Two of the most polished practice management systems in allied health, compared on pricing, features, claiming and ecosystem for UK clinics, with notes for Australia and New Zealand.
Until recently, a UK clinic shopping for practice management software faced a short list of familiar names, with Cliniko usually near the top. There is now a serious new entrant. Jane, a Canadian platform known for polished booking and charting, has arrived in the UK with a dedicated UK data centre, UK phone line and support for Healthcode insurer claims.
The scale behind the push is considerable. A US$500 million financing in 2025 valued Jane at US$1.8 billion, and the UK is its clearest market beyond North America. Cliniko needs less introduction. Built in Melbourne by Red Guava since 2011, it has spent well over a decade as a default choice for physiotherapy, osteopathy, chiropractic and podiatry clinics across the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
So the Cliniko vs Jane question is genuinely current, and the honest answer is that these are different products with different philosophies rather than a clear winner and loser.
This comparison sets out where each one is strong for a UK clinic: how the two pricing models behave as a team grows, what each includes at which tier, how Healthcode claiming works on each, and how their ecosystems differ. Australian and New Zealand clinics get their own sections, because the picture there is different. It closes with a practice-type guide and the questions worth asking before committing.
Jane at a Glance
Jane began life inside a real clinic. Co-founder Alison Taylor ran a multi-disciplinary practice in North Vancouver and built the software with developer Trevor Johnston, launching it publicly in 2014. That clinic-floor origin still shows: the product is known for a polished booking experience, strong charting and an unusually well-regarded support team. More than 200,000 practitioners across roughly 50,000 clinics now use it, mostly in Canada, the United States and Britain.
Jane's UK pricing runs on three plans: Balance at £29 per month (one practitioner, capped at 20 appointments a month), Practice at £44 and Thrive at £55, each including one full-time practitioner. Additional practitioners are charged per licence: £19 a month full-time and £9.50 part-time on Practice, £22 and £11 on Thrive, with part-time meaning fewer than 24 booked hours a week.
Admin staff and locations are unlimited and free. Add-ons include Insurance Billing at £10 per month (which unlocks Healthcode claim files for UK insurer work) and group telehealth at £8 per practitioner. One-to-one telehealth, email reminders and the secure patient portal are included on every plan, and SMS reminders are unlimited and free from the Practice plan up.
Distinctive strengths: a dedicated patient mobile app, secure messaging, packages and memberships (on Thrive), a built-in AI scribe, integrated card processing through Jane Payments, and free data imports with hands-on onboarding.
The trade-offs sit at the edges: there is no free trial (a shared demo account stands in for one), no open API, and a curated integrations list on which several entries, including claiming and fax integrations, are Canada or US only. Outside North America and the UK the localisation thins: Jane's pricing for Australian and New Zealand clinics displays in Canadian dollars, not AUD or NZD.
Cliniko at a Glance
Cliniko was founded in Melbourne in 2011 by developer Joel Friedlaender and remains owned by Red Guava, a deliberately small, bootstrapped company that donates at least 2% of subscription revenue to charity and makes the product free for registered charities. It is squarely an allied-health system, and its UK, Australian and New Zealand roots run deep.
Cliniko's pricing is a flat monthly rate per team-size band: in the UK, £29 for a solo practitioner, £59 for two to five practitioners, £89 for six to eight, up to £259 for the largest band, which stretches to 200 practitioners. Australian pricing follows the same shape, from AUD $45 for a solo clinic. Every feature is included at every tier, with unlimited admin staff, locations, patients and storage; the only usage cost is prepaid SMS. There is a 30-day free trial with no card required, and paying annually earns a free month.
Distinctive strengths: pricing simplicity and transparency, native telehealth including group calls, group appointment types, and an open API published since 2013 that has grown a large directory of connected apps, from Xero and Physitrack to claiming services and AI tools.
The trade-offs are the mirror image of Jane's: there is no dedicated patient mobile app, no built-in memberships or recurring invoicing, and reporting depth is the most consistent request in recent user reviews. Insurance claiming is delegated to integration partners rather than built in.
