Nookal vs Cliniko for Australian Clinics: Which PMS Is Right for Your Practice?

If you run an allied health clinic in Australia, two names come up again and again when practice management software (PMS) is on the table: Nookal and Cliniko. Both are Australian-built, cloud-based, trusted by thousands of clinics, and cover the core essentials of running a modern practice: scheduling, clinical notes, online bookings, invoicing, patient communications, and reporting.

They are also different enough that the "right" choice depends heavily on the shape of your clinic. A solo podiatrist in Perth and a twelve-practitioner physiotherapy group in Melbourne with NDIS, workers' comp, and private billing streams are solving different problems. The software that suits one may frustrate the other.

This guide walks through how Nookal and Cliniko stack up across pricing, features, integrations, and day-to-day operations. It's written from a neutral standpoint; BookedSolid integrates directly with both systems, so we have no axe to grind either way.

What Nookal and Cliniko Have in Common

Before getting to the differences, it's worth noting that for most clinics, Nookal and Cliniko solve the same fundamental problems. Both are cloud-based, accessible from any device, and require no local installation. Both are built specifically for allied health; physiotherapy, chiropractic, osteopathy, podiatry, psychology, speech pathology, and similar disciplines. Both comply with the Australian Privacy Principles and encrypt patient data at rest and in transit.

At the feature level, both platforms cover:

• Appointment scheduling with a visual diary
• Online bookings for patients, embeddable on your website
• Customisable clinical note templates
• Automated SMS and email reminders to reduce no-shows
• Invoicing, payments, and basic financial reporting
• Integration with Xero for accounting and common payment gateways
• Telehealth, included at no extra cost
• Multi-location and multi-practitioner support

Both also offer a 30-day free trial, so you can test either platform with real workflows before committing. If your requirements are fairly standard – a handful of practitioners, straightforward private billing, online booking, and good clinical notes – either system will serve you well.

The differences start to matter when your clinic has specific operational complexity, pricing sensitivity, or growth plans.

Nookal at a Glance

Nookal was founded in Brisbane and is built exclusively for the allied health market. It has invested heavily in features that matter to multi-practitioner, multi-disciplinary clinics – particularly around case management, claims handling, and reporting depth.

Where Nookal tends to stand out:

• Case management with payer setup, referrer tracking, session counting against budgets, and the ability to send insurance claims directly from the system.
• Detailed reporting across staff KPIs, real-time occupancy, practitioner performance, and financial metrics; useful for practice owners who want to actively manage clinic economics, not just pull end-of-month numbers.
• Digital client registration forms that flow straight back into the patient record, reducing admin at intake.
• Granular staff permissions and audit trails across an unlimited number of user groups.

The trade-off is that Nookal has more to configure, and some clinics find the learning curve steeper than Cliniko's. It's also fair to say that smaller or simpler practices may not use the depth of functionality Nookal provides, in which case they're paying for complexity they don't need.

Pricing starts at AUD $55 per practitioner per month (excluding GST) and scales per practitioner, with small per-practitioner discounts in larger bands.

Cliniko at a Glance

Cliniko was founded in Melbourne and has grown to over 65,000 practitioners across more than 95 countries. Its philosophy is simplicity: a clean interface, every feature included at every tier, and pricing that scales only with the number of active practitioners.

Where Cliniko tends to stand out:

• Ease of use. New receptionists and practitioners are often productive within hours, not days. This matters for clinics with staff turnover or seasonal hires.
• Transparent pricing with no feature gating. Whether you have one practitioner or twenty, every user gets the full platform.
• Unlimited free admin and reception users. Only active practitioners count towards your bill, which can meaningfully reduce cost for front-desk-heavy clinics.
• Clean clinical notes with drag-and-drop body diagrams and a well-documented API that makes third-party integrations straightforward.
• A strong reputation for customer support and a track record of never raising external investment; an ethos some clinic owners value.

