NotuDocs vs Doximity Scribe: Template-First Notes vs Free Physician AI Scribe

Doximity launched its AI scribe in July 2025, and the pitch is hard to argue with: free ambient AI documentation for the roughly 80 percent of US physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants already on the platform. No separate subscription, no credit card, no per-note fees. If you are a verified Doximity member, you already have it.

NotuDocs is a template-first documentation tool that starts at $25 per month. It does not record anything. It has no ambient layer. It works by letting clinicians write their observations after a session and having AI map that input into a structured note template the clinician controls.

On the surface this looks like a simple comparison: free beats paid. In practice, the two tools serve different practitioners with different workflows and different access conditions. Whether Doximity Scribe is the right tool for you depends on whether you can qualify for it, whether the workflow fits how you document, and whether general medical note generation actually covers what you need.

This article walks through both tools honestly, including where each has a genuine advantage.

How Each Tool Works

Doximity Scribe: Ambient AI Documentation for Verified Clinicians

Doximity Scribe is built on ambient AI medical scribing. During a patient visit, the tool listens to the encounter in real time and generates a structured clinical note when the visit ends. The physician reviews the draft, makes any needed edits, and saves it. There is no separate writing step.

The product is available at no additional cost through the Doximity mobile app and web platform. Access requires a verified Doximity account, which is available to licensed US physicians (MD/DO), nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and medical students. Doximity verifies credentials through the NPI registry and medical school enrollment records, so access is tied to active professional status in those specific roles.

The note output is general medical in structure: it covers patient history, chief complaint, exam findings, assessment, and plan. Doximity Scribe is designed for the outpatient visit and primary care encounter. The company has not released specialty-specific templates or behavioral health formats as of the time of writing. For physicians in general medicine, internal medicine, family practice, or similar outpatient settings, the default format covers the standard documentation needs of a patient visit.

Audio is processed in real time and is not stored after the note is generated. This follows the same pattern as other ambient AI scribes that have adopted a no-audio-retention approach in response to practitioner privacy concerns.

NotuDocs: Template-First, Post-Session Text Input

NotuDocs does not listen to anything during a session. There is no audio layer, no real-time transcription, and no ambient capture.

The workflow begins after the encounter ends. The clinician writes their observations in plain language: what was presented, what happened clinically, what was observed, what the next steps are. They select a note template from a pre-built library or build their own, with custom section names, field labels, and required structure. The AI maps the written observations into that template, filling each placeholder with the relevant content from the written input. If a section has no corresponding input, it stays empty rather than generating content that was never in the note.

Templates are fully clinician-defined. SOAP notes, DAP notes, BIRP notes, GIRP notes, progress notes, treatment plans, and any custom format are all supported. The AI fills the placeholders. It does not invent sections, and it does not generate information that was not in the clinician's input.

NotuDocs covers multiple disciplines: psychology and mental health, medicine, law, social work, and education. Pricing is public: a free tier with 3 templates and 3 notes per month, and a Pro tier at $25 per month with unlimited notes and full template control.

NotuDocs follows strict privacy practices but is not HIPAA compliant and does not sign Business Associate Agreements (BAAs). That distinction matters in clinical contexts and is addressed directly below.

The Access Question: Who Can Actually Use Doximity Scribe

This is the first filter that matters for most readers encountering this comparison.

Doximity Scribe is available only to verified members of the Doximity network. Doximity verification requires one of the following credentials: MD, DO, NP, PA, or active medical student enrollment at a US medical school. The verification process checks credentials against the NPI registry or institutional enrollment records.

This means the following practitioners cannot access Doximity Scribe, regardless of their clinical training or licensure:

• Licensed clinical social workers (LCSW)
• Licensed professional counselors (LPC)
• Licensed marriage and family therapists (LMFT)
• Psychologists (PhD/PsyD)
• Occupational therapists
• Physical therapists
• Speech-language pathologists
• School counselors and school psychologists
• Attorneys and legal professionals
• Coaches, dietitians, and other non-medical practitioners

If you are a therapist, social worker, or licensed counselor asking whether Doximity Scribe is an option for your documentation workflow, the answer is that you most likely do not qualify. The product is designed for the physician network, and access control reflects that design choice.

NotuDocs has no credential requirement. Any practitioner who documents sessions, visits, or case notes can create an account and use the tool.

The Workflow Difference: Real-Time Ambient vs Post-Session Writing

Beyond access, the second most important dimension is when documentation happens and how the AI is involved in that process.

Doximity Scribe's workflow is session-concurrent. The tool listens while the visit is happening. The physician does not need to carve out a separate writing block after the visit. When the encounter ends, a draft is ready for review. The documentation burden is shifted from after the visit to a brief edit during or just after.

