Talkspace vs. BetterHelp: Key Differences Explained

About Talkspace and BetterHelp

BetterHelp and Talkspace are among the best online therapy platforms that offer mental health support through their websites and mobile apps. They work in the same way as telehealth or telemedicine.

Our methodology and testers

We researched and wrote this review of two well-known online therapy platforms, drawing on each platform’s website, independent reviews by patients and therapists, and peer-reviewed research on online therapy worldwide. Both BetterHelp and Talkspace passed our rigorous vetting process.

Most importantly, we had a few Healthline staff test the platforms for themselves. Parisa Syed and Laramy Applekamp tested BetterHelp for more than a month. Meanwhile, Grace tested Talkspace for a month, and Christy Snyder for more than a week. We use these testers’ quotes and experience throughout this article as we compare Talkspace and BetterHelp.

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Comparing prices: Talkspace vs. BetterHelp

One of the benefits of online therapy is that it typically costs less than in-person therapy. With that in mind, here’s a cost comparison.

Cost was one of the issues both Grace and Christy had with Talkspace.

“$69 a week to message a therapist isn’t a lot, but the cost can be up to $165 a week if not more,” Christy said. “In using traditional/in-person mental health services with my insurance, I have paid anywhere from $50 to $185 per therapy session.”

Grace noted that the value depends on how you use the platform. “I think the price of this product is a little expensive. This is mainly because I don’t enjoy texting as much as calling, so I didn’t text as much. Since we only get four 30-minute sessions, the price seems a little steep for calling. With that being said, I can see how this price might be worth it to someone who enjoys having a lot of texting conversations with their therapist. That’s just personally not for me!”

Indeed, for users who want features like unlimited messaging, the cost may be worthwhile. But if you’re mainly looking for a once-a-week live session, you may be able to find a more affordable option.

Talkspace may also offer an out-of-pocket cost share for psychiatry services if you have access to Talkspace through a health plan provider. Check with your health insurance plan for more information.

The sign-up process

BetterHelp and Talkspace have similar enrollment processes, but they differ slightly in how they match you with a therapist.

On both platforms, an initial questionnaire asks about you, your life, goals, and preferences. Both services create a secure virtual therapy room. This is where you can leave messages, upload documents, videos, and audio files, and otherwise interact with your therapist.

Both Talkspace and BetterHelp offer services with qualified and licensed therapists and counselors who may specialize in one or more areas, such as teen or couples counseling.

According to both brands, you can change therapists or stop therapy at any time.

BetterHelp

Parisa shared that signing up for BetterHelp was a simple process.

“Filling out the forms and choosing what type of therapist you were looking for was a bit tedious, but it worked out for me,” she said.

Laramy found the process straightforward. It took her about 20 minutes to complete the survey.

“I messed up one question,” she said, “and when I navigated back to change it, the interface instead took me to the beginning of the quiz, and I had to restart.”

Both Laramy and Parisa were matched almost immediately after submitting their questionnaires.

“They sent me a message 2 hours after I submitted my request, and I was matched,” Parisa said. “I could either choose a different therapist or schedule an appointment with the one they matched me with.”

Talkspace

Talkspace’s intake is processed by a licensed therapist, who serves as a matching agent. However, scripted responses are part of the interaction from time to time.

Christy noted that the Talkspace sign-up process was quick and easy.

“I felt that the survey asked the right questions about my mental health history and current status without getting long-winded or superfluous,” she said. “The therapist I was matched with was in touch pretty quickly.”

Grace agreed that “Talkspace had a really simple sign-up process, and the matching service worked really well for me.”

Talkspace lets you see a typical therapy journey up front, so you’ll know the milestones, checkpoints, progress reports, and opportunities to adjust your growth plan before you start.

Additionally, Talkspace offers psychiatry services, including medical care and prescription medication management, from licensed psychiatrists and therapists trained to treat sleep disorders such as insomnia.

Types of services offered

A note on privacy

In-person licensed therapists and psychiatrists must protect patient privacy and follow codes of conduct regulated by governing bodies such as the American Psychological Association and state licensing boards. Online therapists follow the same rules and regulations as in-person therapists. Check your state’s laws for more detailed information.

