CliniScripts alternative

A CliniScripts alternative for solo therapists who want on-device, not multi-discipline cloud

CliniScripts is a competent cloud scribe with an unusual range — it's built for mental-health clinicians but also covers occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech-language pathologists, and pediatric specialists, and the catalog runs to 30+ note formats. There's a permanent free tier, an iOS app, a Chrome extension that pushes finalised notes into your EMR, and HIPAA + PHIPA + PIPEDA + ISO 27001 paperwork covering both US and Canadian practices. TherapyDraft is narrower on purpose: a Mac-only app for licensed therapists, four mainstream note formats (SOAP, DAP, BIRP, GIRP), and an architecture where the audio physically cannot leave your laptop. This page is for clinicians choosing between "broad cloud platform" and "narrow on-device app" — they're solving genuinely different problems and the right answer depends on yours.

TL;DR

CliniScripts is a cloud platform with a free Starter tier, paid plans from $19/mo (Bronze) to $49/mo (Silver) to $52/seat (Clinic, 3+ clinicians), iOS + web + Chrome-extension reach, 30+ note formats including ABA and allied-health specialties, and BAA-backed HIPAA/PHIPA compliance with no long-term session storage. TherapyDraft is a $39/mo Mac-only app that drafts SOAP, DAP, BIRP, and GIRP notes from microphone audio entirely on-device — the macOS sandbox blocks the audio file and the draft from ever reaching a network socket, so there's no PHI to cover under a BAA in the first place. If you need iOS, allied-health note formats, a free starting point, or a group-practice team dashboard, CliniScripts wins. If you're a solo therapist on a Mac who'd rather pay $39/mo for "the audio never leaves the device" than $0–$49/mo for "we don't retain it," that's TherapyDraft.

Why therapists compare CliniScripts and TherapyDraft

The comparison comes up most often in three scenarios:

You're testing the CliniScripts free tier and asking "what's the architectural ceiling here?" Free is a real differentiator and CliniScripts deserves credit for offering it. The tier limit isn't sessions — it's the cloud-native architecture itself. Every recording syncs to CliniScripts' servers when connected; the audio is processed in their cloud; the note comes back to your device. That's a fine trade for many clinicians, and they back it with a clear retention policy. But if your compliance officer's question is "where does the audio go?", the answer is "to CliniScripts' infrastructure, briefly, under the BAA." TherapyDraft is built around a different answer: nowhere — it stays on your Mac, by enforced sandbox policy, not by retention promise.
You're a solo therapist and the multi-discipline platform feels like overkill. CliniScripts covers OT, PT, SLP, ABA, and pediatric specialties because there's a real market for "one tool across the practice." If you're a 1-clinician therapy practice, the breadth costs you nothing on the free tier and almost nothing on Bronze, but the product surface area is wider than your problem. TherapyDraft is shaped to a single use case (licensed therapist, talk-therapy session, four mainstream formats) and the depth of the templates reflects that focus.
You want the note workflow to live entirely in macOS, not in a browser tab plus a Chrome extension plus an iOS app. CliniScripts' EMR Connect extension is well-thought-through — it pushes finalised notes from the web app into your EMR's documentation field. TherapyDraft's equivalent is per-EHR paste presets in the native Mac app, formatted to fit SimplePractice, TheraNest, TherapyNotes, and Jane fields without a browser intermediary. Different ergonomics. Pick the one that matches how you actually work.

If none of those are you — if you're a multi-discipline practice owner, an iOS-first clinician, or someone who wants to start at zero cost — CliniScripts is genuinely a better fit and we'll say so.

How TherapyDraft is different

CliniScripts' pipeline is cloud-native by design. You record on the iOS app or in the browser; audio syncs to CliniScripts' infrastructure when connected; speech-to-text and the AI note generation run server-side; the finalised note is delivered back to your account, with retention bounded by their data policy. The BAA covers it, the ISO 27001 cert documents the controls, and the PHIPA/PIPEDA paperwork extends the same posture into Canadian practice contexts. It's a competent cloud product and the legal instruments are the load-bearing piece that makes it compliant.

TherapyDraft inverts the pipeline. The Mac app records from your microphone (built-in or external — your choice). Transcription runs locally via whisper.cpp, the Apple-Silicon-optimised port of OpenAI's Whisper family. Drafting runs locally via a 4-bit-quantized Qwen 2.5 14B model on Apple's MLX runtime. The macOS app sandbox is configured with two outbound network entitlements only: Stripe (for license activation) and our update server (for version checks). The audio file and the draft never traverse a network socket, by enforced sandbox policy — not by retention promise. You can verify it in Activity Monitor's Network tab during a session: bytes-out stays at near-zero throughout the recording.

The honest trade-off: CliniScripts' breadth (multi-discipline, multi-platform, 30+ note formats, free tier, group-practice tooling) comes from cloud infrastructure that we deliberately don't have. TherapyDraft's privacy posture (no PHI ever leaves the laptop, no BAA needed, no sub-processor chain to audit, no ISO 27001 because there's no server-side process to audit) comes from the architectural decision to keep the laptop the entire compute substrate. The two products are paying their engineering bills for different things.