For high-volume outpatient physicians seeing 20 to 30 patients in a day, this addresses a real capacity problem. Every note written from memory after the visit is a minute taken from the next patient or from the evening. Ambient scribing compresses post-visit documentation from a full writing task to a confirmation step.

NotuDocs' workflow is post-session. The session ends, the clinician writes a focused synthesis of what was clinically significant, selects or builds a template, and the AI organizes the input into structured output. The writing step still exists, but it is compressed from a full structured note to the clinician's working observations in their own language.

These are not the same solution at different price points. They reflect different assumptions about which part of documentation is actually the problem.

A primary care physician seeing 25 patients in an eight-hour day has a volume problem. An ambient scribe addresses that directly by eliminating the post-visit writing step altogether.

A therapist or social worker who sees eight to twelve clients per week often has a structure and format problem: the writing comes naturally, but formatting observations to meet payer requirements, supervisory standards, or court documentation rules is where time is lost. For that practitioner, a template-first tool that organizes existing notes is more useful than ambient recording, even if ambient recording were available to them.

Dr. Marta Villanueva, an internal medicine physician in a busy outpatient clinic, sees 22 patients per day. Between appointments, she has roughly two minutes to finalize each note before the next patient enters. Doximity Scribe eliminates most of that two-minute window by producing a draft while she is still in the room. That is a genuine time recovery at her volume.

Andrés Morales, an LCSW in private practice, sees 11 clients per week. After each session, he spends 20 minutes formatting a DAP note that his supervisor and insurance auditors need in a specific structure. Doximity Scribe is not available to him. A template-first tool that accepts his session impressions and formats them into a clean DAP note addresses the actual friction in his workflow.

These are different workflows for different practitioners.

Discipline Coverage and Behavioral Health

Doximity Scribe generates general medical notes. It does not offer specialty-specific templates for behavioral health, mental health, or counseling. A psychiatrist using Doximity Scribe would receive a standard medical format covering history of present illness, mental status, assessment, and plan, but without the structured formatting that behavioral health-specific workflows require.

Behavioral health documentation has distinct requirements that general medical formats do not cover: detailed mental status examinations (MSE), session-level clinical narrative, DAP notes, BIRP notes, SOAP notes adapted for therapy, treatment plan progress documentation, and the specific language that Medicaid audits and payer reviews look for in behavioral health claims.

Psychiatrists on Doximity can use the scribe for medication management visits where the SOAP structure maps reasonably to their visit type. But for practitioners whose entire documentation practice is built around behavioral health formats, a general medical scribe is a partial fit at best.

NotuDocs was built with behavioral health documentation as a primary use case. The template library covers the modality-specific formats therapy practitioners use: EMDR session structure, IFS parts documentation, CBT module tracking, motivational interviewing with DARN-CAT change talk notation, and dozens of other therapy-specific configurations that no general medical scribe attempts. For therapists and counselors who qualify for neither Doximity Scribe's network nor its general medical note format, this is the relevant differentiation.

Pricing: Free vs $25/Month

Doximity Scribe is free for all verified Doximity members. There are no tiers, no per-note fees, and no additional cost beyond a Doximity account, which is itself free for eligible practitioners.

NotuDocs pricing is $25 per month for the Pro tier. A free tier exists with 3 templates and 3 notes per month.

For eligible physicians, the pricing comparison is straightforward: Doximity Scribe costs nothing. If a physician is already on Doximity, using the scribe costs zero marginal dollars. This is a genuine and unambiguous advantage.

For practitioners who do not qualify for Doximity, the comparison is irrelevant. A therapist is not choosing between free and $25. They are choosing among the tools that are actually available to them.

The pricing table below shows the realistic comparison for practitioners who can access both:

HIPAA Compliance and BAA Availability

Doximity Scribe is HIPAA compliant. Doximity, as a company operating within the healthcare infrastructure, signs BAAs with covered entities. This meets the compliance baseline that most clinical settings require for any tool handling protected health information.

NotuDocs follows strict privacy practices but is not HIPAA compliant and does not sign BAAs. This is a real limitation for practitioners whose licensing board, employer, or malpractice carrier requires HIPAA-compliant tools for all clinical documentation. If a signed BAA is a non-negotiable requirement for your practice, NotuDocs does not currently meet that standard.

For clinicians in institutional or group practice settings, employer IT policies may require a BAA for any tool touching patient data. In those settings, Doximity Scribe has a genuine compliance advantage for physicians, while NotuDocs would not qualify regardless of other workflow strengths.

This difference should be a primary filter, not a footnote. Before evaluating features or price, ask: does your setting require a signed BAA? If yes, that answer determines which tools are viable options before any other comparison begins.

Recording Sensitivity and the Privacy Variable

Both tools handle audio differently, but the privacy question runs deeper than storage policies.

Doximity Scribe discards audio after processing. The note is generated from the acoustic input, but the audio itself is not retained. This follows industry practice for compliant ambient scribes and removes the long-term storage risk.

