Cliniko vs coreplus: Which Practice Management System Fits an Australian Clinic?

Two Australian-built practice management systems compared on pricing, Medicare, DVA and NDIS claiming, daily workflow, integrations and data hosting.

Australian allied health clinics shopping for practice management software keep landing on the same shortlist. coreplus launched in 2009, founded by Yianni Serpanos and Mark Pirotta, was built around the funding schemes Australian allied health actually runs on. Cliniko was founded in Melbourne in 2011 by developer Joel Friedlaender, and built something deliberately simpler that has since travelled to clinics in dozens of countries.

Search for a Cliniko vs coreplus comparison today and the results are almost entirely the two vendors' own pages and software directories. That is a shame, because the honest answer is more interesting than either side's version. Cliniko's own comparison page, to its credit, declines to review its competitor at all. It would rather spend its time improving its own product, it says. coreplus takes the opposite approach and lists five points of difference, most of them fair, one of them contestable.

BookedSolid's AI receptionist integrates directly with both systems, and both vendors list it in their own integration directories, so there is no axe to grind either way. What follows is drawn from what each company publishes. It covers how the two pricing models behave as a clinic grows, and how Medicare, DVA, NDIS and health-fund claiming work on each. It then looks at daily workflow, the two ecosystems, and where patient data physically sits.

coreplus at a Glance

coreplus is allied health practice management software built for one market. The company describes itself as "the Australian leader in online patient and health practice management software as a service". Everything about the product follows from that focus. Medicare, DVA, NDIS and the Hearing Services Program are first-class features rather than integrations, and all client data is stored in Australia. More than 20 allied health professions are supported, with psychologists, physiotherapists, speech pathologists, occupational therapists and audiologists among the largest cohorts.

coreplus pricing runs per user, in AUD. CORE, at $35 per user a month, covers the essentials: calendar, client records, case notes, invoicing, online bookings, email and SMS reminders, reporting, storage and integrated telehealth. Add-on integrations are limited on that plan. PLUS, at $49 per user a month, adds unlimited add-on integrations, free Medicare claiming, free DVA claiming, secure messaging and access to referral programmes. GROUP is priced on application for practices of eight or more practitioners and discounts the per-practitioner rate. Admin users are free on every plan, as is data migration, and the trial is untimed with no card required and no contract.

Distinctive strengths start with claiming. A direct Medicare Online integration submits claims straight from a client's invoice and returns instant results, and NDIS-enabled invoicing builds in participant funding, time codes and item codes. Secure messaging connects the practice to a network of more than 75,000 Australian healthcare practitioners for referral correspondence. Audiology practices can add Hearing Services Program workflows for $5 per user, and a referral programme layer aims at bringing new clients in.

The trade-offs sit at the edges. Telehealth is metered at $0.01 per participant per minute rather than included, and integrations are capped on the CORE plan.

Cliniko at a Glance

Cliniko was founded in Melbourne in 2011 and is still owned by Red Guava, a deliberately small, self-funded company. It donates at least 2% of subscription revenue to charity and makes the product free for registered charities. Cliniko is a general allied health system with particular depth in physiotherapy, osteopathy, chiropractic and podiatry. It has also grown well beyond its home market, with native pricing in Australian dollars, pounds and New Zealand dollars.

Cliniko pricing is a flat monthly rate per team-size band rather than a per-user charge. It runs $45 for one practitioner, $95 for two to five, $145 for six to eight and $195 for nine to twelve, with higher bands stretching to 200 practitioners. Every feature ships at every tier, with unlimited admin staff, patients, locations and storage. The only usage cost is prepaid SMS at ten cents a message. The trial runs 30 days with no card required, and paying annually earns a free month.

Distinctive strengths start with that pricing simplicity. Telehealth is native, browser-based and free, group calls included, and group appointment types handle classes and rehabilitation groups. Behind all of it sits an open API published since 2013, which has grown into a directory of 96 connected apps across artificial intelligence, patient care, booking, finance, prescriptions, forms and reporting.

The trade-offs mirror coreplus's strengths. Medicare, DVA and health-fund claiming run through Tyro Health rather than the product itself, NDIS billing uses general invoicing, and there is no published native secure messaging. Reporting depth remains the most consistent request in recent user reviews.

Cliniko vs coreplus: Feature by Feature

Sources: corepluspm.com/coreplus-pricing, corepluspm.com/addons, cliniko.com/pricing, cliniko.com/connected-apps. Verified August 2026; both vendors update their pricing pages, so figures should be re-checked before deciding.

