Summary
Wai Clinicians is the better choice for most clinics. It finishes the note, the letters, the codes and cited answers from one consultation, at a published $350 a clinician a month, live the same week. Abridge is an enterprise product, Best in KLAS two years running and sold to Epic health systems through a three to six month procurement at a reported $2,500 a clinician a year.
This comparison turns on scope and how each product is bought. Abridge is the strongest enterprise deployment in the category. Best in KLAS two years running, 300 or more health systems, the deepest Epic integration anyone has built. A health system on Epic with an IT function should buy it.
A private clinic is buying something else. Abridge is reported near $2,500 a clinician a year behind a three to six month procurement with no published price. For a four-doctor practice that is not a purchase, it is a project. The comparison that decides it covers the letters, the coding and the front desk, not the note alone.
The best note in the category is not the whole job. Your front desk is the other half.
Book a demo| Question | Abridge | Wai |
|---|---|---|
| The note drafted from the room | Yes, best in class | Yes |
| Epic integration depth | Deepest in the category | Native, less deep |
| A briefing before the patient sits down | Not offered | Yes, built from the chart |
| ICD-10 coding attached to the decision | Yes | Yes, drafted against MDM |
| The phone, email and WhatsApp answered | Not offered | Yes, same record |
| Eligibility checked at booking | Not offered | Yes |
| Time to first note | Three to six month procurement | Same day |
| Published price | Not published | See pricing |
What Abridge is good at
Everything about the note, and the Epic integration in particular. Best in KLAS in 2025 and 2026 is not marketing, it is a customer survey, and 300 or more health systems is a real deployment record. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
One intelligence layer connecting health systems, payers, and life sciences organizations. Built by clinicians, for clinicians, trusted by 300+ health systems.Abridge homepage, abridge.com, read 22 September 2026
Where the friction is
The procurement. Three to six months and roughly $2,500 a clinician a year is proportionate for a 6,000-clinician rollout and impossible for a small practice. There is no published price and no self-serve signup, so you cannot compare it against anything without a discovery call.
Abridge is also named in litigation. A California patient sued Sharp HealthCare in January 2026 alleging his appointment was recorded without consent. The allegations are untested and the consent duty sits with the health system rather than the vendor. The same exposure applies to every product in this category, ours included.
What the evidence says
Abridge has no randomised trial. Neither do we. Nabla does, cutting note-writing time 9.5 percent, about 41 seconds, across roughly 72,000 encounters, and neither arm reduced after-hours record time. Best in KLAS measures customer satisfaction, which is a different and also valuable thing.
The half nobody compares
Abridge covers the consultation. It does not answer your phone, book, take a deposit, check eligibility or backfill a cancellation.
For a health system that is a procurement question, since somebody else owns the front desk. For a practice it is the same person. About 27 percent of denials are eligibility errors caught before the patient arrives or not at all, and no amount of Epic depth reaches one of them.
The number this comparison misses
A $2,500 subscription buys the best note in the category and reaches none of what follows. Your E/M level already turns on Medical Decision Making or time, so the note is the evidence for the code and the code is the money. Up to 19 percent of E/M visits are undercoded at roughly $37 each, and Medicare Advantage downcoding takes $42 to $74 off a visit and a reported $28,000 to $74,000 a physician a year, without ever appearing as a denial.
Abridge sells into health systems with revenue integrity teams, so the argument lands differently there. In a practice, nobody is running that report and the money leaves quietly.
Price
Abridge does not publish. The $2,500 figure is a third-party estimate and may be wrong. We publish on one page, and you can check ours in four seconds.
Which one
Take Abridge if you are a health system on Epic with a procurement function and an IT team, you want the deepest Epic write-back available and you will pay for it, and Best in KLAS with 300 health systems is the assurance you need.
Take Wai if you are a practice rather than a system and a six month procurement is not available to you, if your evening is letters, codes and callbacks rather than notes, and if you want the front desk and the consultation on one record.
What we are not claiming
We do not have Best in KLAS and Abridge does, twice. We do not have 300 health systems or its Epic depth. Those matter to an enterprise Epic buyer with a procurement team. Everywhere else, Wai Clinicians covers more of the job at a price you can read today.
Bring your own clinic to it. Thirty minutes, and you see it on your workflows.
Book a demoFrequently asked questions
How much does Abridge cost?
Abridge does not publish pricing. Independent estimates place the entry point near 2,500 dollars per clinician per year, with fully Epic-integrated deployments reported considerably higher, and procurement typically running three to six months. There is no self-serve signup and no free trial for individual clinicians. Confirm any figure directly with Abridge. Wai publishes its price on its pricing page, with a 14 day free trial and no minimum term.
Can a small practice buy Abridge?
In practice, rarely. Abridge sells enterprise contracts to health systems, of which more than 300 are live including Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins and Kaiser Permanente, and its model assumes an IT function that can carry a deep Epic integration. That is a reasonable choice for the company and a wall for an independent clinic. If nobody in your building has the word procurement in their job title, you are not the buyer Abridge was built for.
Should I buy Abridge or Wai?
Wai, for almost every clinic. Wai is published, live this week, and covers the letters, the coding, the front desk and the patient record rather than the note alone. Abridge has been named Best in KLAS for Ambient AI two years running and has deep Epic integration, but it has no self-serve signup, no free trial, no published price and a procurement cycle of three to six months. Unless you are an Epic health system with a procurement function, Wai is the better answer, and it is not close.
Does Abridge have clinical trial evidence?
Abridge has no randomised trial. Neither do we. Nabla does, cutting note-writing time 9.5 percent, about 41 seconds, across roughly 72,000 encounters, and neither arm reduced after-hours record time. Best in KLAS measures customer satisfaction, which is a different and also valuable thing.
How long does Abridge procurement take?
The procurement. Three to six months and roughly $2,500 a clinician a year is proportionate for a 6,000-clinician rollout and impossible for a small practice. There is no published price and no self-serve signup, so you cannot compare it against anything without a discovery call.
See it on your own clinic
Fifteen minutes on your workflows. If it is a fit we reply within 24 hours.