· Independent
Cliniko bands its price by practitioner count; Jane charges a base plan plus per-practitioner fees and $15-a-head add-ons. Here is where each one bites, and the exact number Jane's extra seats have to beat.
Loistrofi Editorial — Sep 1, 2026 — 9 min read
Cliniko is cheaper at every practitioner count either vendor prints. Solo: $45/mo against Jane's $54 Balance (capped at 20 appointments) or $79 Practice. Two to five practitioners: a flat $95/mo with every feature included. Jane's page shows plan prices but not the per-practitioner fee that sits on top, so you cannot price a three-person Jane clinic from the public page at all.
That missing number is the whole comparison. Jane's pricing page has a calculator with fields for full-time and part-time practitioner counts, and an add-on structure that charges $15 per opted-in practitioner for AI Scribe and another $15 per opted-in practitioner for Group Telehealth. Cliniko charges one number per band and puts everything inside it. So the decision below is partly a price comparison and partly a decision about how much undisclosed cost you are willing to discover on a call.
Before you compare anything, write down four numbers: full-time clinicians with a bookable schedule, part-time clinicians, front-desk and admin staff, and how many of your clinicians would actually turn on AI note-taking. Cliniko's page says every subscription includes unlimited admin users and unlimited reception users, so your front desk is free and does not push you into the next band. Jane's page splits practitioners into full-time and part-time — the insurance billing add-on charges $5 per additional full-timer and $2.50 per additional part-timer — so a job-share pair is not the same as one full-timer in Jane's arithmetic.
The fourth number matters more than people expect. Jane's per-practitioner add-ons are opt-in, so eight clinicians where only three want AI Scribe costs $45/mo, not $120/mo. If you count seats wrong here you will overestimate Jane by hundreds of dollars a year, and it is the one place Jane's model can genuinely undercut a bundled competitor.
| Practitioners | Cliniko /mo | Cliniko per practitioner | Cliniko /yr | Jane base /mo (Practice) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $45 | $45.00 | $540 | $79, or $54 on Balance with a 20-appointment cap |
| 2 | $95 | $47.50 | $1,140 | $79 + unpublished per-practitioner fee |
| 5 | $95 | $19.00 | $1,140 | $79 + unpublished per-practitioner fee |
| 6 | $145 | $24.17 | $1,740 | $79 + unpublished per-practitioner fee |
| 8 | $145 | $18.13 | $1,740 | $79 + unpublished per-practitioner fee |
| 9 | $195 | $21.67 | $2,340 | $79 + unpublished per-practitioner fee |
| 12 | $195 | $16.25 | $2,340 | $79 + unpublished per-practitioner fee |
| 13 | $295 | $22.69 | $3,540 | not published above 10 full-time |
| 25 | $295 | $11.80 | $3,540 | not published above 10 full-time |
| 26 | $395 | $15.19 | $4,740 | not published above 10 full-time |
Cliniko's page lists one inclusion set for every band: every Cliniko feature, 100% free support, unlimited admin users, unlimited reception users, frequent updates, constant backups, and a minimum 2% of the subscription donated to charity. There is a 30-day free trial. The only usage charge printed on the page is SMS at 10¢ per message, and that one deserves attention — a five-practitioner clinic sending 1,000 appointment reminders and confirmations a month adds $100 to a $95 subscription. Model your actual message volume, because SMS can plausibly cost more than the software.
The flat band is the feature. At two practitioners you pay $95/mo, which is $1,140 a year and $47.50 per head. At five you pay the same $1,140 a year, which is $19.00 per head. Three hires inside that band cost you nothing in software. That is the single best value window Cliniko publishes.
Four hires trigger a step increase. Your sixth practitioner moves you from $95 to $145 — plus $50/mo, plus $600 a year. Your ninth moves you from $145 to $195, another $600 a year. Your thirteenth moves you from $195 to $295, which is $1,200 a year for one person. Your twenty-sixth moves you from $295 to $395, another $1,200 a year.
The per-head recovery is the part worth planning around. At five you pay $19.00 each. Your sixth hire pushes that to $24.17 each, and you do not get back below the $19.00 you were paying until you reach eight ($18.13). Same shape higher up: the ninth hire takes you to $21.67 each and you beat your old rate at eleven ($17.73). The thirteenth takes you to $22.69 each and you do not beat the eight-person rate of $18.13 until seventeen ($17.35). If a hire is going to sit alone at the bottom of a new band for a year, the software cost of that person is $600 or $1,200, not $19 a month.
Balance is $54/mo and is explicitly limited to one practitioner license and 20 appointments per month — Jane's page explains this as up to 20 invoices, counting 1:1 appointments, group appointments and classes together. That is roughly one appointment per working day. It is a starter plan, not a growing-clinic plan, and if you are reading this comparison you have already outgrown it.
