Cliniko vs Halaxy vs Splose vs Nookal: which practice management software fits your practice

In short

• Splose and Halaxy fit NDIS-heavy therapy practices. Nookal and Cliniko fit physio, chiro and podiatry practices living on HICAPS and Tyro. Zanda’s Starter plan and Halaxy’s free core suit a solo psychologist.
• None of the five has a native Zapier or Make app. If you want automation, the API matters more than the feature list: Cliniko’s is the most documented, Halaxy’s costs credits, Zanda’s is still in closed beta.
• Switching costs more than any price difference. Pick for the next five years, not the next invoice.

Which one should you pick?

Pick by what the practice bills and what you want the software to do on its own. The feature lists are near-identical; the fit is not.

NDIS therapy practice (OT, speech, psychology, behaviour support). Splose or Halaxy. Both do NDIS bulk upload for PRODA and auto-billing to plan managers, both store Australian data in Australia, and both have AI note-taking built in. Splose charges $27 per practitioner a month; Halaxy’s core is free and you buy credits for SMS, telehealth and AI.

Physiotherapy, chiropractic, osteopathy, podiatry with health fund and Medicare volume. Nookal or Cliniko. Nookal does HICAPS Digital Claims and Tyro Health, including NDIS agency and plan-managed claims through HICAPS; Cliniko claims Medicare and DVA through Tyro Health and health funds through Tyro HealthPoint, but you cannot lodge NDIS claims from it.

Solo or two-clinician mental health practice. Halaxy (free core, direct Medicare) or Zanda Starter at $29 a month with direct Medicare and DVA claiming at no per-claim fee. Cliniko at US$45 a month is the dearest option for a solo operator once you convert it.

A practice that wants recalls, waitlist offers and reports running without the front desk. Cliniko or Splose, because their APIs are public and documented and the practice-automation market has built around them. Halaxy’s API works but costs 150 credits a month. Zanda’s public API is in a closed beta at the time of writing. Nookal has an API and a community-built Make app.

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What does each one cost?

Between nothing and about A$70 per practitioner a month, and the sticker price is the smallest part of it.

Cliniko is the outlier because it bills in US dollars with no Australian price list: US$45 a month for one practitioner, US$95 for two to five, US$145 for six to eight, US$195 for nine to twelve, with a month free on annual billing. (Cliniko pricing, fetched 28 September 2026) At current exchange rates a five-clinician practice pays roughly A$145 a month, which is cheaper per head than Nookal or Splose; a solo practitioner pays roughly A$70, which is dearer than any of them. Halaxy’s core is free for unlimited practitioners and locations, and the practice buys credits at A$0.15 to A$0.22 each for SMS, telehealth, AI Scribe and e-scripts; a busy front desk sending 400 reminders a month is spending about A$70 in credits. (Halaxy pricing) Splose is A$27 per practitioner a month ex GST with admin users free; the AI add-on is another A$27 per user. (Splose pricing) Nookal is A$49 or A$59 per practitioner a month ex GST depending on tier. (Nookal pricing) Zanda’s Growth plan is A$59 a month plus A$29 per additional practitioner, with admin users unlimited. (Zanda pricing)

The bigger costs are the ones that do not appear on the pricing page: SMS volume, card processing (1.5% to 1.95% plus a per-transaction fee on all of them), the AI add-on once clinicians start using it, and the hours your front desk spends doing by hand what the software could do on its own. A A$30 a month difference in subscription is one no-show a month. Choose on fit.

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Which one books patients from your website?

All five embed. Splose and Nookal give you the most control over what a new patient sees first.

Every one of the five puts a booking page on your site. The differences are in the flow. Splose lets you build separate booking pages by practitioner, location and service and matches returning clients to their record, which matters on a multidisciplinary site where a parent booking speech should not see the physio diary. (Splose, Online bookings) Nookal offers an any-practitioner flow (first available) and a practitioner-first flow, which is the difference between filling gaps and letting a patient follow a name. (Nookal, Online bookings, updated June 2025) Cliniko’s embed is plain and reliable with new-patient registration built in. Halaxy’s branded calendar carries intake forms. Zanda’s client portal drops in by iframe.

What none of them do is the work around the widget: the condition page that gets the patient there, the funding pathway that tells an NDIS participant they can book, the confirmation and after-visit texts, and the tracking that tells you which page produced the booking. That layer is what we build under websites and booking and membership systems, on whichever of the five you run.

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Which one claims Medicare, HICAPS and NDIS?

Halaxy and Nookal cover the most funding streams. Cliniko cannot lodge NDIS claims. Zanda has no HICAPS.

