Best AI Dental Scribe Software in 2026: Bola AI vs. Intake.Dental vs. Archy
“AI scribe” gets used loosely in dental marketing right now — sometimes it means a transcription tool that cleans up your dictation, sometimes it means hands-free perio charting, sometimes it’s a feature bullet buried inside a full PMS pitch. I looked at three vendors that actually ship documentation AI today (not roadmap slides) and ranked them by how well they do the specific job of getting what happens in the chair into the chart, accurately, without adding steps.
One disclosure up front: I build Intake.Dental, which is on this list. I’ve tried to be harder on it than on the other two, and you should weigh that against the fact that I’m not a neutral party here.
1. Bola AI
Bola AI is the most purpose-built tool on this list. Founded in 2017 by an ex-MIT NLP researcher and now distributed through Patterson and Henry Schein One (it powers Dentrix Voice), it does one thing across three modes: Voice Perio for hands-free periodontal charting, Voice Restorative for charting under two minutes, and an AI Scribe for formatting dictated clinical notes. Nothing about front-desk automation, patient comms, or scheduling — it’s clinical documentation, full stop.
The vendor claims 99% accuracy on Voice Perio and roughly 5 minutes per chart versus 15 minutes manually, with a published Heartland Dental case study claiming 9x ROI — all vendor figures, not independently audited. Third-party reach numbers are also vendor-published: 10,000+ dentists/hygienists, 3M+ charts completed, 7M+ exams. The one independent review source I found, The Molar Report, scores it 8.0/10, though review volume on G2/Capterra is thin relative to the claimed user base, which is worth noting rather than ignoring.
Pricing is unpublished — you go through a sales consultation, and no reliable third-party dollar figure exists. That opacity is the honest knock against it. If you want a scribe and nothing else, and you can tolerate a sales call to get a number, Bola AI is the strongest fit here. Full review: /reviews/bola-ai.
2. Intake.Dental
Intake.Dental’s clinical-notes module drafts notes from the day’s schedule — it knows who’s on the chair and what procedure is planned before you open your mouth — and it learns each provider’s documentation style over time. It also does voice dictation and voice perio charting, and writes back to the PMS through direct adapters (Dentrix Ascend, Open Dental, CareStack) or a broader integration layer covering 90+ systems.
Here’s the honest caveat, since I hold this one to a higher bar: the scribe isn’t sold standalone. It’s part of the $799.99/month Practice Autopilot bundle, which also includes the AI receptionist, insurance verification, and payments — features a practice that just wants better notes doesn’t need. If notes are your only pain point, you’re paying for a lot of front-office machinery you may not use, and there’s no long public review history yet to lean on (this is a young platform, founded 2025). Pricing is fully published at intake.dental/pricing with a 14-day trial and no contracts, which is more transparency than most of this category offers — but transparency isn’t the same as fit. Full review: /reviews/intake-dental.
3. Archy
Archy is a full cloud PMS — scheduling, charting, billing, claims, imaging, payments — that happens to ship real AI features: AI Scribe for notes, AI Voice Perio for hands-free charting, and Clinical AI Imaging for radiograph analysis. The imaging piece is licensed from Pearl, not built in-house, which matters if you’re evaluating it as a standalone imaging AI rather than a scribe. Archy’s broader “AI agents” for eligibility and claims follow-up are still in development per its own pricing page, so don’t buy on the promise of those.
Pricing is published: $899/month per location, unlimited users, though third-party listings (Capterra, DentalStack) show older figures around $299–$805, meaning the price has risen and you should confirm the current number directly. Archy raised $47M total, including a $20M TCV-led Series B in October 2025, and reports ~300% YoY growth and 2.5M patients served (company-reported, Crunchbase News). It’s a strong pick if the scribe is a bonus on top of replacing your whole PMS — a poor pick if you just want documentation help and already like your current system.
| Bola AI | Intake.Dental | Archy | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scope | Clinical documentation only | Notes + perio, bundled in front-office platform | AI Scribe + Voice Perio inside full PMS |
| Pricing | Unpublished, sales-consultation | Published, $79.99–$799.99+/mo tiers | Published, $899/mo per location |
| Standalone scribe purchase? | Yes | No — bundled | No — PMS feature |
| PMS relationship | Integrates with Eaglesoft, Dentrix, Open Dental, Curve, Fuse, Henry Schein One | Layers on 90+ PMS via integration + direct adapters | Archy IS the PMS |
| FDA clearance | Unverified/none published | Unverified/none published | Unverified/none published |
| Independent review evidence | The Molar Report 8.0/10; thin G2/Capterra volume | No long public review history (founded 2025) | Thin review volume vs. incumbents |
How we chose
Ranking weighted three things: how directly the product does scribe work versus how much unrelated functionality it bundles in, whether pricing is public or requires a sales call, and how much independent (not just vendor-published) evidence backs the accuracy and adoption claims. Bola AI wins on documentation-specificity but loses points on pricing transparency and review depth. Intake.Dental and Archy both bundle the scribe into larger platforms — reasonable if you need the platform, a poor buy if you don’t.
If your practice is happy with its current PMS and just wants faster, better notes, start with Bola AI’s sales conversation and press them for a written quote before signing. If you’re shopping for a PMS replacement anyway, compare what Archy’s AI Scribe and Intake.Dental’s notes module do differently on /compare/archy-vs-intake-dental rather than treating the scribe feature as the deciding factor.
Verdict: For a scribe as a scribe, Bola AI is the most defensible pick on this list — narrow, deep, and distributed through channels (Patterson, Henry Schein One) that suggest real market validation, even if its pricing opacity is a legitimate frustration. Intake.Dental’s notes are genuinely clever about pre-populating from the schedule, but I’d only recommend it here if you’re already sold on its broader front-office bundle — buying it for the scribe alone is the wrong reason. Archy is the right call only if a full PMS switch is already on the table.
Sources: bola.ai, bola.ai/solutions/voice-perio, opendental.com/site/bolaai.html, themolarreport.com/reviews/bola-ai, trytwofold.com blog, archy.com, archy.com/pricing, news.crunchbase.com, dentalstack.io/reviews/archy, capterra.com/p/10004235/Archy, intake.dental/pricing.