Practice at $79/mo ($948 a year) and Thrive at $99/mo ($1,188 a year) are the real options. Jane's page lists card processing at 2.85% + $0.25 online and 2.6% + $0.10 in person, a chart template library of over 10,000 templates, AI Scribe with 5 free notes per month, PIPEDA and GDPR compliance, SOC 2 audit, 256-bit encryption and 99.9% uptime. Insurance Billing, with pre-appointment policy upload and real-time eligibility checks, can only be added to Practice or Thrive at $20/mo plus $5 per additional full-time practitioner and $2.50 per additional part-timer.
You can work out the ceiling even without Jane's per-practitioner rate. For Practice at $79 to match Cliniko's $95 at five practitioners, the four additional practitioners have to cost $16/mo between them — $4 each. At eight practitioners against Cliniko's $145, you have $66 spread over seven additional practitioners, or $9.43 each. At twelve against Cliniko's $195, you have $116 over eleven, or $10.55 each. And Thrive at $99 already sits above Cliniko's $95 band before you add a single extra person.
Take those three figures into the calculator on Jane's page or into a conversation with them. If Jane's incremental practitioner fee is above roughly $4 at five people or above roughly $9.43 at eight, Jane is more expensive on base subscription alone, before any add-on.
Jane's per-practitioner add-ons compound fast at clinic scale. AI Scribe with unlimited notes is $15/mo per opted-in practitioner: eight opted-in clinicians is $120/mo, or $1,440 a year, on top of everything else. Group Telehealth is another $15/mo per opted-in practitioner: five clinicians is $75/mo. Insurance Billing for a five-full-timer clinic is $20 plus four times $5, so $40/mo, or $480 a year.
Stack a realistic five-person clinic on Practice with insurance billing and AI Scribe for everyone: $79 + $40 + $75 = $194/mo, and that is before Jane's undisclosed per-practitioner charges. That is at least $2,328 a year against Cliniko's $1,140. The honest caveat: Cliniko's page does not list an AI scribe of any kind, so those two totals are not buying identical things. If AI note-taking is the reason you are switching, verify what Cliniko's "every Cliniko feature" actually contains before you treat the gap as pure savings.
- **If you're solo and seeing more than 20 appointments a month**, pick Cliniko at $45/mo. Jane's only cheaper-than-Practice plan is Balance at $54, and its 20-invoice ceiling makes it unusable for you; against Practice at $79 you save $34/mo, or $408 a year. - **If you have two to five practitioners**, pick Cliniko at $95/mo. You pay $1,140 a year whether you are two or five, and Jane's Practice plan would need its extra practitioners to cost under $4 each to match that at five heads. - **If you're about to hire your sixth**, budget $600 a year of software before that person starts, and hire toward eight. At eight you pay $18.13 per head, less than the $19.00 you were paying at five; alone at six you pay $24.17. - **If you have more than 10 full-time practitioners**, Jane's page routes you to a conversation while Cliniko publishes $195, $295 and $395 for the bands above. If you will not talk to a sales team to get a number, that decides it for you. - **If AI scribing is the whole reason you're switching**, Jane publishes a price for it — $15 per opted-in practitioner for unlimited notes — and Cliniko's page does not mention one. Confirm parity before you assume Cliniko's bundle covers it. - **If you send heavy SMS volume**, price it separately. Cliniko charges 10¢ per message, so 1,500 messages a month is $150 — more than the six-to-eight practitioner subscription itself.
- Open Jane's pricing calculator, enter your exact full-time and part-time counts, and write down the total; the incremental practitioner rate does not appear in the page text. - Ask Jane directly whether the $79 and $99 plan prices include any practitioner licenses at all, or whether every clinician is billed on top of the plan. - Ask Cliniko whether an annual or prepaid discount exists — the pricing page shows monthly figures only, with no annual column. - Get Cliniko's card processing rates in writing and compare them with Jane's published 2.85% + $0.25 online and 2.6% + $0.10 in person. On $40,000 a month in card volume, a half-point difference is $200. - Confirm SMS availability and per-message pricing for your region with Jane; their own FAQ raises the question and their page shows no rate. - Ask Cliniko what happens mid-month when you cross a band — whether you are pro-rated on the day you add the practitioner or billed the full step at next renewal. - If you run more than one location, confirm with both vendors whether the price is per clinic or per account.
Take Cliniko, and time your hiring to the top of a band. For anything from one to twenty-five practitioners the published price is lower, the feature set does not fragment into per-head add-ons, and you can budget twelve months ahead from a public page without speaking to anyone. Two to five practitioners at $1,140 a year with unlimited admin and reception users is the strongest published number in this comparison.
The one thing that should make you reconsider is a specific published Jane feature you cannot live without — AI Scribe with unlimited notes at $15 per opted-in practitioner, or real-time insurance eligibility checks at $20/mo plus $5 per additional full-timer. If that is you, get Jane's per-practitioner rate before you commit, and hold it against $4 at five heads or $9.43 at eight. If they will not give you the number without a call, that itself is information.
Loistrofi does not take vendor briefings or speak to sales teams. Every figure here comes from a page the vendor publishes itself, checked on Sep 1, 2026. Where a number could not be confirmed at source, it is marked rather than smoothed over.
