Comparison
HelpDental Assist vs OpenDentist
Prices and features checked 17 August 2026
OpenDentist is a UK ambient dental scribe founded by Dav Singh, a dentist, and incorporated in January 2025. It is the closest product to Assist in intent: ambient only, copy and paste into any practice software, structured dental output including BPE and BEWE.
Their Pro plan is £50 a month, with patient letters and consent forms included.
The honest summary is that these two products are trying to do the same job in the same way, and the differences are price, trial terms, whether letters and consent forms come with it, and what happens to the parts of the note the software worked out for itself.
01The comparison
Assist and OpenDentist side by side.
Price
Assist:£99 per dentist per month. £79 a month if you pay for the year.
OpenDentist:£50 a month per clinician on the Pro plan, billed monthly. £20 a month for foundation dentists during foundation year. Corporate pricing on request.
Source: OpenDentist's own pageFree trial
Assist:28 days free. No card.
OpenDentist:28 days with full access. A card is required at signup, nothing is charged until the trial ends, and it converts to a paid subscription unless you cancel.
Source: OpenDentist's own pageHow it captures the appointment
Assist:Ambient. It listens to the appointment and the words appear on screen as they are said.
OpenDentist:Ambient. They describe listening to the natural conversation, with no dictation and no clicking, and a note in under a minute.
Source: OpenDentist's own pageGoes into your practice software
Assist:Copy and paste into any system. There is no native integration.
OpenDentist:Copy and paste, described on their site as no integrations to set up. They list SOE, R4, Dentally, Exact and CS R4+ as compatible on that basis.
Source: OpenDentist's own pageTemplates
Assist:Your own templates and protocols, written and edited by you.
OpenDentist:Built in templates you can modify, custom templates, and a template store for sharing with colleagues.
Source: OpenDentist's own pageScores and diagnoses
Assist:Assist does not calculate scores or suggest diagnoses in production mode.
OpenDentist:BPE and BEWE scoring and automated diagnosis are listed as Pro plan features. Their homepage also describes caries risk and recall intervals being extracted.
Source: OpenDentist's own pageShows where each line came from
Assist:Shows whether text came from the appointment, a selected template or clinician-approved saved wording. The clinician reviews and edits the note before copying.
OpenDentist:Not described in those terms. Their trust page states that clinician review of AI output is mandatory.
Source: OpenDentist's own pagePatient facing documents
Assist:Notes only. Assist does one job.
OpenDentist:Patient letters and digital consent forms on the Pro plan.
Source: OpenDentist's own pageWhere the data sits
Assist:UK and EU cloud services. The full processor list is in the data processing agreement.
OpenDentist:UK only, on AWS in the London region, per their trust and privacy pages.
Source: OpenDentist's own pageWho builds it
Assist:Built in the UK by a practising dentist.
OpenDentist:OpenDentist Ltd, registered in England since January 2025, Huddersfield. Founded by a dentist.
Source: OpenDentist's own page| Assist | OpenDentist | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | £99 per dentist per month. £79 a month if you pay for the year. | £50 a month per clinician on the Pro plan, billed monthly. £20 a month for foundation dentists during foundation year. Corporate pricing on request. |
| Free trial | 28 days free. No card. | 28 days with full access. A card is required at signup, nothing is charged until the trial ends, and it converts to a paid subscription unless you cancel. |
| How it captures the appointment | Ambient. It listens to the appointment and the words appear on screen as they are said. | Ambient. They describe listening to the natural conversation, with no dictation and no clicking, and a note in under a minute. |
| Goes into your practice software | Copy and paste into any system. There is no native integration. | Copy and paste, described on their site as no integrations to set up. They list SOE, R4, Dentally, Exact and CS R4+ as compatible on that basis. |
| Templates | Your own templates and protocols, written and edited by you. | Built in templates you can modify, custom templates, and a template store for sharing with colleagues. |
| Scores and diagnoses | Assist does not calculate scores or suggest diagnoses in production mode. | BPE and BEWE scoring and automated diagnosis are listed as Pro plan features. Their homepage also describes caries risk and recall intervals being extracted. |
| Shows where each line came from | Shows whether text came from the appointment, a selected template or clinician-approved saved wording. The clinician reviews and edits the note before copying. | Not described in those terms. Their trust page states that clinician review of AI output is mandatory. |
| Patient facing documents | Notes only. Assist does one job. | Patient letters and digital consent forms on the Pro plan. |
| Where the data sits | UK and EU cloud services. The full processor list is in the data processing agreement. | UK only, on AWS in the London region, per their trust and privacy pages. |
| Who builds it | Built in the UK by a practising dentist. | OpenDentist Ltd, registered in England since January 2025, Huddersfield. Founded by a dentist. |
02Which to pick
When OpenDentist is the better pick
- You are a foundation dentist. Their foundation year rate is £20 a month and we have no equivalent.
- You need to name the exact cloud region the data sits in. Theirs is AWS London.
- You want patient letters and consent forms from the same tool.
When Assist is the better pick
- You want to trial it without a card and without it converting to a paid subscription on its own.
- You want the note to distinguish what was said from saved template text before copying.
28 days free. No card required.
03Questions
Questions about OpenDentist.
Is OpenDentist cheaper than Assist?
Their Pro plan is £50 a month, with £20 a month for foundation dentists. Assist is £99 monthly or £79 a month paid annually. Assist shows the source of note text for the clinician to review before copying.
Do both listen to the appointment?
Yes. Both are ambient and neither asks you to dictate afterwards.
What is the difference in the trial?
Both run 28 days. OpenDentist takes a card at signup and converts to a paid subscription unless you cancel. Assist takes no card, so nothing happens if you forget about it.