Medical Practice Software Cost Calculator (Free Tool)
This free calculator adds up what your practice's software costs each month and each year, using only the prices vendors publish on their own sites. Tell it how patients pay you, how big your team is and which tool you use (or are weighing) for each job, and you'll see every line with its math, your one-time setup fees, an estimate of your card fees and the places your team carries information between tools by hand. Add your email if you'd like the printable version with a dated 30-day checklist.
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How the calculator works
Every practice, whatever its size or specialty, covers the same handful of jobs. There's the chart (your EMR), phones and texting, scheduling, intake forms and e-signature, fax, an ambient scribe that drafts the visit note, and a way to take card payments. For each job you choose a tool, and the list includes "another tool", paper and "not using one", so a practice that still runs a fax machine or writes its own notes gets an honest number too.
Your answers about the practice drive the per-seat and per-patient math. Providers set the price of most EMRs and scribes, while staff matter for tools that charge for every login (Spruce counts every teammate as a user, and Cerbo charges for each staff user). Your active patient count sets the plan on tools priced by panel size, like Hint and Akute. Card payments and the average payment drive the fee estimate, and if you bill insurance you can enter your monthly claims for tools that charge per claim.
When one tool does two jobs, it's counted once. Pick PracticeQ Practice Management for scheduling and again for forms and you'll see one line, and if your EMR has its own fax, payments or scribe, those show as included or priced as the add-on the vendor lists.
Where every price and default comes from
Every price is the vendor's own published price, checked on each vendor's site in November 2026. The calculator never estimates a vendor's price. If a vendor doesn't publish one (athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Hero EMR, Jane, SigmaMD, Ultralight Health, Klara, Freed, Sully, Cognito Forms, DocuSign, Dropbox Sign, eFax Corporate and SRFax), it shows "Quote-based", names it under the total and leaves it out of the sum.
| Job | How a few common picks are priced |
|---|---|
| EMR | Elation $425 per provider, Charm $200 plus $15 eRx per provider, OptiMantra $99 plus $49 per extra practitioner and $38 eRx each |
| Phones and texting | Spruce $24 or $49 per user, Weave from $199, Podium $399 |
| Scheduling | Calendly or Cal.com per provider seat, Acuity Premium $55 |
| Forms | PracticeQ Forms Only $54.90 plus $20 per extra practitioner, Jotform Gold $99 |
| Fax | Documo Solo $25 or Business $100, or the fax inside your EMR |
| Scribe | Heidi free or $110 per clinician, Cerbo $29 or $59, Charm $125 per provider |
| Card payments | Stripe 2.9% + 30¢, Square 3.3% + 30¢, Elation 2.99%, Atlas.md 2.1% + 30¢ |
The starting answers are one provider and one staff member, which is the solo setup our guide to what medical practice software costs prices in full. The 200 card payments of $100 each match the example month in that guide's card fee section. These are typical figures, so use your own. The starting tools are a common mix for a small practice, not a recommendation.
How to read your total
The big number is software plus card fees, because for many cash-pay, membership and concierge practices the fees are as large as the subscriptions. With the starting answers, the software comes to $767.90 a month and Elation's 2.99% on $20,000 of card payments adds $598, so the month lands near $1,366. The fee line shows its math, and under the list you'll see what the same payments would cost by bank transfer (ACH), which on those numbers is about $250. Our patient payments and billing guide explains how practices move members to ACH without making payment harder for anyone.
If "from" appears in front of a number, at least one line is a starting price or a plan that only partly fits your size, so the real bill may run higher. Setup fees sit in their own list because you pay them once, and they can tip a first-year comparison between two EMRs that look the same month to month.
Before you sign, ask each vendor for a first-year total in writing that includes setup, ePrescribing, add-ons and exactly who counts as a seat. It's the one number you can compare across every quote.
The hand-offs between your tools
Below the cost you'll find a short list of the places where information has to be carried from one tool to another by a person. A text that becomes a refill, a fax that becomes a chart entry, an intake form that gets retyped and a payment that has to be matched to a patient all show up here whenever the two jobs live in different tools. If you bill insurance and sell memberships, you'll also see the work of keeping both records about the same patient in agreement.
Where a vendor publishes a connection that covers part of the work, the item says "partly connected" and explains what still needs a person. Spruce can sync texts and voicemails into the Elation chart, for example, and Elation can read scanned intake forms into chart fields. None of these hand-offs reflect on your team. The tools come from different companies and were never built to share one picture of a patient.
What to do with your numbers
Start with the biggest line, which is usually the EMR or the card fees. If it's the EMR, compare it against what that EMR already includes, since a built-in fax, scheduler, scribe or payment tool can let you drop a separate subscription. Our guide on how to choose medical practice software has a demo checklist for asking those questions.
Then get the quote-based lines priced, because a total with three tools missing isn't a total yet. The printable version lists every line, every setup fee and every hand-off, along with a dated checklist for the next 30 days covering written quotes, overlap you can trim, the first hand-off worth a closer look and a reminder to run the numbers again with your real figures. If you're still deciding on the chart itself, the best EMR for a small practice compares the main options side by side.
The part most guides skip
Every tool in a DPC clinic is good at its own job, and none of them were built to talk to each other. A patient text turns into a refill in the chart, which needs a review, which needs a reply, and the follow-up lives in someone's head. That isn't anyone's fault. The tools just don't share a to-do list.
That's the job Tabflows does. Tabflows is a dedicated tech team for DPC clinics. We connect the tools you already chose and give your team one place for chat, tasks and patient context, with managed workflows for the repeat work like refills, lab follow-ups and onboarding. You keep every tool you picked.
Frequently asked questions
How much does software cost for a small medical practice?
It depends on the tools and the size of the team. With one provider, one staff member and a common set of tools at November 2026 published prices, the software alone comes to about $768 a month, and card fees on 200 payments of $100 add roughly $600 more. The calculator on this page prices your own mix.
Should card processing fees count as a software cost?
For a cash-pay, membership or concierge practice, yes. Card fees grow with every dollar you collect and can come close to the whole software bill, so the calculator adds them to the monthly total and shows what bank (ACH) payments would cost instead.
Why do some tools show as quote-based?
Some vendors, including athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Hero EMR, Jane, Klara, DocuSign and eFax Corporate, don't publish a price on their site. Rather than guess, the calculator names them under your total and leaves them out of it, so ask each one for a written quote.
What setup fees should a practice expect from its software?
Only a few vendors publish them. Cerbo lists a $1,195 setup fee, Atlas.md lists $475 per prescriber for ePrescribing setup and $525 per clinic for PDMP setup, Hint charges $500 for onboarding on its Scale plan, and Spruce charges $19.50 once to turn on outbound texting.