NotuDocs never captures audio. The input is text written by the clinician. There is no audio layer at any point in the workflow.

For most outpatient medical contexts, Doximity's audio-discard policy is a reasonable approach and should not create clinical complications. But for specific populations and settings, ambient recording in the room introduces a layer of complexity that a no-recording workflow avoids entirely:

• Trauma-focused therapy sessions where a recording device in the room affects the clinical relationship
• Clients with prior legal involvement or active custody disputes who are sensitized to any form of recording
• Court-involved minors in school-based mental health settings
• Group therapy sessions where recording raises consent complications for all participants
• Forensic contexts where audio capture creates evidentiary questions

Physicians in general medical outpatient settings rarely encounter these constraints. The populations most affected are precisely the populations that Doximity Scribe does not serve anyway, since they are seen by practitioners who cannot access the platform.

What Doximity Scribe Does Well

The product has genuine strengths that deserve direct acknowledgment.

The integration with an existing practitioner network that covers 80 percent of US physicians is a distribution advantage that has nothing to do with documentation quality. Physicians do not need to evaluate a new tool, create a new account, or learn a new workflow. The scribe is already in the app they use for messaging, news, and telehealth. Adoption friction is close to zero.

The ambient workflow eliminates the post-visit note backlog for high-volume practices. For a physician running a busy outpatient schedule, the difference between ending the day with no notes outstanding versus ending it with 25 notes to write is significant. Doximity Scribe addresses that directly.

The compliance posture (HIPAA, BAA, no audio retention) reflects the standards that physician practices expect from any vendor in their clinical workflow. The fact that these are standard features rather than premium add-ons matters.

And the price is genuinely zero. For an eligible physician already on Doximity, there is no cost to try it.

Who Is Each Tool For

Doximity Scribe is the clear choice if:

• You are a US physician, NP, or PA with a verified Doximity account
• Your documentation need is general medical outpatient notes (primary care, internal medicine, family medicine, general psychiatry med management)
• You see a high daily patient volume and the post-visit note backlog is your core pain point
• Your setting requires HIPAA compliance and a signed BAA
• You want ambient documentation without an additional monthly cost

NotuDocs is the more relevant option if:

• You are a therapist, social worker, LCSW, LMFT, LPC, psychologist, educator, lawyer, coach, or any practitioner outside the physician/NP/PA credential scope
• Your documentation practice centers on behavioral health formats (DAP, SOAP adapted for therapy, BIRP, GIRP, treatment plans, session narratives)
• You work with populations where a recording device in the session introduces clinical or legal complications
• You need custom template structures tied to your specific modality, supervision requirements, or payer formats
• You prefer to write your observations first and have AI format them, rather than having AI generate content from ambient capture
• HIPAA compliance is not required or is handled through another system in your workflow

Decision Checklist

Before choosing between these tools, run through the following questions:

Access and eligibility:

• Do you hold a US MD, DO, NP, or PA credential? If no, Doximity Scribe is not available to you. The rest of this checklist applies to NotuDocs only.
• Are you an active Doximity member with a verified account? If no, activation takes time.

Workflow fit:

• Is your documentation burden primarily about volume (many visits per day, no time between appointments)? Ambient scribing addresses this more directly.
• Is your documentation burden primarily about structure and format (moderate caseload, but formatting takes longer than the writing)? Template-first is a better fit.
• Do any of your clients or patients belong to populations where ambient recording in the room creates clinical or legal friction? If yes, a no-recording workflow eliminates that question.

Compliance requirements:

• Does your employer, licensing board, or malpractice carrier require a signed BAA for clinical documentation tools? If yes, NotuDocs does not qualify. Doximity Scribe does.
• Are you in a solo private-pay practice where BAA requirements are less formalized? If yes, the compliance gap matters less.

Documentation type:

• Are your notes general medical (SOAP, H&P, visit notes)? Either tool can handle these; Doximity may be free.
• Are your notes behavioral health specific (DAP, therapy-adapted SOAP, BIRP, modality-specific formats)? Doximity Scribe does not offer these templates.

Cost:

• If you qualify for Doximity Scribe, is there a meaningful reason to pay $25/month for a different tool? Only if template control, multi-discipline support, or no-recording workflow are priorities that Doximity's default format does not address.

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The honest answer for most readers is that these tools do not actually compete for the same user. Doximity Scribe is a free, well-positioned ambient scribe for the physician network it serves. NotuDocs is a template-first documentation tool for the broader set of practitioners outside that network. If you qualify for Doximity Scribe and general medical note formats cover your workflow, the free option is worth trying first. If you are a therapist, social worker, counselor, or any non-physician practitioner, the access question settles the comparison before any features are weighed.

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• How to Document Collaborative Care and Behavioral Health Integration
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