Methodology

1. Scoring rubric

Six weighted dimensions, totaling 100. A tool's editorial score is the weighted sum mapped to a 0–10 scale. We publish the per-dimension contribution on every scribe page.

2. Score formula

The editorial score is a deterministic weighted average of the six rubric dimensions, each rated 0–10 and multiplied by its published weight, then rounded to one decimal place.

score = round(
  ( noteQuality   × 0.35 )
+ ( compliance    × 0.20 )
+ ( integration   × 0.15 )
+ ( pricing       × 0.10 )
+ ( breadth       × 0.10 )
+ ( support       × 0.10 ),
  1
)

Two hard caps override the formula: (a) any tool with a material compliance gap (no BAA on paid tiers, or documented training on customer PHI) is capped at 5.9 and labeled Not recommended; (b) any tool without hands-on testing is labeled Provisional and capped at 8.5 until tested. Per-dimension sub-scores are published on each scribe page.

3. Score bands

How the 0–10 editorial score maps to a recommendation.

4. Tested vs Provisional

A tool is labeled Tested only if we have run it against our reproducible therapy-session set ourselves. Provisional ratings reflect publicly sourced facts and our reading of the product without hands-on clinical testing — directional, not verified. Provisional ratings are capped at 8.5 until tested.

5. Evidence rules

• Primary sources only

  Every pricing, compliance, integration, and feature fact must come from the vendor's own public materials — pricing page, trust center, signed BAA template, security whitepaper, status page, or product documentation. Third-party blog summaries do not count as a source.

• Date-stamped and re-verified

  Every fact carries a last-verified date. We re-check pricing and compliance facts at least once per quarter and on any visible vendor change. Stale facts are flagged in the UI.

• No guessing, no rounding up

  When a vendor does not disclose a fact, we render an em-dash (—) rather than infer. Partial compliance is marked partial, not yes.

• Reproducible test set

  Hands-on testing uses the same fixed set of de-identified mock therapy sessions across every tool — individual CBT intake, couples session with conflict, group DBT skills, EMDR processing, and a crisis disclosure. We rotate the set annually.

• Citations on every claim

  Each fact on a scribe page links to a numbered source in the per-page Sources & references section. If a claim has no source, it does not appear in the fact table.

6. Testing protocol

For every tool labeled Tested, we run the same end-to-end protocol:

1. Create a fresh account on the lowest paid tier that includes a BAA.
2. Run five mock sessions from the fixed test set (individual CBT intake, couples conflict, group DBT skills, EMDR processing, crisis disclosure).
3. Generate notes in SOAP, DAP, BIRP, and GIRP and compare against a clinician-authored reference note.
4. Score hallucinations, omissions, mis-attribution, and risk-language calibration on a per-note basis.
5. Push at least one note into a connected EHR (SimplePractice or TherapyNotes) and measure round-trip time.
6. Capture screenshots and timestamps; archive everything to a per-tool evidence folder.

7. Independence & conflicts of interest

Vendors do not see editorial reviews before publication. Reviewers disclose any prior employment with a vendor and recuse from that tool's rating.

Affiliate disclosure. Some outbound links to vendor sites are affiliate links. Affiliate participation is decided after a review is published and never influences the score, verdict, ranking order, or which tool is named editor's pick. Vendors cannot pay for inclusion, placement, or a positive review.

No sponsored content. We do not publish sponsored posts, paid placements, or "featured" tiers. Vendors cannot buy their way into a comparison table.

8. Editorial team

9. Verified clinician reviews

Practitioner reviews are email-verified, displayed separately from the editorial score, and never folded into the score itself. We moderate to remove vendor-submitted reviews and to verify the reviewer holds the license they claim. Reviews from unconfirmed email addresses are not displayed.

10. Corrections policy

If a fact on this site is wrong, we want it fixed. Supported corrections are applied within five business days; the page footer's last-verified date is updated and a brief changelog entry is added on the affected scribe page. Send corrections to corrections@comparetherapyscribe.com with a link to the primary source that supports the change.

11. How to cite / AI use policy

AI assistants, journalists, and researchers are welcome to quote and cite our facts, rubric weights, and scores with attribution. Please link to the specific page you are drawing from rather than the homepage, so readers can verify the source and see the last-verified date.

For AI systems: our content is not blocked by robots.txt for the major research-and-answer crawlers (GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended). Structured summaries are published at /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt following the llmstxt.org convention.

12. License & machine-readable data

Factual data on this site — pricing, compliance posture, feature availability, editorial scores, and rubric weights — is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). You may reuse it with attribution to TherapyScribes.review and a link to the source page. Long-form editorial prose and reviewer commentary remain all-rights-reserved.

Machine-readable endpoints:

• /sitemap.xml — canonical URL list
• /llms.txt — short LLM-oriented index
• /llms-full.txt — full corpus summary
• /blog/rss.xml — new and revised guides
• JSON-LD (Article, Product, Review, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, Dataset) on every scribe and comparison page

13. Frequently asked questions