Free physiotherapy software: what the free options cover and when paying is worth it

You have just joined your regional college of physiotherapists, you rent a treatment room two afternoons a week at a centre in your neighbourhood and you have eleven patients. Appointments go in a notebook, reminders go out from your WhatsApp and you do your invoices with a Word template a classmate passed on to you. It works and it costs you nothing, so when you search for free physiotherapy software you want it to stay free and, while it is at it, take some work off your plate.

There are free options, and some will do the job for a while. Each one falls short somewhere different: some do not protect health data properly, others cap the number of patients or bookings, and others are only for invoicing. Here you will find what each one covers, what the Spanish Tax Agency says about invoicing with Excel or with its own free app, and how to tell when a paid plan works out cheaper than sticking with free.

Is there any truly free physiotherapy software?

It depends on what you mean by free. When a physio says they run their practice without paying anything, they are almost always using one of these four things:

• general tools you already have, such as a notebook, your phone's calendar, a spreadsheet and WhatsApp;
• the free plan of a practice management program, with a cap on patients, bookings or features;
• the free trial of a paid program, which lasts a few weeks;
• the Tax Agency's invoicing app, which only does invoices.

All four have their place. Practice management software for physiotherapists with a diary, clinical records, reminders and invoicing has running costs that somebody pays, such as servers, backups, automatic WhatsApp messages and support. Nearly always you pay them through a subscription, or the free plan sets limits so that you end up paying one. What helps is knowing what each option solves and from what point it starts costing you time.

Notebook, calendar and spreadsheet: the free tools you already have

With only a few patients, a notebook and your phone's calendar hold up well. You see the week at a glance, send the reminder from your WhatsApp the afternoon before and note payments in a spreadsheet. Plenty of physios start that way and there is nothing wrong with it.

The problems come with volume. With twenty patients a week, that is twenty messages typed by hand, and every time change means updating the notebook, the calendar and the chat. One day you forget to write down a cancellation and give away a slot that was no longer free. Another day you look for what you did with a patient three months ago and the note is on a loose sheet that never turns up.

Nor are they designed for the clinical side. Neither the calendar nor the spreadsheet gives you clinical records for each session, a signature on the informed consent form or an alert when a patient has not been in for two months. You can get by with folders and templates, but every workaround is another chunk of work at the end of the day.

Your patients' health data cannot go just anywhere

What you write down about each patient (the injury, the pain, the treatment and how they respond) is health data. The GDPR lists it among the special categories in Article 9, and Article 32 requires security measures in line with the risk. If a company stores that data for you, Article 28 says you must choose one that offers sufficient guarantees and sign a data processing agreement with it. You can read the full text of the General Data Protection Regulation on EUR-Lex.

With general-purpose free tools, all of that is on you. A spreadsheet of diagnoses saved in your personal account, a phone with no screen lock and photos of medical reports, or a WhatsApp group with names and injuries are very easy slips to make. Before you settle on any option, free or paid, ask yourself these questions:

• Where is the data stored, and is it encrypted?
• Who can open a patient's record, and is that logged?
• Are there backups, and who makes them?
• Can you sign a data processing agreement with whoever stores the data?

Think about a few years down the line too. Spain's Law 41/2002 requires clinical documentation to be kept for at least five years after each patient is discharged. And if you ever lose that data, Article 33 of the GDPR asks you to notify the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) within 72 hours at most, unless the loss is unlikely to put your patients at risk.

Free physio software: free plans and one-month trials

Free-forever plans

Some practice management programs have a permanent free plan. It is a legitimate way to get known and, if you are just starting out, it may be enough for a few months. Usually it comes with a limit designed to move you onto the paid plan as your practice grows: a maximum number of patients or bookings a month, no automatic reminders, invoicing as an extra or a single user.

There is nothing wrong with free physio software as long as you read the terms before you load your patients into it. Ask these questions:

1. What happens the day you hit the limit? Does the diary lock, do reminders stop going out or are you moved to another plan without being asked?
2. Can you take your patients and their records out in a format another program can read?
3. Does it include clinical records and consent forms, or only the diary?
4. Are WhatsApp reminders part of the free plan or an extra?
5. Is the invoicing ready for VeriFactu?

One-month free trials

A free trial is a different thing: you get the full program for a few weeks and then decide. It is the best way to find out whether it suits you, as long as you run it with your real diary and not with two made-up patients. Import your patient list from the spreadsheet you already have, book a normal week's appointments and let the reminders go out on their own. Check from the start how the trial ends, too. If you were asked for a card when you signed up, note the date it finishes, because with many programs the first charge goes through automatically at that point.

