Practice Better vs Healthie for dietitians
Duo Practice, in short
- What it is
- Duo Practice is a free EHR with insurance billing built in. It drafts the note and the claim from the visit, files the claim under your NPI once you approve it, matches the payment and explains denials.
- Who it's for
- Independent registered dietitians who bill insurance.
- Price
- The chart is free. Billing is 3.9% of what the insurer pays on each claim, with no monthly fee, so a claim paid $0 costs $0. You pay Claim.MD directly for your own clearinghouse plan.
- How it differs
- Practice Better, Healthie and SimplePractice give you claim tools and leave the claim work to you. Duo Practice does that work, and it can run on top of the EHR you already use.
By Javier Alvarez · Updated · 5 min read
| Practice Better (billed monthly) | Free (3 clients), Starter $35, Professional $69, Plus $99, Team $155 |
|---|---|
| Healthie (billed monthly) | Core $19.99, Essentials $49.99, Plus $129.99, Group from $149.99 |
| Claims | Practice Better: Claim.MD on every paid plan, your account. Healthie: from Essentials, integration from $30/mo, account transferred to Healthie |
| AI notes | Practice Better from $10/mo (Professional and up); Healthie $35/mo for 40 hours (Plus and up) |
| Who codes the claim | You, on both |
| Prices checked | October 13, 2026, on each vendor's pricing page |
Disclosure: we make Duo Practice, which works alongside platforms like these two and appears below as an add-on, not as a pick. Practice Better and Healthie prices come from their own pricing pages, checked October 13, 2026, billed monthly; the calculator above uses the same figures.
Put Practice Better and Healthie side by side and the feature lists look almost the same: scheduling, intake forms, charting, telehealth, a client portal, payments and insurance claims through Claim.MD. The real difference is what each one believes your practice is. Get that right and either is a good buy. Get it wrong and you own excellent software for problems you don't have.
Two philosophies
Practice Better: the client relationship. Its bet is that your practice runs on ongoing relationships: programs, protocols, packages, check-ins and a portal clients actually open. For coaching, wellness and hybrid practices, few tools do this better.
Healthie: the platform. Its bet is that practices grow into teams and companies that need infrastructure: shared calendars, roles, sub-organizations, an API to build on. That's why nutrition startups and group practices default to it. The cost of that generality is that a solo RD uses a fraction of the machine.
Head to head
| Practice Better | Healthie | |
|---|---|---|
| Free or entry plan | Free for 3 clients; Starter $35/mo (10 clients) | Core $19.99/mo (10 active clients), no claims |
| Mid plan | Professional $69/mo (300 clients) | Essentials $49.99/mo (250 active clients) |
| Unlimited clients | Plus $99/mo | Plus $129.99/mo |
| Teams | Team $155/mo (2+ practitioners) | Group from $149.99/mo + $50/mo per added clinician |
| Insurance claims | Claim.MD on every paid plan | From Essentials, ClaimMD integration from $30/mo + $50 to $100 setup |
| Your Claim.MD account | Stays yours; you pay Claim.MD | Transferred to Healthie; fee on your Healthie bill |
| AI notes | Add-on, $10 (20 h), $20 (60 h) or $40 (120 h) a month, Professional and up | Add-on, $35/mo for 40 h, Plus and up |
| Programs | Its strength | Online programs on Plus and up |
| Building on it | Has an API (Duo Practice's import uses it); not the focus | Its strength: built for companies that run products on it |
| Who picks codes and units | You | You |
Billed monthly; both are cheaper billed annually. Checked October 13, 2026 on practicebetter.io/pricing and gethealthie.com/pricing. Healthie's pricing page lists the ClaimMD integration at "$30/mo" in the plan cards and "$25/mo" with the setup fee further down; we use the higher figure.
Where Practice Better wins
- Programs, protocols and packages. Drip content, group programs and supplement protocols. If your revenue is coaching relationships, this is the reason to choose it.
- The client experience. A clean portal and app with messaging, journals, food logs and document sharing.
- The cheapest way to bill some insurance. Claim.MD works on every paid plan, starting at $35 a month, and the account stays yours.
- Cheaper AI notes for most solo caseloads, from $10 a month.
Stay with Practice Better if you're mostly cash-pay or hybrid and your clients live in its portal.
Where Healthie wins
- Teams. Shared calendars, roles and permissions, internal chat and per-clinician pricing that scales.
- An API and integrations. If you're building a product or a company on top of an EHR, Healthie is built for exactly that.
- A lower entry price if you don't bill insurance yet: Core is $19.99 a month.
- Claims and AI in one platform bill, including the Claim.MD fee, if you'd rather have one invoice.
Stay with Healthie if you run a group, a nutrition company or anything that needs an API. For more on leaving it, see Healthie alternatives.
What neither one does
Both platforms send the claim. Neither one decides between 97802 and 97803, counts the units from the visit time, puts the Z71.3 and Z68 codes in the right order, or reads an adjustment code and fixes the claim. In both, that judgment work is yours. Our Practice Better + Claim.MD walkthrough shows exactly which steps stay manual; the same steps stay manual on Healthie.
Option zero: keep your platform, add the billing
If insurance is most of your revenue and the hours go to claims, the choice between these two may matter less than who does the claim work. Duo Practice is a billing layer that sits next to either: it charts the visit, builds the claim, files it under your NPI through your own Claim.MD account once you approve it, posts the payment and explains denials. It costs 3.9% of what the insurer pays on each claim, with no monthly fee, so a claim paid $0 costs $0.
Today it imports clients and their insurance from Practice Better (one way, nothing written back); there's no Healthie import yet, so on Healthie you'd add clients by hand. It doesn't do prior authorizations, appeals or credentialing. The third line in the calculator above shows Practice Better plus Duo; how the billing works is on our dietitian billing service page, and the full list of Practice Better options is in Practice Better alternatives.
What to test in your trials
Both offer trials: 14 days on any Practice Better paid plan (30 on Team) and 14 days of Healthie Plus. Skip the portal tour and run one realistic client end to end:
- Check a new client's nutrition benefits. Who did the work, you or the software? (Our benefits verification checklist lists what to ask.)
- Document a visit. How long from the end of the visit to a signed note?
- Get to codes. Did you pick 97802 or 97803 and count the units, or did the system derive them correctly?
- Submit the claim and find its status two days later. How many clicks?
- Simulate payment day. Where does the ERA go, and who posts it?
Write down your minutes for each step and multiply by your visits a week. That number, not the feature list, is the comparison.