Summary
The cheapest way to try an AI medical scribe is the wai Clinicians seven day trial, every feature including letters, coding and cited answers. One widely used scribe has a real £0 tier with unlimited basic transcription. Another gives you seven days without a card. Both are worth using and neither is a plan you can run a practice on.
The thing to check on any £0 tool is whether it will sign a business associate agreement. If it will not, it cannot touch a patient encounter, and price stops being the relevant question.
See it in your clinicSeven days of the whole product. Letters, coding and the briefing on every plan.
Request a demoWhat £0 gets you
One widely used scribe has the most generous £0 tier in the category. Unlimited basic transcription, with the fuller features held for paid tiers. It is a genuine way to find out whether ambient AI suits you at all and we would tell you to try it.
Another gives you seven days with no card and has no permanent £0 tier.
Beyond that, a £0 offer in this category means one of three things. A trial. A cap. Or a consumer transcription app that has no business being near a patient.
What £0 costs
The first question is the BAA. Any tool handling your audio, transcript or draft note is a business associate under 45 CFR 160.103 and has to sign one before it touches an encounter. Consumer transcription tools will not. Using one on a patient visit makes you solely liable for whatever happens to that data, and the fact that it cost nothing is not a defence.
The second is the ceiling. The features that carry a clinic sit on paid plans. When you outgrow that £0 tier you are on its paid plan, which listed $150 until August 2026 and now shows no figure, and EHR push-to-chart is on the tier above that, so the note is drafted and you paste it by hand.
The third is what £0 tiers do not include anywhere in this category. Letters, coding, and anything that reads your record rather than only listening to your room.
Try before you buy, properly
£0 tiers are a good idea and you should use them. Run one for a fortnight on your own list. Then look at where your evening actually went and see whether the note was any of it.
The only randomised trial in this category found the best product cut note-writing time by about 41 seconds and neither product tested reduced after-hours record time.2Lukac PJ, et al. NEJM AI 2025;2(12). A £0 tier will show you the 41 seconds. It will not show you the rest of the problem, because no scribe reaches it.
What we do
wai does not have a £0 tier. We have 7 days at £0 on Clinician, and a 90-day pilot on Admin that reports revenue, hours saved and patients cared for from your own clinic. The number no scribe on this page reaches is the code. Up to 19 percent of E/M visits are undercoded at roughly $37 each, and Medicare Advantage downcoding runs a reported $28,000 to $74,000 a physician a year without ever showing as a denial.
We would rather give you a week of the whole product than a permanent sliver of it. Letters, coding, cited answers and the pre-consult briefing are on every plan, so a trial shows you what you would actually be buying.
What a week shows you
The £0 tier shows you whether you like talking to a microphone. Seven days of everything shows you whether your six o'clock moves.
Run it on a real list. Then look at what is still open at the end of the day. If it is only notes, a £0 tier will serve you and we would say so. If it is letters, codes, results and callbacks, you have found the difference between the two products.
What we are not claiming
If your budget is genuinely zero, the most generous £0 tier in the category is the best thing available and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Unlimited transcription at £0 is real and it is more than we give away.
Availability
wai Clinician runs a 7-day trial, no minimum term. Pricing is on one page.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a £0 AI medical scribe?
One widely used scribe has the only substantial permanent £0 tier in the category. Unlimited basic transcription, with the fuller features on paid tiers, and it is a genuine way to find out whether ambient AI suits you at all. Another offers seven days with no card and no permanent £0 tier. Beyond those, a £0 offer in this category means a trial, a cap, or a consumer transcription app that has no business near a patient. wai does not have a £0 tier. We offer 7 days at £0 on the whole product.
Can I use a £0 transcription app as a medical scribe?
No, unless it will sign a business associate agreement, and consumer transcription tools will not. Any vendor that creates, receives, maintains or transmits protected health information on your behalf is a business associate under 45 CFR 160.103 and must sign a BAA before handling an encounter. Using a tool without one makes you solely liable for whatever happens to that data, and the fact that it cost nothing is not a defence. If the audio of a patient visit leaks from a consumer app, the exposure is yours.
What do £0 AI scribe tiers not include?
The same things across every vendor. Letters, coding, and anything that reads your record rather than only listening to your room. On the most generous £0 tier, the working features sit on a paid plan that listed $150 per user per month until August 2026 and now shows no figure, and EHR push-to-chart sits on the tier above that, so the note is drafted and you paste it by hand. £0 tiers show you the 41 seconds the randomised trial measured. They do not show you the work after the patient leaves, because no scribe reaches it.
A week of everything, not a permanent sliver.
Start the wai Clinicians seven day trial and run it on real clinics, then compare the whole product against any £0 tier. If it works, the 90-day pilot reports revenue, hours saved and patients cared for from your clinic. If it does not, you have lost a week.
About this article. Written and published by wai, which does not offer a £0 tier and has said so. Claims about other products are from their own published material, and tier structures in this category change frequently. Confirm directly before relying on them. wai has no peer-reviewed clinical trials published to date and does not claim any.
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