Side-by-side comparison

	CliniScripts	TherapyDraft
Where transcription runs	CliniScripts cloud	Your Mac (whisper.cpp, local)
Where drafting runs	CliniScripts cloud	Your Mac (Qwen 14B 4-bit on MLX, local)
Session audio leaves your device	Yes (synced to cloud when connected)	No (blocked by macOS sandbox entitlements)
HIPAA posture	BAA + ISO 27001 + retention policy	No BAA needed — no PHI is transmitted
Canadian PHIPA / PIPEDA	Yes (documented compliance posture)	By architecture (no transmission, no cross-border data flow)
Sub-processor chain for PHI	Cloud infra + speech model + AI provider + storage	None — zero sub-processors touch audio or text
Free tier	Yes (Starter, permanent)	10-session free trial, then paid
Mobile (iOS) capture	Yes	No — Mac only in v1
Cross-device sync	Yes (web + iOS)	No — tied to the Mac it's licensed on
Works fully offline (end-to-end)	iOS records offline; sync is required to generate the note	Yes (record + transcribe + draft, all offline)
Note formats	SOAP, DAP, BIRP, ABA, and 30+ specialty formats	SOAP, DAP, BIRP, GIRP (v1)
Discipline scope	Mental health + OT + PT + SLP + pediatric specialties	Licensed therapists (LCSW, LMFT, LPC, PsyD, PhD)
EHR integration approach	Chrome extension (EMR Connect) pushes notes into web EMRs	Per-EHR paste presets in the Mac app (SimplePractice, TheraNest, TherapyNotes, Jane)
Group-practice tooling	Clinic tier ($52/seat, 3+ clinicians) — team dashboards, shared templates, scheduling	Single-clinician licensing in v1
Tamper-evident receipt	Server-side audit log under retention policy	Hash-chained JSONL on your disk (you hold the chain)
Platform	Web + iOS + Chrome extension	macOS 14+ on Apple Silicon (M1–M4)
Price (monthly)	Free Starter / $19 Bronze / $49 Silver / $52/seat Clinic / Enterprise custom	$39/mo or $349/yr — flat, unlimited

Different products, different problems

The cleanest way to read this matchup is that CliniScripts and TherapyDraft are answering two different questions, and the right answer follows from which question is yours.

CliniScripts answers "what's the most flexible AI scribe a multi-discipline practice can adopt?" Its breadth — 30+ note formats including ABA, allied-health discipline coverage, iOS + web + Chrome reach, group-practice tooling, a free tier that lets a clinician trial it without a procurement conversation — is the answer. That breadth genuinely matters if you run a practice that has therapists and OTs in the same office, or if you need to write your first note before payday.
TherapyDraft answers "what's the AI scribe that doesn't require uploading my session at all?" Its narrowness — Mac-only, four formats, single discipline, single-clinician licensing — is what lets us put the entire pipeline on-device. We're not paying a cloud compute bill, so we don't need to charge for cloud usage. We're not running speech models server-side, so there's no inbound audio to retain. The trade-off for that posture is everything CliniScripts gets from the cloud architecture: cross-device sync, iOS, the breadth of the format catalog, the group-practice surface area.
Both are reasonable answers — pick by your actual constraint. If your constraint is "I need a tool that works for the whole practice, on whatever device, ideally starting free," that's CliniScripts and we won't pretend otherwise. If your constraint is "I need to be able to truthfully tell a malpractice carrier or a forensic patient that the audio never left the room," that's TherapyDraft, and the architecture is what makes the sentence true.

When CliniScripts is still the right choice

You're not on a Mac, or you're not the only platform. TherapyDraft is Apple-Silicon-only in v1. If you do half your sessions on an iPad in a satellite office, or your practice spans Windows and Mac, CliniScripts' web + iOS reach earns its keep. Don't fight the platform.
You need allied-health note formats. If you write OT progress notes, PT SOAP-with-ROM, SLP language-sample notes, or ABA session data, that's not what TherapyDraft's templates are tuned for and CliniScripts' 30+ format catalog is the better fit. We won't pretend a generic SOAP/DAP/BIRP/GIRP formatter is the same thing as a discipline-specific template.
You run a group practice with shared documentation standards. CliniScripts' Clinic tier exists for a reason: shared templates, team dashboards, and per-seat billing matter when documentation has to be uniform across 5+ clinicians. TherapyDraft is single-clinician-licensed in v1 and that's a deliberate scope choice.
You're in Canada and your compliance framework wants PHIPA/PIPEDA paperwork. CliniScripts has both, documented. TherapyDraft's posture is by architecture (the audio doesn't cross any border because it doesn't leave the device), which is a defensible answer in most Canadian compliance reviews — but if your insurer or regulator wants signed PHIPA paperwork from the vendor, that's a real ask we can't fulfil right now and CliniScripts can.
You want to start free, today, without a credit card or trial clock. The CliniScripts Starter tier is permanent free. TherapyDraft is a 10-session trial then paid. If "I want to try it for a month before paying anything" is your constraint, that's a clean trade and CliniScripts wins it.

Trying TherapyDraft without committing to a switch

The low-risk pattern, if you're a current CliniScripts user: keep your CliniScripts account active and run TherapyDraft in parallel through the 10-session free trial. Use CliniScripts for any session that genuinely benefits from the cloud workflow (iOS capture, Chrome-extension push to a web EMR, allied-health template) and use TherapyDraft for the talk-therapy sessions where the privacy ceiling matters most. Compare drafts on three axes: clinical utility, minutes spent editing, and how each product made you feel about the audio after the session. After the trial, you can stay on CliniScripts, switch to TherapyDraft, or — for clinicians with a mixed caseload — keep both: CliniScripts for the workflows where cloud breadth is the right answer, TherapyDraft for the workflows where on-device is.

No credit card required for the TherapyDraft trial. No sales call. The download is signed and notarized; macOS Gatekeeper recognises it as a developer-identified app on first launch.

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