Cliniko vs Jane: Feature by Feature
The table below sticks to what each vendor publishes. Where a capability comes through a partner rather than the product itself, the table says so.
| Feature | Jane | Cliniko |
|---|---|---|
| Made in / founded | North Vancouver, Canada, 2012 | Melbourne, Australia, 2011 |
| Pricing model | Per practitioner: base plan plus a fee per additional full-time or part-time licence | Flat rate per team-size band; every feature at every tier |
| UK solo price | £29 (Balance, 20 appointments/month) or £44 (Practice, unlimited) | £29, unlimited appointments |
| AU and NZ pricing | Displays in Canadian dollars; no native AUD or NZD | Native AUD and NZD |
| Free trial | No; shared demo account instead | 30 days, no card required |
| Online booking | Yes, custom-branded site on every plan (Balance capped at 20 appointments/month) | Yes, at every tier |
| Patient mobile app | Yes | No; mobile-friendly web |
| Telehealth | One-to-one included on all plans; group sessions £8/practitioner add-on | Included, native and browser-based; group calls up to four participants |
| SMS reminders | Unlimited and free from Practice plan (availability varies by region) | Prepaid, 5p per message (UK) |
| Packages and memberships | Yes, on Thrive | No |
| AI scribe | Built in: five free notes on every plan; unlimited at £15/practitioner | Via third-party connected apps |
| Xero integration | Not listed | Yes |
| UK private-medical claiming | Healthcode claim files via the £10/month Insurance Billing add-on | Via Effra, a third-party connected app |
| AU Medicare and health-fund claiming | No integrated claiming; a standalone HICAPS terminal can be recorded manually as a payment method | Via Tyro Health (Medicare, DVA, HealthPoint) |
| Open API | No | Yes, public since 2013, large connected-apps directory |
| Data residency | Regional data centres in Canada, the US, the UK and Australia | In-region storage for Australia, the UK, the US, Canada and the EU; other regions, including NZ, hosted in Australia |
| Ethos notes | Bursary programme for non-profit clinics | Minimum 2% of revenue to charity; free for charities |
Sources: jane.app/pricing, jane.app/integrations, cliniko.com/pricing, cliniko.com/connected-apps. Verified July 2026; both vendors update pricing pages, so figures should be re-checked before deciding.
Pricing Compared: Two Models, Not Two Numbers
The most important difference between Jane and Cliniko is not any single price. It is the shape of the pricing.
Jane scales per person. The base plan covers one full-time practitioner, and every additional bookable practitioner adds a monthly licence fee: on Practice, £19 full-time or £9.50 part-time, with part-time meaning fewer than 24 booked hours a week. Costs track headcount smoothly, and a clinic pays for exactly the practitioners it runs. Jane's pricing calculator prices any configuration precisely.
Cliniko scales in steps. One flat rate covers a whole band, so £59 covers a two-practitioner clinic and a five-practitioner clinic alike. Over a growing team, the flat bands usually work out cheaper per head, and Cliniko publishes its prices all the way to 200 practitioners.
For a solo clinician the comparison is direct. A genuinely part-time caseload, up to 20 appointments a month, costs £29 on either system, and Jane's Balance plan is a strong fit for that stage. A solo practitioner with a full diary compares Jane's Practice plan at £44 with Cliniko at £29, though the £44 buys unlimited free SMS reminders where Cliniko charges 5p per message; a clinic sending several hundred texts a month closes much of that gap.
From two practitioners upward, the shape takes over. On current list prices, all-full-time clinics land like this on Jane's Practice plan against Cliniko's bands:
| Full-time practitioners | Jane Practice (£44 + £19 each) | Cliniko (flat band) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | £63 | £59 | Cliniko £4/month cheaper |
| 3 | £82 | £59 | Cliniko £23/month cheaper |
| 5 | £120 | £59 | Cliniko £61/month cheaper |
| 8 | £177 | £89 | Cliniko £88/month cheaper |
| 12 | £253 | £129 | Cliniko £124/month cheaper |
The sticker price is not the whole bill, though, and three things pull the numbers back toward each other. Part-time staff: a clinic of one full-timer and three part-time associates pays £72.50 on Jane against £59 on Cliniko, a much narrower gap than the full-time table suggests. SMS: Jane's Practice price includes unlimited free text reminders where Cliniko charges 5p a message, worth £10 to £25 a month at typical volumes. And features: Thrive's memberships, waitlist automation and rooms scheduling have no Cliniko equivalent at any price, while Cliniko's everything-included bands mean nothing is ever gated. Clinics should price their actual roster on both: Jane's calculator on one screen, Cliniko's pricing page on the other. Both vendors include unlimited admin and reception staff free, and both migrate data from other systems at no charge.
Two footnotes matter at the margins. Cliniko discounts annual billing by roughly a month. And Jane's add-ons, Insurance Billing and group telehealth, are per-account or per-practitioner extras that belong in any like-for-like total.
For Australian and New Zealand clinics the pricing gap is also a currency gap. Cliniko publishes native AUD and NZD prices, while Jane's pricing for both regions displays in Canadian dollars, so the monthly bill moves with the exchange rate. For a clinic budgeting in AUD or NZD, that is a real difference in predictability, before any feature comparison starts.
Claiming and Payments: Where Geography Decides
For many clinics this section settles the choice, because it is where the two products differ most by market.
