatives roundup compares the options.

Can I use my own Stripe account with SimplePractice?

The payment processor in our data is SimplePractice's own payments service, at the listed 3.15% + $0.30. We could not confirm any option to connect your own Stripe account, so ask support if that matters to you. Coachful runs payments through your own Stripe Connect or Razorpay account.

What is Coachful's free white-glove service?

It is a build service included on every plan. You describe what you need, such as a website, funnel, program or email sequence, and attach up to 8 reference links and 10 files. The team builds it inside your own account, usually within about 24 hours. It does not cover recording videos, logo design, ad management or ongoing marketing.

How do I move from SimplePractice to Coachful?

Export what SimplePractice allows and confirm the steps with its support, since we could not verify them. Clients, programs and content are imported for you during Coachful onboarding, and clinical records should stay in a clinical system. Start with a free trial and run the two side by side until your next billing date.