What an AI dental scribe costs, and what it replaces
Documentation is already costing you something. Usually your evening, sometimes a second assistant chairside. Here is the arithmetic, with your numbers.
What dental AI scribes charge
Every price below is one the vendor publishes on its own site, quoted as they quote it and linked to the page it came from. Checked 13 October 2026.
| Product | Published price | Per |
|---|---|---|
| ButterNote | $39.99 / moPractice plan is $159/mo for up to 5 clinicians, about $32 each. | per clinician |
| Dentistry Dashboard | $79 / moUS price list, 14-day trial. Practice Hub modules are priced separately per location. | per dentist |
| DigitalTCO | $120 / moTheir FAQ puts the annual rate at $108/mo, billed $1,296 up front. | per clinician |
| Heidi Healthgeneral medical, markets to dental | $150 / moGeneral medical scribe with a dentistry landing page. $110/mo if billed yearly. | per user |
| Denti.AI | $399 / moOneStop Clinical: the scribe bundled with voice perio and X-ray analysis, unlimited users. $333/mo billed yearly. No scribe-only plan on the pricing page. | per location, up to 7 installs |
| Kiroku | £26.99 / mo and £89.99 / moPublishes GBP and AUD only, with no USD price anywhere on the page. Listed here unconverted on purpose. | per clinician |
Prices move, and this table is only as good as its date. If you are reading it long after 13 October 2026, click through and check for yourself. We have deliberately not converted currencies or repeated figures from review sites, so a vendor who publishes only in pounds is listed in pounds.
And the ones that will not tell you
That table is short for a reason. Most dental AI vendors do not publish a price at all. For each of these we checked the site, the /pricing URL, and the site's own sitemap, and found no price anywhere. What you get instead is a form:
- Bola AIGet a demo
- Overjet VoiceBook a demo
- VideaHealth Voice NotesBook a demo
- DentScribeBook a demo
- AvoraBook a demo
- Pearl VoiceBook a demo
We are not going to pretend to know what they charge, because they have not said. That is the whole point. You cannot compare what you cannot see, and a price you only learn on a sales call is a price set by how much they think you will pay. Ours is on the website, which is the least a vendor can do.
Dentistry never had scribes
You will find plenty of pages, including an older version of this one, comparing dental software to the cost of hiring a scribe. It is a borrowed comparison. The dedicated scribe is a medical role. Dentistry does not have the position, and no dentist is weighing up whether to hire one.
What dentists actually weigh up is narrower and more familiar. Either the note gets written up after the patient leaves, on your own time, or you staff a second assistant during exam appointments purely so that someone can chart while you examine. Two assistants per provider instead of one. Those are the two real costs, so those are the two this page uses.
Run your own numbers
Change anything that does not match your practice. The defaults are our estimates, not research.
On your numbers
4.5 hours
back a week
207 hours
back a year
$20,700
that time is worth
ButterNote, a year
$480 solo
$1,590 up to 5 clinicians
A second assistant, a year
$47,300
US median wage, before payroll taxes and benefits
Your numbers, not ours. The annual figures assume 46 working weeks. We have not put an industry average for charting time on this page because no dental-specific study of it exists, and the figures quoted elsewhere come from studies of physicians. The assistant wage is the BLS median for dental assistants, May 2024. See full pricing.
A second assistant, side by side
If the reason for the second person is charting, this is the trade.
| Factor | Second assistant | ButterNote |
|---|---|---|
| Cost a year | $47,300 median wage | $1,590 for up to 5 clinicians |
| Payroll taxes and benefits | On top of the wage | None |
| Recruiting and turnover | Yours to manage | None |
| Covers | One operatory at a time | Every clinician on the plan |
| Available | Scheduled shifts only | Every appointment |
| Also does | Assists, sterilizes, turns over rooms | Charting only |
Read the last row before the first one. An assistant does a great deal that software cannot, and we are not pretending otherwise. ButterNote removes charting as the reason to add a second person during exams. It does not replace the person.
How the workflows compare
Charting with a second assistant
- 1Staff a second assistant for exam blocks
- 2You call findings out as you examine
- 3They chart it live in the EHR
- 4You review and correct before signing
Charting with ButterNote
- 1Tap record on iPhone or Apple Watch
- 2AI transcribes on-device (no internet needed)
- 3AI generates the structured note
- 4Review in ButterNote
- 5Copy and paste into your EHR
Frequently asked questions
Is there such a thing as a dental scribe?
Not really. Dedicated scribes are a role in medicine, not in dentistry. In a dental practice the nearest equivalent is a second assistant chairside during exam appointments, there so that someone can chart while the dentist examines. That staffing decision, or the dentist writing the note up later, is what an AI scribe actually competes with.
How much does an AI dental scribe cost?
ButterNote is $39.99 a month for a single clinician. A practice plan covers up to 5 clinicians for $159 a month ($1,590 billed yearly), or up to 12 for $299 a month. It is one flat bill for the practice with no per-seat licensing, and every plan includes a 14-day trial.
How does ButterNote compare on price to other dental AI scribes?
As of 13 October 2026, the dental AI scribe products that publish a price on their own website run from $79 to $150 a month for a single clinician, and Denti.AI charges $399 a month per location for a bundle that includes its scribe. ButterNote is $39.99. Most vendors in the category publish no price at all and ask you to book a demo instead, so there is no honest way to compare against them.
How much does a second dental assistant cost?
The US median wage for a dental assistant is $47,300 a year as of May 2024, with the middle of the range running from about $36,190 to $61,780. That is wage only, before payroll taxes, benefits, and the cost of recruiting and replacing someone.
Does this mean I can run one assistant instead of two?
It removes charting as a reason to staff a second person during exams. It does not replace an assistant. A second pair of hands also assists the procedure, turns over the room, and handles sterilization, and software does none of that. What ButterNote changes is that the note no longer needs a human to type it while you work.
How much time does charting actually take?
There is no dental-specific study of it, so we do not quote one. The documentation-burden figures you will see elsewhere come from studies of physicians, and a dental note is nothing like an internist’s. Our own estimate is roughly five minutes a note by hand against about thirty seconds with ButterNote, which is why the calculator on this page lets you replace both numbers with your own.
Will it work with my existing EHR?
ButterNote generates formatted clinical notes that you copy and paste into any EHR or practice management software: Eaglesoft, Dentrix, Open Dental, Curve, and others. No integration is required, so it works with whatever you already use.
What happens if ButterNote misses something in the note?
Every generated note is presented for review before you save or sync it, and you can edit any field directly in the app. The AI gives you a first draft; you have final say over everything that goes in the record.
See what it does with your next note
Record a visit, review the note, paste it into your EHR. Free to try on web, iPhone, or Apple Watch.
Create your first note