The main limitation for Australian clinics is the lack of native Medicare and DVA claiming. Practices processing Medicare-subsidised services generally have to handle claiming through a separate tool. For private-pay-heavy clinics this is a non-issue; for practices with significant Medicare volume, it's a real consideration.

Australian pricing is banded rather than strictly per-practitioner: AUD $45/month for a solo practitioner, $95 for 2–5, $145 for 6–8, $195 for 9–12, $295 for 13–25, and $395 for 26–200 (all excluding GST). That banded structure means per-practitioner cost drops sharply as clinics grow; a meaningful advantage at scale.

Pricing Compared

Both platforms publish Australian pricing in AUD (excluding GST), but they use different models; and the difference has real consequences as a clinic grows.

Nookal prices per practitioner. A solo practitioner pays AUD $55/month, a two-practitioner clinic pays $85, a three- or four-practitioner clinic pays $120, a five- to eight-practitioner clinic pays $195, and so on. Per-practitioner cost does gradually taper in larger bands (roughly AUD $23/practitioner at twenty clinicians), but the overall bill continues to scale up with practitioner count.

Cliniko prices per band, with one whole-clinic price covering every practitioner in that band. A solo practitioner pays AUD $45/month. A two-to-five-practitioner clinic pays $95 total, regardless of whether there are two or five practitioners. Six-to-eight pays $145. Nine-to-twelve pays $195. Thirteen-to-twenty-five pays $295. Twenty-six to two hundred pays $395. Reception and admin users are free and unlimited, so only active practitioners count towards the band.

At almost every clinic size, Cliniko's banded pricing works out cheaper on the monthly line, often substantially. A side-by-side comparison makes this clearer:

There's really only one scenario where Nookal is cheaper than Cliniko on headline price: a two-practitioner clinic, where Nookal's $85 beats Cliniko's $95 by $10/month. At three practitioners the picture flips. By five practitioners, Cliniko is $100/month cheaper. By twenty, it's more than $160/month cheaper. And at the largest tier (26–200 practitioners), Cliniko's flat $395 becomes a genuinely different economic proposition.

A few framing notes are worth flagging. First, both pricing models have tier cliffs; the jumps between bands can be meaningful, so the per-practitioner figure at the top of a band is often more honest than the figure at the bottom. Second, SMS credits, Medicare claiming (where applicable on Nookal), and payment processing fees are pass-through costs on both platforms, so the headline monthly fee is not the full monthly cost; it's worth modelling your own SMS volume. Third, pricing changes; the figures above were verified against each vendor's pricing page in April 2026.

Where does this leave the decision? Cliniko wins on pure cost at nearly every clinic size. Nookal's price premium is real but buys you something specific: case management, native Medicare and DVA claims handling, and deeper reporting. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on your billing mix and operational complexity.

Features: Where They Differ

Both systems cover the core well, but the depth varies in specific areas. Here's where the practical differences tend to surface.

Clinical Notes and Documentation

Cliniko is widely praised for the simplicity of its clinical notes. Templates are easy to build, body charts are drag-and-drop, and most practitioners are writing notes confidently within their first week. The trade-off is less depth for clinics that need highly structured, discipline-specific documentation workflows.

Nookal's clinical notes offer more structure, including case-level notes that tie to specific treatment plans and funding sources. For practices running NDIS plans, workers' compensation cases, or complex rehab programs where the same patient may have multiple parallel cases, Nookal's approach maps more naturally to how the work actually flows.

Scheduling and Online Bookings

Both systems provide solid online booking modules that can be embedded into clinic websites and used by patients 24/7. Cliniko's booking flow is famously clean and low-friction for patients. Nookal's is more configurable, with deeper options for class and group booking – useful for practices that run reformer pilates, hydrotherapy, or group rehab sessions alongside one-to-one appointments.

Recurring appointments, class attendance tracking, and waitlist management are available in both, but Nookal tends to offer more options for clinics running structured group programs.

Billing, Claiming, and Payments

This is the area where the gap is widest. For private-pay clinics, both systems handle invoicing, receipts, and payment collection cleanly. Both integrate with Xero and common payment gateways.

