Abridge vs Shortwave
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Abridge if you want ambient ai that drafts clinical notes from patient conversations (Copilot, enterprise); choose Shortwave if you want ai-native email client with an agent that searches, drafts, and organizes (Copilot, subscription).
| Abridge | Shortwave | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Ambient AI that drafts clinical notes from patient conversations | AI-native email client with an agent that searches, drafts, and organizes |
| Type | product-with-agents | product-with-agents |
| Autonomy | Copilot | Copilot |
| Pricing | enterprise | subscription · $24/seat/mo (Business, billed annually) |
| Best for | enterprise | smb, consumers, enterprise |
| Deployment | saas | saas |
| Modalities | voice, text | text, email |
| Models | proprietary | model-agnostic |
| Protocols | rest-api | rest-api |
| Integrations | Epic, athenahealth | Gmail, Google Calendar |
| Capabilities | 4 documented | 4 documented |
Abridge
- +Deep EHR integration (Epic's first Pal, athenahealth) lowers workflow friction
- +"Auditable AI" links output back to source so clinicians can verify it
- +Broad real-world deployment across health systems and specialties, with strong investor confidence
- -Clinician review is mandatory and remains real work; safety still depends on the human reviewer
- -Accuracy, time-savings, and burnout claims are vendor or partner figures, not independently verified, and AI scribes can introduce errors
Shortwave
- +Fast natural-language email search across years of mail
- +Clean Inbox-style UX from the team that built Google Inbox
- +Genuinely agentic actions, not just chat
- -Gmail-centric; non-Gmail support is narrower
- -Pricing is steep and annual-only ($24-$100/seat)
Which should you choose?
Abridge is ambient ai that drafts clinical notes from patient conversations, best for enterprise. Shortwave is ai-native email client with an agent that searches, drafts, and organizes, best for smb, consumers, enterprise. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.