If you have personal information about your appointments on your mobile device (such as a phone or laptop), that information may be accessible to others if someone else has access to your device or if you lose your phone or computer. Be sure to keep your personal devices safe and never share your password with anyone you don’t trust.

During your therapy sessions, try to be in as quiet and private a place as you can.

Talkspace

Talkspace offers a wider range of services, including:

• individual therapy for adults
• couples therapy
• therapy for children ages 13 and older
• teen therapy
• sleep therapy
• psychiatry, including medication management and diagnostic evaluations

Talkspace allows you to choose from three therapist matches, and you can switch therapists if you choose to. The platform allows you to reach your therapist at any time through:

• text
• audio messages
• pictures
• video messages

And you receive a guaranteed response during weekly business hours.

BetterHelp

BetterHelp offers similar services but does not provide therapy for children (BetterHelp’s sister site, Teen Counseling, offers therapy for teens ages 13 to 19). With BetterHelp, you can access individual therapy for adults and family therapy.

BetterHelp lets you message your therapist anytime during business hours. BetterHelp does not allow you to choose your therapist, but it does provide more communication options. You can switch between the following communication options as needed:

• messaging
• live chatting
• phone calls
• video conferencing

Comparing the platforms’ features

Both platforms offer blog content that addresses various mental health, wellness, and personal growth topics. Many of the resources are available to the public.

Talkspace’s special features

• The sign-up platform offers multiple short videos that help explain each step of the process.
• An online symptom tracker allows you to document your clinical progress.
• Talkspace integrates with Happify, a science-based positive psychology app.
• Through Talkspace’s EAPs, you can find resources for financial wellness, legal advice, and work-life planning.
• Talkspace has also announced a psychiatry service for people who need mental health care and prescription management. Staffed by psychiatrists and nurse practitioners, Talkspace Psychiatry offers an initial evaluation at $299 and follow-up visits at $175 per session.
• Talkspace is available on desktop, mobile, and app. Grace especially enjoyed using the “incredibly user-friendly and easy to use” mobile site. However, she noted that the app could be “a little glitchy.”
• Grace also said it was “very easy” to schedule an appointment. She added, “The app guided you through choosing times based on your therapist’s availability.”

However, Talkspace Psychiatry professionals cannot prescribe controlled substances such as Adderall and lorazepam.

BetterHelp’s special features

• You have weekly access to more than 20 interactive live group sessions moderated by therapists.
• BetterHelp lets you talk with your therapist by phone, while Talkspace does not offer phone contact, citing security and HIPAA (patient privacy) protocols. (BetterHelp states that all messages exchanged between you and your therapist are confidential. It also uses a 256-bit encryption system to keep your information private.)
• BetterHelp operates a sister site, TeenCounseling.com, that allows parents to participate in choosing a therapist for their child. Counseling is confidential, and only your child has access to the therapy room, but your child’s therapist will send you an alert if it’s time for an intervention.
• BetterHelp has both an app and a desktop site. Laramy used the desktop site and found it easy to navigate. Parisa said she preferred the app: “The app itself is pretty straightforward. I like how it has a journaling tab with prompts. It’s also cool how your therapist can provide worksheets for you after a session.”
• Parisa also said it’s easy to schedule appointments with your therapist through the app, which features a user-friendly scheduling tool and calendar.

Major differences between Talkspace and BetterHelp

Both therapy platforms offer some notable benefits:

• lower cost than in-person therapy
• convenient access to licensed, experienced mental health professionals

Below are the major differences between the two services.

Pros and cons: Talkspace vs. BetterHelp

Customer reviews and brand reputation

BetterHelp

Some BetterHelp users complain about being charged even when their therapists are unavailable for sessions.

According to Laramy and Parisa, BetterHelp was a positive overall experience. Laramy noted that she would continue to use BetterHelp after her testing period.

“I appreciated the questionnaire that went into matching me with a therapist (trying to research an in-person therapist felt very overwhelming, so I appreciated the guesswork being taken out of it),” she said.