For clinics processing Medicare, DVA, or workers' compensation claims, Nookal has a meaningful advantage. Its case management model is built for this work: set the payer, assign a budget, track sessions against that budget, and submit claims through the system. Cliniko, by contrast, does not offer native Medicare or DVA claiming. Clinics using Cliniko typically handle claiming through an external service, which works but can add a layer of manual effort.

If a significant share of your revenue runs through third-party payers, this is the single most important factor in the decision.

Integrations and the Ecosystem

Cliniko has a well-documented public API and a wide third-party ecosystem, which tends to attract new tools first. Nookal also has an open API and a strong set of integrations, with particular strength in allied-health-specific tools like Physitrack for exercise prescription.

For AI and automation specifically, both platforms integrate directly with BookedSolid. Calls handled by the AI receptionist write straight into the same calendar and patient records your team already uses, in both systems. BookedSolid is Nookal's exclusive AI receptionist integration partner, which means the integration is natively supported and maintained in close partnership with Nookal's product team. For Cliniko users, BookedSolid offers the same real-time appointment booking, rescheduling, and cancellation capability through Cliniko's API.

Reporting

Nookal's reporting is noticeably deeper. Real-time occupancy, clinician performance charts, and KPI dashboards are part of the standard feature set. For practice owners who actively manage clinic utilisation and individual practitioner economics, this matters.

Cliniko's reporting is solid for core operational metrics like revenue, cancellations, no-shows, outstanding invoices, but is less granular than Nookal for performance analytics. For clinics that primarily want to run the business day to day rather than drill into fine-grained KPIs, this is usually sufficient.

Which Is Better for Different Types of Clinics?

There is no universally "better" option, but the fit tends to break down along predictable lines.

Cliniko tends to be the stronger fit for:

• Solo practitioners and small teams who want to be operational quickly.
• Private-pay-heavy practices where Medicare claiming isn't a daily task.
• Clinics that value simplicity, a short training curve, and a clean patient-facing booking experience.
• Practices with proportionally more reception and admin staff than clinicians (free unlimited admin users can meaningfully reduce cost).
• Multi-practitioner clinics that are cost-sensitive; at three or more practitioners, Cliniko's banded pricing is materially cheaper than Nookal.

Nookal tends to be the stronger fit for:

• Allied health practices with significant Medicare, DVA, NDIS, or workers' compensation volume; where native case management and claims handling pay back the pricing premium.
• Clinics running structured group programs alongside one-to-one care (reformer, hydrotherapy, rehab classes).
• Practice owners who want deeper reporting, real-time occupancy data, and practitioner performance analytics to actively manage clinic economics.
• Two-practitioner clinics on a tight budget; the one clinic size where Nookal is genuinely cheaper than Cliniko on headline price.
• Clinics that prefer the linearity of per-practitioner pricing for forecasting, rather than banded tier cliffs.

A practical heuristic: if your clinic's complexity is mainly clinical, Cliniko usually works. If the complexity is mainly administrative – multiple funding sources, complex case management, detailed reporting – Nookal usually pulls ahead.

Nookal vs Cliniko: Side-by-Side

A summary of the main points:

Where an AI Receptionist Fits Alongside Either PMS

One factor that increasingly shapes the PMS decision is what sits around it. Both Nookal and Cliniko offer online booking, but most clinics still field a significant volume of phone calls for appointment bookings, rescheduling, cancellations, and general enquiries. That phone volume is what most stretches a front desk, particularly during peak periods and after hours.

AI receptionist tools that integrate directly with Nookal or Cliniko can handle these routine calls end-to-end: the AI answers, understands the request, checks real-time availability in the PMS, books or moves the appointment, and sends the same automated confirmation your online booking module would send. Complex or sensitive calls are escalated to a human team member with full context.

BookedSolid is built specifically for this purpose and integrates natively with both Nookal (as its exclusive AI receptionist integration partner) and Cliniko. The choice between Nookal and Cliniko doesn't lock you out of call automation either way, but it's worth confirming any AI or automation tools you're considering actually integrate with your chosen PMS before committing.

