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

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

Australian allied health clinics comparing practice management software usually land on these two names. Cliniko was founded in Melbourne in 2011 by developer Joel Friedlaender and built something deliberately simple: one flat price per team size, every feature included, and an open ecosystem for everything else. Splose was founded in South Australia in 2018 by Nicholas Sanderson and took a slightly different approach: a single per-practitioner plan that builds in the NDIS workflows and AI writing tools other systems leave to add-ons.

Search for a Splose vs Cliniko comparison today and the results are the two vendors' own pages. Splose publishes a comparison table making its case; Cliniko publishes a page that declines to review its competitor at all, saying vendor reviews are not helpful and that it does not know a lot about Splose. There is no independent editorial comparison of the two.

BookedSolid's AI receptionist integrates directly with both systems and books into both diaries through their APIs, so there is no axe to grind either way. Everything below is drawn from what each company publishes. It covers how the two pricing models behave as a clinic grows, where NDIS work lands on each, how claiming runs, and where the products place AI, integrations and patient data.

Splose at a Glance

Splose is practice management software for allied health and disability providers, founded in 2018 in South Australia. Physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, psychologists, podiatrists, osteopaths and exercise physiologists are its core professions, with multidisciplinary NDIS providers a visible specialty. The product positions itself around automation: AI-assisted documentation, waitlist screening, embeddable referral forms and case tracking sit in the standard plan rather than a premium tier.

Splose pricing is one plan at $27 per practitioner a month in AUD, excluding GST, and every non-practitioner role is free. There are no tiers: online bookings, telehealth links, batch invoicing, NDIS bulk upload, custom reporting and the API are all part of the plan. The one paid add-on is splose AI, the writing assistant for progress notes, reports, letters and emails, at $27 per user a month. The trial runs 14 days, and annual billing takes 10% off.

Distinctive strengths cluster around scheme-funded work: NDIS service agreements, funding tracking and portal-ready bulk claiming are product features, covered in detail below. A waitlist screener triages incoming referrals, with a map view for teams scheduling mobile visits.

The trade-offs sit at the edges. Telehealth runs through Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet rather than built-in video, and the AI assistant is priced per user on top of the seat.

Cliniko at a Glance

Cliniko was founded in Melbourne in 2011 and is owned by Red Guava, a deliberately small, self-funded company. It donates 2% of subscription revenue to charity, makes the product free for registered charities, and reports more than 65,000 health professionals using it worldwide. Physiotherapy, osteopathy, chiropractic and podiatry are historic strongholds.

Cliniko pricing is a flat monthly rate per team-size band rather than a per-practitioner charge: $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. Every feature ships at every tier, with unlimited admin and reception users, 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 each year.

Telehealth runs in the browser at no extra cost, with group calls included. Classes and rehabilitation groups have their own appointment type. Behind the product sits an open API published since 2013, which has grown a directory of 96 connected apps across artificial intelligence, patient care, booking, finance, forms and reporting.

The trade-offs mirror Splose's strengths. NDIS billing runs through general invoicing with no dedicated workflow published, there is no built-in waitlist or AI writing assistant, and reporting depth remains the most consistent request in recent user reviews.

Splose vs Cliniko: Feature by Feature

The table sticks to what each vendor publishes. Where a capability arrives through a partner or an add-on, the table says so.

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

Pricing Compared: Per Practitioner vs Flat Bands

The most useful thing to understand about Splose vs Cliniko pricing is the shape, because the shape decides which is cheaper long before the sticker does.

Splose scales per person, in a straight line. Every practitioner adds $27 a month, every admin or reception seat is free, and there are no tiers to cross or features to unlock. Cliniko scales in steps: one flat rate covers a whole band, so $95 covers a two-practitioner clinic and a five-practitioner clinic alike, and hiring inside a band costs nothing. On current AUD list prices, all-practitioner rosters land like this:

Splose is cheaper for one, two and three practitioners, and by a useful margin at two, where $54 faces the $95 band. Cliniko takes over at four, is $40 a month cheaper at five, and the flat bands keep absorbing hires from there: a six-practitioner clinic pays $162 on Splose against $145 on Cliniko, and the gap widens with every seat. Both vendors discount annual billing, Splose by 10% and Cliniko by one free month a year.

The sticker is not the whole bill, and the add-ons pull in opposite directions. On Splose, the AI assistant is $27 per user a month, so a clinic that wants splose AI on every practitioner is effectively paying $54 a head. On Cliniko, AI note-taking arrives through third-party connected apps with their own subscriptions, so that budget line does not disappear; it goes to a different vendor and needs pricing separately. Telehealth splits the same way. Cliniko includes native video free at every tier, while Splose runs consultations through the clinic's own Zoom, Teams or Google Meet account. SMS lands even, at ten cents a message on both sides.

Clinics working to a tight budget can see how both compare with the rest of the market in the Australian cheap practice management software roundup.