Parisa enjoyed her therapist and the help she received and recommends this platform for anyone new to therapy or looking to try online therapy.

Talkspace

Some Talkspace reviewers complain about the app and say the Talkspace website tends to be buggy, making it harder to attend your sessions.

“I would highly recommend this service to readers who prioritize texting with their therapist as an important means of communication.”

Overall, Christy liked the flexibility Talkspace offers but said, “I think because I am so used to a more traditional model, some of the features were not to my liking—but could certainly work for others.”

She would recommend the service to others because there are “multiple options for communicating with your therapist, all of which work for different lifestyles or personality types.”

Meanwhile, Grace felt the platform was better suited to people who prefer texting over video calling.

Talkspace vs. BetterHelp vs. the competition

Talkspace and BetterHelp in scientific studies

The popularity and adoption of services like Talkspace and BetterHelp have outpaced scientific research, but both have featured in recent studies.

Teletherapy can improve mental health

For instance, a 2020 study found that 12 weeks of two-way messaging on Talkspace reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety. Work published in 2019 involving 319 BetterHelp users also found that engaging in online therapy reduced depression symptoms after 3 months.

In the 2020 study, improvements were greater among people with no prior experience with therapy. The authors suggested that BetterHelp’s multimodal communication style (namely, the blend of video and text-based sessions it offers) may be effective for adults with depression, as it allows for flexibility and increases access.

Improving mental health, but posing cost and technology barriers

While several studies show that online therapy can be effective for certain mental health conditions, others show that services do come with drawbacks.

In 2022, researchers published a study showing that although participants’ depression scores improved by the sixth week of the study, 37% had stopped using the platform by then. Younger people, those with higher education and prior therapy experience, and those living with a partner were more likely to quit Talkspace early. That said, those with a therapist with over 10 years of experience were more likely to continue using the platform throughout the study.

Cost was one reason younger people disengaged from Talkspace, and a lack of internet access and confidence in digital tools may prevent older people from using this and similar services.

Concerns over quality of care

A 2023 study analyzed customer reviews of popular teletherapy apps, including Talkspace and BetterHelp. While they found that teletherapy can increase access to care and that many people have positive experiences with these apps, they highlighted some important drawbacks.

Authors note that therapists using teletherapy platforms like Talkspace and BetterHelp may earn less than the average U.S. therapist’s hourly rate and face high caseloads as a result, which may affect their quality of care.

The subscription models that teletherapy apps often use also have their own pros and cons. They can encourage people to engage with the services more regularly, but they can also be inflexible when unexpected problems arise, such as platform issues, therapist unavailability, or changes in a person’s circumstances.

The authors acknowledge that their study is limited by their reliance on customer reviews, which reduced the range of perspectives they could consider and may have introduced bias. However, they suggest improving care on teletherapy apps by increasing therapist compensation, making payment models more flexible, and prioritizing better usability and therapist availability.

A note on therapists’ care

It’s important to remember that therapists are people, too, and their environment can affect their work with patients. This means that employment conditions, such as workload, pay, and other factors, may affect the quality of care you receive as a patient, whether you see a therapist in person or online.

According to some online sources, including employee and patient reviews, Talkspace therapists may have larger caseloads, meaning they care for more patients at once. BetterHelp therapists may earn higher pay, and reviews indicate greater satisfaction among therapists working with BetterHelp.

Despite this, Parisa noticed that her BetterHelp therapist seemed rushed.

“My therapist is great, but definitely was not 100% present,” she said. “She seemed distracted, though she chimed in and said insightful things when it felt right.”

Christy’s Talkspace therapist was helpful overall, but she sent many automated or copied-and-pasted messages about her availability and other issues.

“Those messages were frequent and made me feel a little bit like a number rather than her patient,” Christy said. “But I understand if you are serving a large client/patient base that you may have to communicate in a way that is less personal.”

However, individual cases may vary, and people should not judge a therapist’s care based on the company they work for.

Frequently asked questions about Talkspace and BetterHelp