Making the Decision

For most Australian clinics, the choice between Nookal and Cliniko comes down to three questions:

1. How much administrative complexity does your clinic handle? If you're largely private-pay with straightforward billing, Cliniko's simplicity is a feature, not a limitation. If Medicare, DVA, NDIS, or workers' comp claims are a regular part of the workload, Nookal's case management is built for that reality.

2. How much do you value simplicity vs. depth? Cliniko is easier to learn, easier to train new staff on, and faster to set up. Nookal has more to configure but rewards that investment with deeper reporting and workflow control.

3. How price-sensitive are you, and at what clinic size? At three or more practitioners, Cliniko's banded pricing is materially cheaper than Nookal; often by $100–$160/month as the clinic grows. If that gap matters to you and your billing is mostly private-pay, Cliniko usually wins on economics. If you need Medicare, DVA, or claims handling natively, Nookal's price premium often pays for itself in saved admin time.

Both platforms offer 30-day free trials, and given how central a PMS is to daily operations, it's worth using them. Run a week of real bookings, notes, and invoicing through each and see how each fits your team's rhythm.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Nookal or Cliniko cheaper for an Australian clinic?

As of April 2026, at almost every clinic size, Cliniko is cheaper. Cliniko's solo-practitioner plan is AUD $45/month (ex GST) against Nookal's $55. A five-practitioner clinic pays $95/month on Cliniko versus $195 on Nookal. A ten-practitioner multi-site pays $195 versus $295. The only size where Nookal is cheaper is a two-practitioner clinic ($85 vs $95).

That said, SMS credits, payment processing, and claims handling are pass-through costs on both platforms, so the monthly subscription isn't the total monthly cost. Also, Nookal's native Medicare and DVA claiming can pay back the price difference for clinics with significant third-party billing.

Does Cliniko support Medicare and DVA claiming in Australia?

Cliniko does not offer native Medicare or DVA claiming. Clinics processing Medicare-subsidised services typically handle claiming through a separate integration or external service. Nookal, by contrast, includes case management with budget tracking and the ability to send claims from within the system, which is why Nookal is often preferred by practices with significant third-party billing volume.

Can I switch between Nookal and Cliniko if I change my mind?

Yes, both platforms offer data export, and both have import and migration tools to bring data in from other systems. Nookal provides both free and paid data conversion services for migrating from other PMS platforms. A switch is non-trivial – expect data cleansing, configuration time, and staff retraining – but it's a well-trodden path in both directions.

If you're unsure which platform fits, running a full week on each 30-day free trial before committing is the lowest-risk way to decide.

Do Nookal and Cliniko both integrate with AI receptionists?

Yes. Both platforms have public APIs and integrate with BookedSolid's AI receptionist. BookedSolid is Nookal's exclusive AI receptionist integration partner, and offers direct integration with Cliniko for real-time appointment booking, rescheduling, and cancellations by phone. Regardless of which PMS you choose, call automation is available, though it's worth confirming any specific AI or automation tool you're evaluating actually supports your chosen system before committing.

Which PMS is best for a solo practitioner in Australia?

For most solo practitioners, Cliniko's simplicity and quick setup tend to be the better fit; particularly if the practice is primarily private-pay. Nookal is a strong alternative for solo practitioners who process Medicare, DVA, or NDIS claims regularly, or who anticipate growing into a multi-practitioner clinic and want reporting depth from the start. The best approach is to trial both for a period and see which feels less in the way.

Which is more secure: Nookal or Cliniko?

Both platforms comply with the Australian Privacy Principles and encrypt data in transit and at rest. Cliniko also states compliance with GDPR, PIPEDA, and HIPAA standards; Nookal indicates compliance with industry standards including HIPAA and GDPR. For most Australian clinics, both meet the required privacy and security bar – any evaluation should focus on specific features, fit, and workflow rather than security as a differentiator.