Abridge vs wai

Where wai is ahead

A scribe writes the note. wai runs the clinic. From one consultation, in the room or on video, wai drafts the note, the referral and clinic letters, prescriptions, result explanations, the coding and cited answers for the clinician to sign. Abridge's own pages list no front desk, no online booking and no payments, and its price is not published.

The front desk on the same record. Calls, email, web forms and WhatsApp land in one thread per patient with replies drafted for approval. Patients request appointments through links that read each doctor's calendar, cancellations backfill from the waitlist, and deposits and invoices run through the clinic's own Stripe.

The patient feels the difference. The letter can leave the same day as the consultation, the callback is drafted before anyone has to remember it, and the patient deals with one clinic rather than three systems. Every AI action that affects a patient is drafted for a person to review and approve. The clinician signs the note, the letter and the codes, and the front desk approves each reply before it goes.

Where Abridge is strong

Abridge is built for large health systems. It drafts a structured note for review at the end of the visit, codes ICD-10 and HCC within the visit and calculates the E/M level.

It runs inside Epic as Abridge Inside, and its assistant drafts referral letters and answers questions in the context of the chart with cited sources.

Who should choose which

Choose Abridge if you are a large health system on Epic, your enterprise contract is already in place, and the front desk is run by another team on another system.

Choose wai if you run an independent or private clinic, you want a published price, and you want the note, the letters, the coding and the front desk on one record. For most private and independent clinics that is the decision that changes the evening, and the buyer's guide sets out the questions to ask any vendor, us included.

Moving from Abridge to wai

Start with one clinician, alongside what you use today. Request a demo and bring one real consultation. In fifteen minutes you see the note, the letter and the codes it produces, on your own workflow.

Nothing has to be switched off on the first day. wai connects to Google, Outlook and Apple calendars, and signed notes and letters export to the record you already keep, so Abridge can run in parallel while you compare. The guide to switching scribe without losing records covers the order of steps.

Then a 90 day pilot shaped around your team, which ends with three numbers from your own clinic, revenue, hours saved and patients cared for. The decision is then made on your data, not ours.

What it costs

wai publishes its prices. Clinician Plus is $550 a clinician a month, with bespoke templates, a records sync and a larger allowance, and Clinician is $350, with the note, letters, coding and cited answers from every consultation. Admin, the front desk, is priced per location after a demo.

Abridge's published price, as its own page showed it on 16 October 2026, is in the first row of the table with its source. Set the seat against what it replaces. An hour of a clinician's evening, a letter that waits a day, a call that goes to voicemail and a patient who books elsewhere each cost more than the line on the invoice, which is why the comparison worth making is the whole day, not the note.

Frequently asked questions