Pricing Compared: Per User vs Flat Bands

The most important difference in a coreplus vs Cliniko comparison is not any single price. It is the shape of the pricing.

coreplus scales per person, with no ceiling. Each practitioner adds $35 on CORE or $49 on PLUS, so the bill tracks headcount in a straight line. Admin staff are free, which matters for reception-heavy practices. The GROUP plan then discounts the per-practitioner rate once a clinic passes eight practitioners.

Cliniko scales in steps. One flat rate covers a whole band, so $95 covers a two-practitioner clinic and a five-practitioner clinic alike. Hiring inside a band costs nothing; crossing a boundary is a step up. On current AUD list prices, all-full-time clinics land like this:

On CORE, coreplus is the cheaper option for one and two practitioners, and Cliniko takes over from three, where the flat $95 band starts absorbing hires for free. On PLUS, the plan that includes free Medicare and DVA claiming, Cliniko is level or cheaper from the first practitioner, and the gap widens with every hire. Above eight practitioners the published comparison stops being meaningful. coreplus's GROUP pricing is quoted on application and discounts the per-practitioner rate, so a larger practice should get that number before drawing any conclusion.

The sticker price is not the whole bill on either side, and two metered costs pull in opposite directions. coreplus charges $0.01 per participant per minute for telehealth on every plan. A 50-minute one-to-one video consultation therefore costs about a dollar, and a clinic running ten a week adds roughly $43 a month. Cliniko includes telehealth free at every tier. Pulling the other way, coreplus includes Medicare and DVA claiming free on PLUS, where Cliniko's route runs through Tyro Health, a second relationship with its own terms and fees. SMS lands close to even, at ten cents on Cliniko and on coreplus PLUS.

Clinics working to a tight budget can see where both land against the rest of the market in the cheap practice management software roundup for Australian clinics.

Claiming and Funding: Built In or Through a Partner

For an Australian clinic this is where the two products differ most.

coreplus builds claiming in. Its direct Medicare Online integration processes bills and claims straight from a client's invoice and returns claim results instantly. Medicare and DVA claiming are both listed as free on the PLUS plan. NDIS work gets a dedicated treatment rather than a workaround. Invoicing links to participant funding, time codes and item codes, which strips a layer of manual reconciliation from a heavy NDIS caseload. Private health-fund claims run through HealthPoint on an integrated Tyro terminal, which also handles card-present payments, and Pin Payments covers online cards. Audiology practices can add Hearing Services Program workflows for $5 per user, a capability with no equivalent on the Cliniko side.

Cliniko reaches the same destination through a partner. Its Tyro Health integration covers Medicare, DVA and HealthPoint health-fund claiming, a workflow Australian allied health has run for years and one that works well. What it is not is free or first-party. It is a second vendor relationship with its own onboarding, terms and transaction fees, and those belong in any honest cost comparison. NDIS billing on Cliniko runs through general invoicing rather than a scheme-specific workflow. That suits practices where NDIS is a minority of the caseload, and creates more manual work where it is the majority.

The practical test is proportion. A practice where most revenue arrives through Medicare care plans, DVA or NDIS will feel coreplus's built-in claiming every day. A largely private-pay clinic, or one already comfortable with Tyro, will barely notice the difference and can weigh the rest of the comparison on other grounds.

Daily Workflow: Scheme Depth vs Everything Included

coreplus's daily strengths cluster around Australian clinical administration. Referrals get a dedicated module, and secure messaging carries referral correspondence across a network of more than 75,000 Australian healthcare professionals, which Cliniko publishes no equivalent for. Letters, custom permissions, multi-location and multi-time-zone support round out the practice side, and 16 published feature areas cover the ground a mid-sized allied health practice needs. The gaps are specific rather than general: no published waitlist automation, no group appointment type, and integrations capped on the entry plan.

Cliniko's edge is operational simplicity. Every feature ships to every customer, so nothing needs unlocking as the clinic grows and no one has to work out which plan carries which capability. Telehealth is native, browser-based and free, with no download for the patient and group calls up to four participants included. Group appointment types handle classes and rehabilitation groups directly. The interface has a long reputation for being learnable in an afternoon. Support is well regarded on both sides: Cliniko for fast in-app chat, coreplus for hands-on Australian onboarding and free data migration.

Reporting is a genuine question mark on both. coreplus publishes reporting on every plan and adds Huddle, a business analytics add-on, for practices that want more. Reporting depth, meanwhile, remains the most consistent request in recent Cliniko user reviews. Any data-hungry multi-site practice should test both reporting suites against its own questions during the trial rather than taking either vendor's word for it.