NDIS Workflows: Where the Two Differ Most

For a scheme-funded practice this is the widest gap in the comparison, and it is the section most Splose vs Cliniko searchers are really asking about.

Splose treats NDIS work as a first-class workflow. Service agreements draw participant details, plan dates and schedules of support into a document built against the NDIS fee schedule, then go out for digital signature. The Cases feature tracks each participant's funding by hours, appointments or budget across face-to-face and non-face-to-face services, raises alerts as utilisation approaches thresholds, reminds the team before plans expire, and rolls funding periods over automatically. When it is time to claim, NDIS bulk upload generates portal-ready payment requests in one pass. Around the edges, embeddable referral forms capture NDIS numbers and plan dates straight into the record, and the waitlist screener triages incoming referrals, with a map view for scheduling mobile and community visits.

Cliniko reaches the NDIS through general invoicing. Item numbers, rates and participant details can all be handled, but there is no published service-agreement builder, funding tracker or bulk payment-request generator, so practices assemble that layer from templates, spreadsheets or connected apps. For a clinic where NDIS is a minority of the caseload that is a manageable difference. For a disability provider running dozens of plan-managed and self-managed participants, the gap shows up every week.

The practical test is proportion. A practice where most revenue arrives through NDIS plans will feel Splose's built-in workflow daily; a largely private-pay clinic will barely open that part of either product and can weigh the rest of the comparison on other grounds.

Medicare, DVA and Health-Fund Claiming: The Same Road

Here the honest answer is that the two systems are more alike than either comparison page suggests. Both route Australian claiming through Tyro Health rather than building it in.

On Splose, the Tyro Health integration submits Medicare bulk-bill and patient claims from the invoice, lodges DVA claims without a physical terminal, and processes health-fund claims with claim status visible in real time. On Cliniko, the Tyro Health connected app covers the same ground: Medicare, DVA and HealthPoint health-fund claiming through a workflow Australian allied health has run for years.

The consequence for a buyer is simple. Tyro Health's onboarding, terms and transaction fees apply on either system, so claiming capability should not decide this comparison in any direction. What differs is what surrounds the claim: on Splose the NDIS side is native, as above, while on Cliniko every scheme runs through the same general invoicing engine.

Daily Workflow: AI Built In vs Everything Included

Much of Splose's automation is included in the standard plan. The waitlist screener accepts or declines incoming referrals, the Cases feature warns the team before a participant's funding runs out or a plan expires, and custom and performance reports are built in. The paid layer on top is splose AI, at $27 per user a month: it drafts progress notes, reports, letters and emails, and turns a dictated summary into a finished report.

Cliniko includes its whole feature set in every subscription. Telehealth is built in and free, with nothing for the patient to download, and group appointment types cover classes and rehabilitation groups. Splose also supports group appointments, so neither system has an edge there. Cliniko publishes no built-in waitlist or AI writing assistant; both jobs go to its connected-apps directory, where AI note-taking tools have a category of their own. Splose includes custom report building, while reporting depth remains the most consistent request in recent Cliniko user reviews. A practice that leans on its numbers should run the reports it depends on during both trials.

Integrations: Cliniko's App Directory vs the Splose API

Beyond the diary itself, most clinics run other software: accounting, card payments, exercise programmes, phone systems. How easily those tools connect to the practice management system is easy to overlook in a demo, and it is where these two products differ most.

Cliniko answers with a directory. It has published an API, the connection point other software uses to read and write its data, since 2013. Other companies have built 96 connected apps on Cliniko, spanning artificial intelligence, patient care, booking, exercise prescription, finance, forms and reporting. For a clinic, adding a new tool is usually a matter of choosing from that list; the connection already exists.

Splose's API is newer, and open in the same way. The documentation is public, and a clinic can switch a connection on from its own settings rather than applying to Splose first. Software connected this way works with the diary properly: it can read availability, write bookings and update patient records. What Splose does not yet have is a directory of ready-made apps. Its published integrations are Tyro Health, Xero, QuickBooks, Stripe, Physitrack, Mailchimp, Zoom, Teams and Google Meet; anything else connects through the API directly, built by the company behind the other tool. AI receptionists sit in exactly this layer on both platforms, answering the phone and writing bookings straight into the diary.

The practical step is the same on either system: list the tools the practice already relies on and check each one against both integration lists before deciding. A clinic that runs nothing beyond the PMS itself can weigh this section lightly.

Data Residency, Security and Compliance

Both vendors publish real detail on where patient data lives and how it is protected. The main difference is geography.

Splose stores Australian users' data in Australia on AWS. Data is encrypted in storage and in transit (AES-256 and SSL), and encrypted backups are taken hourly and kept off-site. Access is controlled through two-factor authentication, single sign-on and custom roles, and a change log records who changed what, and when. The company publishes how it complies with the Australian Privacy Principles and GDPR. Two things its security page does not say: where data for UK and New Zealand customers is stored, and whether Splose holds a certification of its own, such as ISO/IEC 27001. Clinics in those markets should ask the vendor both questions directly.

