If you’re weighing Freed AI alternatives, start by naming what you actually want. Freed is a solid, proven ambient scribe for solo clinicians: it listens, drafts the note, and you paste it into your chart. If a note drafter is the whole job, Freed is a good tool and you may not need to switch. Patient Square is the alternative for people who want more than a note. It’s a scribe too, but the Copilot plan bundles a real EHR and front-office automation, so the note lands in a chart and the front desk runs itself a little. Pricing is published: from $79/mo for the scribe, with the EHR bundled from $119/mo on annual billing. See the whole ladder on our pricing page.
We make one of the alternatives here, so read this the way you’d read any vendor’s comparison, with the sources open. Where Freed is the better fit, and for many clinicians it clearly is, there’s a section that says so by name.
Key takeaways
- Freed is a focused ambient scribe for solo clinicians: low entry price, large user base, EHR-agnostic. It ends at the note.
- Patient Square is a scribe plus a bundled EHR (AI Copilot EHR) plus front-office automation, so the note has somewhere to go.
- Patient Square US pricing: Assist $99/mo ($79 annual, no EHR), Copilot $149/mo ($119 annual, EHR bundled), Autopilot $249/mo ($199 annual).
- The trade is scope, not note quality. If the note is your only pain, Freed wins. If your front office and chart are also a mess, the bundle earns its price.
What Freed AI is good at
Credit where it’s due. Freed is one of the established names in ambient scribing, and it earned that the boring way: a note drafter that works, priced low enough for a solo clinician to say yes without a meeting. It listens during the visit, hands back a structured note, and doesn’t ask you to change the EHR you already run. Its published pricing and no-card trial mean a doctor can test it this afternoon.
That’s a real product with a clear audience. A solo physician drowning in after-hours charting can pick Freed up and feel lighter the same week. Nothing below is a takedown.
The question is scope. Freed is built to solve one problem: the note. If that’s your only pain, it’s a fine answer. If your front desk is also underwater and your EHR fights you daily, a scribe alone leaves most of the mess untouched. That’s where a wider tool comes in. Book a demo and see the note quality against your own visits before you decide.
Where Patient Square is different
Here’s the honest split. Freed ends at the note. Patient Square keeps going.
Patient Square is an ambient AI clinical platform, live now, built around Practice Copilot. The scribe layer does what Freed’s does: it listens during the visit and drafts a structured SOAP note with ICD-10 suggestions and a prescription draft you review and sign. But the Copilot plan bundles AI Copilot EHR, a real electronic health record, so the note isn’t something you paste anywhere. It’s already in the chart. On the same plan, the front office gets automated: intake, scheduling, and the follow-up busywork a scribe never touches.
One line: a scribe hands you a note and a clipboard. Patient Square hands you a note, a chart it lives in, and a front desk that runs a little on its own.
If you already love your EHR and won’t leave it, that bundle is more than you need, and we say so below. But if you went looking for a scribe because the whole workflow is broken, the wider tool is the point. Book a demo and check whether the EHR and front-office pieces solve problems you actually have.
What Patient Square costs
We publish the price. No call required to learn what you’ll pay.
Three US tiers, per clinician:
| Tier | Monthly | Annual (per mo) | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assist | $99 | $79 | Documentation essentials, no EHR |
| Copilot | $149 | $119 | Scribe plus AI Copilot EHR bundled, front-office automation |
| Autopilot | $249 | $199 | Everything, deepest automation |
The scribe starts from $79 a month on annual billing. The bundled EHR starts from $119 a month on annual billing, which is the Copilot tier. A 7-day free trial runs on the scribe, so you test note quality on a real clinic week before committing.
Be honest about the money: for a solo clinician who only wants documentation, Freed’s entry tier can come in under our Assist price, and we won’t pretend otherwise. The comparison isn’t scribe-versus-scribe on price. It’s whether you’d otherwise be paying for a scribe and a separate EHR and separate front-office tools. Add those up, and one bundled Copilot subscription at $119 a month starts to look like the cheaper stack, not the pricier one. The full ladder with no asterisks sits on the pricing page.
What happens to your visit audio when you switch
Ask this of every vendor before you ask about anything else. Freed’s own compliance FAQ says visit audio is temporarily saved, then automatically deleted once the note generates, per its published wording as of July 2026. Notes are separate: they persist until you delete them or turn on an optional auto-delete. Confirm the current terms yourself before you sign, because policies change.
Patient Square’s approach: visit audio is processed in memory and discarded the moment the note drafts, so there’s no recording retained. What survives is the note you reviewed and signed. The full posture, encryption, access, and audit status, lives on our security page. Whichever tool you pick, get the audio answer in one sentence with a timeline.
When Freed is the better choice
There’s a clean case for staying with Freed, and it deserves to be said plainly.
Choose Freed if the note is the entire job. If you’re a solo clinician happy with your current EHR, with a front desk that runs fine, and you just want charting off your plate, a focused scribe is the right tool and Freed is a proven one. Its low entry price and large user base are real advantages. Buying a bundled EHR and front-office automation you’ll leave idle is spending on features you won’t touch.
Choose Patient Square if the note is only part of the problem. If your charting and your front office both eat hours, and you’d rather buy one tool than wire a scribe to a separate EHR and a separate scheduling system, the bundle earns its price.
The split is scope, not quality. Both draft good notes. Freed assumes the rest of your stack is sorted. We assume it might not be.
If your shortlist is wider, Heidi Health alternatives covers another EHR-agnostic scribe, and Suki alternatives looks at the voice-assistant angle.
How to decide in a week
Skip the spec sheet and run the real test:
- Name your actual problem. Just charting? A scribe alone fits, and Freed is easy to try. Charting plus front-office chaos plus an EHR you hate? Weigh the bundle.
- Count the separate bills. If a Freed-style scribe means also paying for an EHR and scheduling tools, add those in before you compare on price.
- Trial on real visits. Run Patient Square’s 7-day scribe trial across your busiest clinic days and judge note quality against your own edits.
- Settle the audio question with every vendor: stored or not, and for how long.
- Check EHR fit. Keeping your chart? Confirm the scribe drops in cleanly. Fed up with your chart? Look hard at the bundled EHR on the demo.
The price ladder with no fine print is on the pricing page. Book a short demo to see the note against your own visit type, then run the trial on a real week. If a note drafter is the whole job, keep Freed. If the note is only part of the mess, the bundle is what you’re actually shopping for.