Ecosystem: An Open API vs a Partner Gateway

The deepest structural difference sits under the surface, and it is easy to miss during a demo.

Cliniko has run a public API since 2013, and a large ecosystem has grown on top of it. The 96 connected apps span artificial intelligence, patient care and monitoring, marketing, appointment booking, exercise prescription, finance, prescriptions, forms and reporting. If a clinic has a niche workflow, the odds are good that someone has already built for it, and a developer can build against the API without asking permission first.

coreplus takes the curated road. Its add-ons directory is a shorter, deliberately Australian list: Tyro Health, Pin Payments, Xero, MYOB, Physitrack, Snapforms, Clinivid, HotDoc, Healthengine and Huddle among them. Its developer API is technically capable, with create, update and delete on appointments alongside client, referral, payment and availability endpoints. Access is the difference. Credentials come through a sandbox application, and the documentation states the API is intended for server-to-server transactions rather than public applications. Diary-writing integrations do exist and do work, but the route to building one runs through coreplus rather than around it.

Neither philosophy is wrong. A curated directory is easier to trust and easier to support; an open one is broader and moves faster. The distinction matters most for a clinic that already depends on a specific tool, or that expects to add phone automation, AI scribes or reporting pipelines later. On the entry plan the question is sharper still, since CORE caps add-on integrations and PLUS is the tier that unlocks them. AI receptionists sit in exactly this layer on both platforms, answering clinic calls and writing bookings straight into the diary, BookedSolid among them.

Data Residency, Security and Compliance

Both vendors publish enough detail to compare properly, and both are strong.

coreplus stores all client data in Australia on AWS infrastructure. It encrypts data at AES-256 or better, backs up every 15 minutes, and requires a one-time password as a second authentication factor. It states full compliance with the Australian Privacy Principles, and leans on AWS certifications, ISO/IEC 27001, 27018 and SOC 2 Type II, rather than holding its own. It is candid about two limits: it does not hold a dedicated cyber insurance policy, and it is not PCI Level 1 certified directly, relying instead on PCI-compliant payment processors.

Cliniko stores data in-region for Australia, the UK, the US, Canada and the EU. It publishes its GDPR and Australian Privacy Act positions, encrypts data in transit and at rest, and offers two-factor authentication. For an Australian clinic the practical outcome is the same on either system: patient data stays in Australia. The claim, sometimes made, that Cliniko lacks Australian data hosting does not match what Cliniko publishes.

The real difference is scope rather than strength. coreplus offers one region because it serves one market; Cliniko offers several because it serves several, and clinics outside its named regions, New Zealand included, are hosted in Australia under a dedicated NZ Privacy Act 2020 guide.

Can UK and New Zealand Clinics Use coreplus?

A fair number of searches for this comparison come from outside Australia, so it is worth answering plainly. coreplus is an Australian-first product for Australian practices. It publishes no UK or New Zealand pricing, and its billing engine is built around Medicare, DVA, NDIS and the Hearing Services Program. Its secure messaging network is Australian, and its security documentation states that all data is stored in Australia.

Cliniko, by contrast, publishes native pricing in pounds and New Zealand dollars, and stores UK data in the UK. It routes UK private-medical insurer claims to Healthcode through a connected app, and publishes New Zealand Privacy Act guidance. For clinics in those markets the useful comparison is a different one. The UK practice management software roundup covers the systems that actually operate there, and clinics weighing Nookal against Cliniko can read the UK edition of that comparison instead.

Which Practice Type Suits Which System?

Patterns drawn from the two products' own positioning and pricing:

• A solo practitioner watching costs starts cheapest on coreplus CORE at $35, against Cliniko at $45. CORE leaves out unlimited integrations and free Medicare and DVA claiming, both of which sit on the $49 PLUS tier.
• An NDIS-heavy practice plays to coreplus's strongest suit, with participant funding, time codes and item codes wired into invoicing rather than handled by hand.
• A growing multi-practitioner clinic finds Cliniko's flat bands cheaper from around three full-time practitioners, and hiring inside a band costs nothing. Price the real roster on both pages, and ask coreplus for a GROUP quote past eight.
• An audiology practice has an option on coreplus that does not exist on the other side of this comparison: Hearing Services Program workflows for $5 per user.
• A telehealth-heavy clinic should model the metering. Cliniko includes video consultations free at every tier; coreplus charges per participant per minute, which is small per session and visible across a full diary.
• A clinic running classes or rehabilitation groups leans Cliniko, for native group appointment types and included group video calls.
• A practice with an established toolkit, or plans for phone automation, AI scribes or custom reporting, will find Cliniko's open API and 96-app directory the lower-friction route. coreplus integrations run through a partner application.
• A clinic operating outside Australia, or planning to, has one realistic choice of the two.