In the UK, both systems can serve private-medical insurer work through Healthcode, differently. Jane's £10 per month Insurance Billing add-on tracks policies and claims and produces batched claim files for submission to Healthcode. Cliniko routes Healthcode claiming through Effra, a dedicated third-party app that reads invoices from Cliniko, submits to the major insurers and posts remittances back, under its own commercial terms. Jane's route is cheaper and inside one product; Cliniko's is more automated but means a second agreement.
In Australia, the difference is starker. Cliniko integrates with Tyro Health for Medicare, DVA and HealthPoint health-fund claiming, a workflow Australian allied health lives on. Jane's integrations hub, which the company describes as its source of truth, lists direct claiming integrations for Canadian insurers and a US clearinghouse, but nothing for Medicare, DVA or HICAPS. Jane's own guidance for Australian clinics is a manual workflow: run a standalone HICAPS terminal alongside Jane, process the claim on the terminal, and record the fund portion and gap payment against the invoice by hand. That works, but it is double-handling rather than integration, and an Australian clinic whose revenue leans on Medicare or health-fund claiming will find Cliniko's path materially more complete today.
On card payments the advantage flips. Jane Payments is built in, with UK online processing at a published 1.5% + 20p, saved cards, pre-payments at booking and payment requests by email and SMS. Cliniko takes payments through integration partners rather than natively. Clinics that want deposits and card-on-file handled inside one system will find Jane's arrangement tidier.
Patient Experience and Daily Workflow
Jane's most visible edge is the patient side. Patients get a dedicated mobile app, a secure portal, two-way secure messaging, and, on Thrive, memberships and packages that suit clinics selling class passes or treatment plans. Online reviews, waitlist automation and return-visit reminders round out a genuinely retention-focused toolkit. For clinics competing on experience, massage and wellness practices especially, this is Jane's home ground.
Cliniko's edge is operational simplicity. Every feature ships to every customer, so nothing needs unlocking as the clinic grows. Its native telehealth runs in the browser with no patient download, group appointments handle classes and rehab groups, and the interface has a long reputation for being learnable in an afternoon. Both products are praised for support: Cliniko for fast in-app chat, Jane for unlimited human onboarding calls and free data imports.
Charting is strong in both, with template libraries, intake forms and outcome measures. Jane adds a built-in AI scribe, with five free notes to trial it; Cliniko clinics typically add a third-party scribe from the connected-apps directory. Reporting is the one workflow area where recent user reviews consistently ask more of Cliniko, so data-hungry multi-site clinics should test both reporting suites on their own questions.
Ecosystem: Open API vs Curated Hub
The deepest structural difference sits under the surface. Cliniko has run a public API since 2013, and a large ecosystem has grown on it: accounting, exercise prescription, online booking aggregators, AI scribes and AI receptionists such as BookedSolid, which connects to Cliniko to answer clinic phones and book directly into the diary. If a clinic has a niche workflow, the odds are good someone has built for it.
Jane takes the opposite approach: no open API, with integrations built or vetted by Jane itself through an approved-partner programme. The result is a shorter, tightly curated list on which everything is supported end to end, but several entries are region-locked to North America, and UK or Australian clinics with an established toolkit, Xero above all, should check the hub line by line before committing. That picture is starting to shift, slowly: Jane has begun building a developer platform for approved partners, with its first APIs still in beta. There are no published plans for diary write access, though, so third-party tools cannot yet book appointments into Jane.
Neither approach is wrong. Closed platforms trade breadth for polish; open ones trade curation for choice. But a clinic buying software for the next five years is also buying its ecosystem, and the two could hardly be more different.
Data Residency, Security and Compliance
Jane operates regional data centres in Canada, the US, the UK and Australia, chosen at sign-up, with UK and EU accounts hosted in London. Cliniko stores data in-region for Australia, the UK, the US, Canada and the EU. A UK clinic can keep patient data in the UK on either system, and an Australian clinic can keep it in Australia; both publish GDPR positions, encrypt data in transit and at rest, and offer two-factor authentication.
New Zealand clinics have no in-country option on either platform, so the practical questions are which offshore region the account sits in and how the vendor supports the NZ Privacy Act. Cliniko answers both in writing: accounts outside its named regions, New Zealand included, are hosted in Australia, and a dedicated guide walks through the NZ Privacy Act 2020 principle by principle; it also displays native NZD pricing. Jane publishes its data-centre regions but no NZ-specific guidance, so an NZ clinic should confirm its hosting region and Privacy Act position with Jane directly.
Which Practice Type Suits Which System?