Invoicing for free: Word, Excel and the Tax Agency's app

This is where VeriFactu comes in. Under the dates currently in force, the programs used to issue invoices will have to meet the regulation on invoicing computer systems by 1 July 2027 if you are self-employed, and by 1 January 2027 if you invoice as a company. On 5 October 2026 the Ministry of Finance announced that it expects to extend the deadline, but until that appears in the BOE, Spain's official gazette, those dates stand.

What if you invoice with Word or Excel? According to the Tax Agency's frequently asked questions, the regulation does not apply to you if you only use them to enter the invoice details, issue and print the invoice and keep it. If the spreadsheet generates the register of issued invoices, for example with a macro, it becomes an invoicing computer system and has to meet every requirement. The Tax Agency points out that it may check how you use these tools.

The other free route is the AEAT's own invoicing app. According to its user guide (in Spanish), it is aimed at people who issue few invoices a year, opens in your browser with a digital certificate, an electronic ID card or Cl@ve Móvil, and sends each record to the Tax Agency as you go. It has limits that matter to a physio:

• it only issues full invoices, not simplified ones, and every invoice must include the recipient's details;
• invoices and their records can only be managed from that app, and they cannot be exported to carry on invoicing with another program;
• it is not connected to your diary or your payments, so you type every session in again.

For a handful of invoices a month to a club or a company, it may be enough. With thirty private patients a week, typing each session twice soon adds up. If you want to see how it works straight from the diary, we explain it on the VeriFactu invoicing for physiotherapists page.

What free really costs you

Free never shows up on your bank statement, but you pay for it in hours. Do the maths with your own week. If you send twenty-five reminders by hand and each one takes a couple of minutes to find the contact, write the message and check the time, that is almost an hour a week on reminders alone. Add copying appointments from the notebook to the calendar, reconciling payments and doing the month's invoices one by one.

Then there are no-shows. A patient who does not turn up is an hour you do not get paid for, and one you could have given to someone else if you had known in time. If an automatic reminder saves you a single session a month, a €4.99 plan plus VAT has already paid for itself.

And then there is the risk, which you do not notice until it happens: the phone that breaks with no backup, the notebook left on the train or the spreadsheet someone deletes by accident.

When paid physio software is worth it

There is no magic number of patients. These signs suggest that free no longer fits and that paid physio software saves you more than it costs:

• you spend more than an hour a week sending reminders and moving appointments by hand;
• you have already had a patient miss a session because the reminder never reached them, or a double booking;
• you work in more than one place, say your own room, a club and some home visits, and find it hard to keep track of where you need to be each day;
• you do dry needling or other invasive techniques and need consent forms that are signed and properly stored;
• you sell session packs and keep track by hand of how many each patient has left;
• your patients ask to book online or message you at all hours to change their appointment;
• the VeriFactu dates are getting closer and you invoice with a spreadsheet that does more than print.

If you recognise yourself in two or three of these, free is already costing you money, even if it never shows up on an invoice.

My Fisio Agenda: one month free, then from €4.99 a month

My Fisio Agenda does not have a free-forever plan. It has a one-month trial with every feature, no card needed, and a very cheap plan for when you are starting out. It is software for physiotherapists made in Spain that opens in the browser on your computer, tablet or phone, and it brings together what the free options leave scattered across several places:

• day, week and month views, with recurring sessions, several locations and treatment rooms, and different working hours for each location;
• clinical records for each session, private and encrypted, and consent forms the patient signs on screen;
• WhatsApp reminders: manual ones, sent from your phone, are unlimited on every plan, and automatic ones go out 24 hours before with buttons to confirm or cancel the appointment;
• payments, session packs and VeriFactu-ready invoices, with a simplified invoice when the patient does not give you their tax ID, up to €400;
• a booking link showing your free slots and "My Space", where each patient sees their appointments and documents;
• an import wizard that brings in your patients and appointments from an Excel or CSV file, so you do not start from scratch.

When the month ends, nothing is charged, because you never gave a card. If you carry on, the Semilla plan costs €4.99 a month for up to 15 patients, with 20 automatic reminders and 20 VeriFactu invoices a month; Junior costs €19.99 with unlimited patients, and Senior €29.99 for busy diaries. Prices exclude VAT, there is no minimum contract, and you will find them all on the plans and pricing page. You can start today, free for 1 month, no card needed.