This is the line that should decide most practices, and it is the one the comparison sites get wrong. Cliniko processes Medicare bulk bill, patient claims and DVA through Tyro Health, and health fund claims through Tyro HealthPoint since HICAPS was phased out in 2023, but its own help centre says you cannot make NDIS claims through Cliniko; you track NDIS work as cases and billable items and claim outside it. (Cliniko help, NDIS) Halaxy generates the bulk upload for PRODA, tracks plan funding, and auto-bills the NDIA or the plan manager. (Halaxy help, NDIS) Nookal lodges NDIS agency-managed and plan-managed claims through HICAPS Digital Claims alongside health funds and Medicare via Tyro. (Nookal help, HICAPS Digital Claims) Splose includes NDIS bulk upload in the base plan. Zanda claims Medicare and DVA directly with no per-claim fee and does NDIS by CSV upload, but does not list HICAPS. (Zanda, NDIS features)

Write down every funding stream the practice billed last quarter, including WorkCover, CTP and DVA, and cross off any system that makes one of them a manual job. That usually leaves two.

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Which one can you automate?

None of the five has a Zapier or Make app. Automation runs on the API, and the APIs are not equal.

Zapier has no app for Cliniko, Halaxy, Splose or Nookal, and none of the four list Zapier or Make on their own integrations pages. (Cliniko connected apps; Splose integrations; Nookal integrations, fetched 28 September 2026) What each has instead:

1. Cliniko: a public API with a developer portal and the largest set of third-party add-ons of the five. Recall and reactivation add-ons such as Peptalkr and Cliniq Apps exist because the API made them possible. If you want a cancellation to offer the slot to the waitlist automatically, this is the easiest of the five to build it on.
2. Splose: a public API with documentation, built-in two-way SMS and native Mailchimp, which covers most reactivation work without a developer.
3. Halaxy: a public API and webhooks, but the API subscription costs 150 credits a month, and most of what practices automate (reminders, recalls, campaigns) is already inside Halaxy.
4. Nookal: an API with keys generated in-app, the most automatic native recalls of the five, and a community-built Make app.
5. Zanda: a public API in closed beta at the time of writing. Automation means waiting or working inside its own features.

The rule: if the thing you want runs inside the system (Nookal recalls, Halaxy campaigns, Splose SMS), use it. If it needs to talk to something outside (your website, a spreadsheet, a report to the owner every Monday), you need the API, and Cliniko or Splose will cost you the least developer time. We build on all five under practice automation; tell us what you need and we will say which ones make the job a day and which make it a fortnight.

Tell us what you need

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Which one has AI notes?

Halaxy, Splose and Zanda have it built in. Cliniko and Nookal connect to Heidi.

Halaxy’s AI Scribe charges one credit per 15 minutes of transcription with summaries free, keeps no audio, and says recordings are not used for training. Splose AI does voice to text, progress notes, report drafting and a question-answer function across a client’s past notes for A$27 per user a month. Zanda’s BizzyAI has a free writing assistant and a usage-charged scribe. Cliniko and Nookal both list Heidi Health as a connected app that pulls the appointment and writes the note back into the file; Nookal also sells its own voice-to-text licence at A$25. Grounded Scribe connects two-way to Cliniko and to Halaxy and ships NDIS report templates.

Whichever you use, the clinician reviews every note before it is saved, patients are told and consent, and you check where the audio and the text are stored. Ahpra’s guidance on AI puts responsibility for the record with the practitioner, not the software. (Ahpra, Meeting your professional obligations when using AI in healthcare, reviewed August 2024) We compare the standalone scribes in AI tools for allied health practices in Australia.

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Where is your data and who owns it?

All five host Australian accounts in Australia. Only Cliniko says in writing that you own the data.

Cliniko stores Australian accounts in Australia and states: “We are the custodians of your data, but you remain the owner.” (Cliniko, Security) Halaxy runs on AWS in Australia or the EU and calls itself the guardian of your data. Splose stores Australian users’ data in Australia on AWS. Nookal hosts Australian accounts in Australia with SOC 2 Type 2. Zanda hosts Australian accounts on AWS in Australia with ISO 27001. (Halaxy; Splose; Nookal; Zanda, security pages fetched 28 September 2026) Hosting location is table stakes. Ask the harder question before you sign: how do I get everything out, in what format, and how long does it take? The answer decides how expensive leaving will be.

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When should you switch?

When the system makes a funding stream manual, blocks the automation you need, or cannot book from your website the way patients arrive. Not for a feature or a price.

A migration costs the front desk two to four weeks of double-handling, retrains every clinician, breaks every booking link on the website and in Google Business Profile until you fix them, and loses history that did not map cleanly. Do it once a decade, for a structural reason. The three structural reasons are in the opener. A missing feature is usually an add-on or an API job; a price gap of A$30 a month is one no-show.

If you are choosing for a new practice or deciding whether to move, tell us what you need. Send the funding streams you bill, the professions in the practice and the three things you wish the software did on its own, and we will say which one or two fit and what the booking and automation layer would cost on top.

Tell us what you need

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