Patterns from the two products' own positioning and pricing:
- A solo practitioner building a caseload gets the gentlest start on Jane's Balance plan at £29 with 20 appointments a month, then a decision point as the diary fills: Jane Practice at £44 with free SMS, or Cliniko at £29 with everything included and per-message texts.
- A growing multi-practitioner clinic finds Cliniko's flat bands cheaper at every full-time headcount on current list prices, and hiring inside a band costs nothing. A clinic staffed mainly by part-timers narrows the gap with Jane's £9.50 half-licences; price the real roster on both.
- An Australian or New Zealand clinic has two structural reasons to favour Cliniko today: integrated claiming through Tyro Health (Medicare, DVA, HealthPoint) against Jane's manual HICAPS workflow, and native AUD and NZD pricing against Jane's CAD-displayed pricing.
- A UK clinic with heavy insurer work can run Healthcode either way: cheaply inside Jane's add-on, or more automated through Cliniko plus Effra.
- Experience-led clinics, massage, wellness, membership-based models, get more out of the box from Jane: the patient app, memberships, integrated payments and review tools.
- Clinics with an established toolkit or custom workflows, Xero, exercise prescription, AI tools, phone automation, will find Cliniko's open ecosystem the safer bet.
How to Choose Without Regret
Four steps keep the decision grounded. First, price the actual roster, including two years of hiring plans, on both pricing pages, with SMS volumes and add-ons in the total. Second, list the five tools the clinic already relies on and check each against Cliniko's connected apps and Jane's integrations hub. Third, trial the workflows that fill the day, booking, charting, invoicing, claiming, using Cliniko's 30-day trial and Jane's demo account and sales walkthrough. Fourth, ask each vendor the awkward questions in writing: claiming in the clinic's market, data region, and what happens to data on cancellation.
Wider context on the selection criteria sits in the UK and Australian practice-management roundups, and clinics also weighing an Australian-made alternative can compare both against Nookal in the UK and Australian editions of Nookal vs Cliniko.
Whichever PMS wins, the phone still needs answering
BookedSolid is the AI receptionist built for private clinics. It answers every call 24/7, handles SMS, WhatsApp, email and web chat, and books directly into Cliniko, Nookal, PracSuite, coreplus, PracticeHub or Splose, with escalation to staff built in. Most clinics are live within 48 hours with no setup fees.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Jane or Cliniko cheaper?
It depends on team size and mix. At solo scale the two are close: £29 on either for a light caseload, or Jane at £44 against Cliniko at £29 for a full diary, with Jane including free SMS. For full-time teams, Cliniko's flat bands are cheaper at every headcount on current list prices: a five-practitioner clinic pays around £120 on Jane Practice (£44 plus £19 per additional practitioner) against £59 on Cliniko. Jane's £9.50 part-time half-licences narrow the gap for part-time-heavy rosters, so pricing the actual roster on both pages is the only reliable answer.
Does Jane work well for UK clinics?
Yes. Jane publishes GBP pricing, hosts UK accounts in a UK data centre, offers a UK phone line, and its Insurance Billing add-on produces claim files for Healthcode, which covers the major private medical insurers. The main UK-specific checks are the integrations hub, since some integrations are North America only, and the absence of a Xero integration.
Can Jane handle Medicare claiming in Australia?
Not as an integrated workflow. Jane's integrations hub lists no Australian claiming integration, and Jane's own guide for HICAPS describes a manual process: run a standalone HICAPS terminal alongside Jane and record the fund payment and gap against the invoice by hand. Jane's pricing for Australian clinics also displays in Canadian dollars. Cliniko covers Australian claiming through its Tyro Health integration with native AUD pricing. Australian clinics that rely on integrated claiming should confirm current capabilities with both vendors before deciding.
Does Cliniko have a patient app?
No. Cliniko offers online booking and a mobile-friendly web experience rather than a dedicated patient app. Jane provides a patient mobile app with booking, forms and secure messaging. Clinics that see the app as central to patient experience lean Jane; clinics content with browser-based booking lose little with Cliniko.
Can either system be tried before buying?
Cliniko offers a 30-day free trial with full features and no card required. Jane does not run free trials; prospective clinics use a booked demo, a shared demo account and unlimited pre-sales support calls instead. Both vendors import existing clinic data free of charge when a clinic signs up.
What about clinics in New Zealand?
Both systems serve NZ clinics, with no in-country data centre on either side. Cliniko hosts accounts outside its named regions, New Zealand included, in Australia, publishes a dedicated guide to the NZ Privacy Act 2020 and displays native NZD pricing. Jane publishes its regional data centres but no NZ-specific guidance, and its pricing for the region displays in Canadian dollars, so NZ clinics should confirm hosting region and Privacy Act positioning with Jane before signing up.
