Doximity Scribe vs Nabla (2026)
Both have a no cost path for an individual clinician, and on compliance they are level: Doximity covers every user under a business associate agreement, and Nabla requires any customer subject to HIPAA to accept its published agreement before the account can be used at all. The decision is therefore about the product rather than about who can lawfully use the free tier. Nabla holds the only positive randomized efficiency result in this category and integrates with more than 15 record systems; Doximity has no located record system integration, no published accuracy figure and no described review gate, and its significance is distribution rather than technology. So the honest sequence is to start with Doximity if you want a note today and nothing else, and move to Nabla when the note has to reach the chart and the programme has to be defended with evidence.
- Free to every verified United States clinician and student with a business associate agreement covering all users, and no contract conversation to reach it, where the alternative withdrew its published pricing during 2026 in favour of a sales process.
- No audio stored or retained, recordings processed in real time and discarded once the note is generated, and the third party that processes the encounter is named.
- No procurement at all. A clinician can be documenting the same day without a contract, a quote or an IT conversation, which is the whole proposition.
- The only positive randomized controlled trial result in this category, a 9.5 percent reduction in time in note against control and the only arm to meet its primary endpoint, against a product with no study, benchmark or independent rating at all.
- It reaches the record system, with more than 15 platforms named including Epic, Oracle Health, athenahealth, NextGen, Greenway and Altera, where no record system integration was located for the alternative.
- A published data lifecycle that completes: audio not stored, no training on user data, a configurable 14 day retention sized around clinician review, and backups expiring seven days later.
This comparison is published by AI Health Index, an independent research platform that compares healthcare AI vendors objectively. Doximity Scribe and Nabla are each graded against the same capability taxonomy, from each vendor's own public materials and the regulatory record, under the AI Health Index verification standard. No vendor pays for placement, and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Plain facts
| Fact | Doximity Scribe | Nabla |
|---|---|---|
| Primary category | Ambient Scribes | Ambient Scribes |
| Founded | 2010 | 2018 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Paris, France |
| Website | doximity.com | nabla.com |
Side by Side
Each record in one paragraph
Written to be quoted whole. Each paragraph states what the AI Health Index verified about the vendor, with the caveats attached. Generated from this pair’s live capability grades, so it moves when a grade moves.
The AI Health Index awards Doximity Scribe its top capability grade on AI Safety and PHI Stewardship and Commercial Transparency. Set against Nabla, Doximity Scribe grades higher on Commercial Transparency. Its thinnest published disclosure sits on AI Liability and Recourse. Grades reflect evidence the AI Health Index could verify at the last review, so a low grade records disclosure the vendor has not published rather than a capability it has been shown to lack.
Source: AI Health Index, August 2026
The AI Health Index awards Nabla its top capability grade on several axes, including AI Centrality, Clinical and Operational Evidence and AI Safety and PHI Stewardship. Set against Doximity Scribe, Nabla grades higher on several axes, including AI Centrality, Autonomy and Oversight Model and Model Supply Chain Disclosure. Grades reflect evidence the AI Health Index could verify at the last review, so a low grade records disclosure the vendor has not published rather than a capability it has been shown to lack.
Source: AI Health Index, August 2026
Questions buyers ask
Should we choose Doximity Scribe or Nabla?
On the axes where the AI Health Index separates them, Doximity Scribe grades higher on Commercial Transparency, and Nabla grades higher on several axes, including AI Centrality, Autonomy and Oversight Model and Model Supply Chain Disclosure. Nabla leads on the greater share of scored axes, but the split means the decision turns on which constraint is binding rather than on an overall winner.
Where do Doximity Scribe and Nabla differ most?
The widest separation the AI Health Index records between Doximity Scribe and Nabla is on Commercial Transparency, where Doximity Scribe grades A and Nabla grades C. That axis sits in the Commercial group, so it should carry the most weight for a buyer whose binding constraint is contracting, scope and what the price actually covers.
Where do Doximity Scribe and Nabla grade the same?
The AI Health Index grades Doximity Scribe and Nabla the same on several axes, including Model and Technology Transparency, AI Safety and PHI Stewardship and AI Governance and Bias Disclosure. Neither holds an advantage the index can evidence on those axes, so they should not carry weight in a selection between these two.
What have Doximity Scribe and Nabla not disclosed?
At the last review, at least one of Doximity Scribe and Nabla published thin or absent detail on AI Liability and Recourse. The AI Health Index treats an absent disclosure as a gap in the public record rather than a failure of the product, so these are the axes to get in writing during diligence instead of inferring from the grade.
Related comparisons
Other published head to head assessments involving these vendors or their closest peers. The full set for this category is on the Ambient Scribes page.
Doximity publishes no accuracy figure, no described review gate or sign off step, and no confidence threshold, acceptance rate or edit burden figure, which is a conspicuous set of absences for a product distributed to a very large share of United States clinicians. An earlier version of this comparison held that Nabla's free tier did not include a business associate agreement and concluded the free plan was unusable in United States production.
That claim traced to competitor comparison pages and is wrong: Nabla publishes its agreement in full and requires any customer subject to HIPAA to accept it before the services can be used. Corrected 13 September 2026. Nabla's randomized result comes from Lukac et al, NEJM AI, 26 November 2025, NCT06792890, conducted in outpatient care at a single academic health system. Neither vendor publishes an accent or dialect performance analysis.