How to Choose Between Cliniko and coreplus Without Regret

Four steps keep the decision grounded rather than theoretical.

First, price the real roster, including two years of hiring plans, on coreplus's and Cliniko's pricing pages. Put SMS volumes, telehealth minutes and any claiming fees in the total, and get a GROUP quote if the practice is near eight practitioners.

Second, work out what proportion of revenue arrives through Medicare, DVA or NDIS. Where that share is high, built-in claiming is worth real money in saved admin. Where it is low, the question barely registers.

Third, list the five tools the practice already relies on and check each against Cliniko's connected apps and coreplus's add-ons directory, remembering that coreplus caps integrations on CORE.

Fourth, trial the workflows that fill the day: booking, notes, invoicing and claiming. coreplus offers an untimed free trial with no card and free data migration; Cliniko offers 30 days and publishes a coreplus-to-Cliniko transfer guide. Moving realistic data in is practical either way.

Wider context sits in the Australian practice management software roundup, and clinics also weighing Nookal can compare it against Cliniko in the Australian edition of that comparison.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is coreplus or Cliniko cheaper?

It depends on team size and plan. coreplus charges per user, at $35 a month on CORE or $49 on PLUS. Cliniko charges a flat rate per band, starting at $45 for one practitioner and $95 for two to five. On CORE, coreplus is cheaper for one and two practitioners, and Cliniko takes over from three, reaching $80 a month cheaper at five. On PLUS, the tier that includes free Medicare and DVA claiming, Cliniko is level or cheaper from the first practitioner. Past eight practitioners coreplus quotes GROUP pricing on application, so a larger practice needs that number before comparing. Metered costs matter too: coreplus charges per participant per minute for telehealth, where Cliniko includes it.

Which is better for Medicare, DVA and NDIS claiming?

Both handle Australian claiming, by different routes. coreplus builds it in. A direct Medicare Online integration submits claims from the client's invoice and returns instant results, Medicare and DVA claiming are free on the PLUS plan, and NDIS-enabled invoicing links to participant funding, time codes and item codes. Cliniko covers Medicare, DVA and HealthPoint claiming through its Tyro Health integration, a long-established partner workflow, and handles NDIS through general invoicing rather than a dedicated one. Practices where scheme work is the majority of revenue should demo their exact claim types on both before deciding.

Does coreplus work for clinics outside Australia?

Not in practice. coreplus publishes no UK or New Zealand pricing, stores all data in Australia, and builds its billing around Medicare, DVA, NDIS and the Hearing Services Program. Its secure messaging network is Australian too. Cliniko, by contrast, publishes native pricing in Australian dollars, pounds and New Zealand dollars, stores UK data in the UK, and publishes New Zealand Privacy Act guidance. Clinics outside Australia comparing the two are effectively choosing Cliniko or a different system altogether.

Does coreplus have an open API?

Not an open one, though it does have a capable one. The coreplus developer API supports creating, updating and deleting appointments, alongside client, referral, payment, practitioner and availability endpoints, so integrations can genuinely write into the diary. Access is gated. Developers apply for sandbox credentials, authenticate with JSON Web Tokens, and the documentation states the API is intended for server-to-server transactions rather than public applications. Cliniko's API has been public since 2013 and underpins a directory of 96 connected apps.

Can either system be tried before buying?

Yes, both, and generously. coreplus offers a free untimed trial with no credit card, no contract and free data migration on every plan. Cliniko offers a 30-day free trial with full features and no card required. Both support bringing existing data across, and Cliniko publishes a guide for transferring data out of coreplus specifically, so trialling with realistic clinic data rather than dummy records is practical on either.

What does coreplus offer that Cliniko does not, and the other way round?

coreplus publishes built-in Medicare and DVA claiming, NDIS-enabled invoicing, secure messaging across 75,000+ Australian practitioners, Hearing Services Program support for audiology, and free data migration. Cliniko publishes included native telehealth with group calls, group appointment types, and one flat price per band with every feature at every tier. It also runs an open API with 96 connected apps, and operates in the UK, New Zealand and beyond. The lists barely overlap, which is what makes this comparison a real decision rather than a close call on price.

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