Cliniko stores data in the clinic's own region for Australia, the UK, the US, Canada and the EU. It publishes GDPR and Australian Privacy Act positions, encrypts data in transit and at rest, and offers two-factor authentication. Clinics outside those regions, New Zealand included, are hosted in Australia, and Cliniko publishes a guide to how that arrangement meets the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020.

For an Australian clinic the practical outcome is the same on either system: patient data stays in Australia. The difference shows outside Australia, where Cliniko publishes an answer for each region and Splose does not yet.

Which Practice Type Suits Which System?

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

• A solo practitioner or two-to-three practitioner clinic watching costs starts cheaper on Splose, at $27 a head against Cliniko's $45 solo rate and $95 band.
• An NDIS-heavy or disability provider plays to Splose's strongest suit: service agreements, funding tracking and portal-ready bulk claiming wired into the product rather than assembled around it.
• A growing multi-practitioner clinic finds Cliniko's flat bands cheaper from four practitioners, and hiring inside a band costs nothing. Price the real two-year roster on both pages.
• A notes-heavy caseload wanting AI dictation gets it in-product on Splose at $27 per user; on Cliniko the same job goes to a connected app with its own pricing.
• A telehealth-heavy clinic leans Cliniko, where video is native, free and group-capable; Splose runs sessions through the clinic's own Zoom, Teams or Google Meet.
• A mobile or community team gets scheduling help from Splose's waitlist map view and mobile-visit bookings.
• A practice that depends on niche tools has more ready-made options in Cliniko's 96-app directory; Splose covers the accounting, payments and claiming core and leaves the rest to its API.

How to Choose Between Splose and Cliniko Without Regret

Four steps keep the decision grounded rather than theoretical.

First, price the real roster, including two years of hiring plans, on Splose's and Cliniko's pricing pages. Count splose AI seats if the clinic wants them, or an AI note-taking app on the Cliniko side if the job matters there.

Second, work out what proportion of revenue arrives through the NDIS. Where that share is high, Splose's built-in agreements, funding tracking and bulk claiming are worth real admin time every week. Where it is low, the question barely registers, and claiming itself will not separate them: Medicare, DVA and health funds run through Tyro Health on both.

Third, list the tools the practice already relies on and check each against Cliniko's connected apps and Splose's integrations, remembering that anything missing on the Splose side means building against its API rather than installing from a directory.

Fourth, trial the workflows that fill the day: booking, notes, invoicing and claiming. Splose offers 14 days and Cliniko 30 days.

Wider context sits in the Australian practice management software roundup, and the rest of the shortlist has its own head-to-heads: Nookal vs Cliniko, Cliniko vs Jane, Zanda, formerly Power Diary, vs Cliniko and Cliniko vs Halaxy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Splose or Cliniko cheaper?

It depends on team size. Splose charges $27 per practitioner a month on a single plan, with all non-practitioner roles free. Cliniko charges a flat rate per band: $45 for one practitioner, $95 for two to five, then $145 and up. Splose is cheaper for one to three practitioners; Cliniko is cheaper at four practitioners and the gap widens with each hire. Add-ons move the line: splose AI is $27 per user on top, while on Cliniko an AI note-taking app is a separate third-party subscription, and Cliniko includes telehealth free where Splose uses Zoom, Teams or Google Meet. Both quote AUD excluding GST.

Which is better for NDIS providers?

Splose publishes far more NDIS capability. Service agreements build against the NDIS fee schedule and go out for digital signature, the Cases feature tracks each participant's funding with utilisation alerts and plan-expiry reminders, and NDIS bulk upload generates portal-ready payment requests. Cliniko handles NDIS billing through general invoicing, with no dedicated workflow published, which suits practices where scheme work is a small share of the caseload. Providers running mostly NDIS participants should trial the agreement, tracking and claiming steps on both before deciding.

How does Medicare and DVA claiming work on each?

The same way, through the same partner. Both Splose and Cliniko integrate with Tyro Health to submit Medicare bulk-bill and patient claims, lodge DVA claims and process health-fund claims without a physical terminal. Tyro Health's own onboarding, terms and transaction fees apply on either system, so claiming capability is effectively level in this comparison, and the decision rests on pricing, NDIS workflows and integrations instead.

Can UK clinics use Splose?

Yes. Splose runs offices in the UK and publishes UK per-practitioner pricing. Splose also offers a native Healthcode integration that submits claims directly to 11 UK private medical insurers, including Bupa, AXA Health and Aviva. It does not publish a UK data-residency position, so clinics in the UK should confirm with the vendor.

Does either system include AI?

Splose sells its own assistant, splose AI, at $27 per user a month; it drafts progress notes, reports, letters and emails, and converts voice recordings into report-ready text. Cliniko does not publish a first-party AI writing assistant and instead lists AI tools as a category in its connected-apps directory, where clinics choose a third-party product with its own pricing. Clinics comparing the two on AI should price the assistant they would use on each side, not just the base subscription.