It’s not exactly a surprise that mental health assistance in this country isn’t great, but here are some sobering facts for you: The average cost of therapy is $200 or more per session, and nearly a third of private practice therapists don’t accept insurance. Online therapy giant BetterHelp aims to address this affordability crisis with accessible, convenient therapy, qualified therapists, and handy subscription plans.
I’m a therapist who owns a private practice and has tested BetterHelp in the past, and I’m passionate about helping people find accessible therapy services. I’m here to sort through the platform’s claims, explore if BetterHelp stays true to its mission, and share my take on whether or not this is a platform worth trying. Spoiler alert: technical difficulties put a damper on the experience, and my therapist was friendly but not my cup of tea. However, I still feel like there could be a valuable service for certain people–stay with me and I’ll explain.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Easy sign-up process
Quick therapist matching process
Simple to switch therapists
Plenty of therapists available
Pricing
The BetterHelp website says services can vary from $70 to $100 a week—I was billed $95 per week (I’m in California).
BetterHelp’s pricing is dependent upon your location, preferences, and therapist availability. The more in-demand BetterHelp’s services are in a certain area, the more money you can expect to pay. This is fairly unusual as a pricing model—most online therapy services offer a flat rate no matter where you are. Still, even BetterHelp’s higher prices are comparable to (or even less than) other companies’ services.
When I tested BetterHelp back in 2023, I was billed on a monthly basis. This time around, I had the option to be billed on a weekly basis, which I opted for. BetterHelp does not accept insurance, though the company has told Verywell Mind that they’re looking to add insurance coverage in the near future.
How I Signed Up
My journey with BetterHelp had a good start, thanks to its super-easy sign-up process that took less than five minutes. I clicked on a button indicating I was looking for individual therapy, then I was prompted to answer a series of questions to help them match me to a therapist. The questions started with asking me about my gender identity (so they could address me with the proper pronouns), relationship status, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, why I’m seeking out therapy, my expectations for therapy, and more. Sharing whether or not I am married can also be helpful information for a prospective therapist to have because it gives them a heads up on how my life factors could impact the issues I’m bringing to therapy.
Details like this make it more likely that your assigned therapist will be the right one for you. For example, if you say you’re Christian, you can be matched with a Christian therapist, or questions about your LGBTQIA+ identity can lead to a match with an ally or a therapist who has a similar identity.
I also liked being able to share what I wanted to work on in therapy. Options included feeling depressed, struggling with maintaining relationships, and wanting to improve self-confidence. Later on in the intake process, I also had the chance to further elaborate on what was bringing me to therapy with a write-in answer, which I appreciated. It was also great that I could specify the style I hoped for from my therapist, including having a therapist who listens, challenges my beliefs, assigns homework, and teaches me new skills. All of these questions helped me—and BetterHelp—better understand why I wanted to begin therapy and what I expected from my therapist.
Once I completed these intake questions, I was taken to my client portal. Since I had used BetterHelp in the past, I was still matched with my old therapist. I indicated I wanted to switch therapists and, at the click of a button, was immediately presented with a few options. I was interested in working with someone who had a holistic approach to therapeutic work, had experience working with women’s issues, was a woman of color, and specialized in anxiety. Out of the five I was presented, I landed on someone who seemed like a fit for me.
Each result option also showed the therapist’s next available appointment, which I liked—this meant that I could choose someone who I could meet with sooner rather than later. My chosen therapist’s availability aligned with mine, she was a woman of color, and she seemed especially versed in working with anxiety and big life changes. With excitement, I booked my first appointment.
Therapist Qualifications
I had no concerns about BetterHelp having qualified therapists – every provider I found on the website was licensed and seemed, for the most part, to have some form of specialized training, such as EMDR, a form of somatic trauma therapy, and DBT, a mindfulness-inspired therapy focusing on managing relationships and difficult feelings. When seeking online therapy, it is very important to work exclusively with licensed therapists, for your own protection. For example, should a therapist violate their code of ethics through sexual harassment or disregard your right to confidentiality, you can report them to their licensing board. This holds licensed therapists accountable and requires them to adhere to ethical and professional behavior. Types of licensed providers working for BetterHelp include clinical social workers, professional counselors, and marriage and family therapists.
As I’ve mentioned, although I appreciated the breezy sign-up, I found the intake questions used to match a client with a therapist to be quite brief. This brevity can translate to there not being enough information provided to match you with a therapist who is truly a good fit.
There is also a place on the website where you can search for providers, but you can only filter your search by location, not specialty or therapeutic modalities used. This lack of specificity can result in having to sort through tons of search options, which can be overwhelming.
How Therapy Sessions Work
Sessions at BetterHelp range between 30 and 45 minutes. You and your therapist can discuss what amount of time feels best for your treatment. I didn’t realize this was a topic open for discussion until I asked my therapist how long our session was and she explained we could decide together. We ended up settling to be flexible, noting that each session length would be dependent on the content of the session and how I am feeling emotionally. This was a new approach to therapy session lengths that I found interesting and might be especially helpful for those with schedules that are often changing. However, session length does not affect the price—you’ll still pay the same amount whether you choose 30-minute or 45-minute sessions.
You can hold a session via video, phone, or text messaging. Scheduling a session is simple—all you have to do is log into your patient portal, view your therapist’s calendar, and pick a slot that works for you. I noticed many providers had evening and weekend availability, so there seemed to be a lot of leeway for those with tricky scheduling constraints. This was also true of my provider, who had early morning appointments available, which were ideal for my schedule as a new mother.
How My Therapy Went
I logged on for my session and immediately noticed a video delay. I pointed this out to my therapist, since I knew it would be a challenge for me to stay focused. We both made attempts to remedy the situation by checking our respective internet connections and turning our camera and volume on and off. It made no difference. After a few minutes, I gave up and resigned to trying to ignore the video lag.
Though I was perturbed by the tech glitch, I was looking forward to my time with the therapist. She was kind and warm, but very quiet. She asked me open-ended questions, like asking me to explore how a feeling might be related to a past event in my personal history. This led me to reflect on how my past was shaping my present, which I appreciated. However, she was typing notes as I talked, leading to a pause before responding to me. Add that to the glitchy delay, and I felt disconnected from her.
However, on a practical level, she mainly hit her marks. After I let her know I was a new mom and wanted some support with feelings of anxiety, she invited me to share how I felt about working with her, given that she doesn’t have children. This struck me as a good way of assessing potential barriers to building a close relationship, because building a rapport within the therapeutic relationship is critical to the efficacy of treatment. Simply put, the safer we feel, the more vulnerable we will be in therapy, which allows us to unearth our deepest emotions, fears, and pain points so we can heal them. I didn’t have any qualms—but I liked being asked.
At the close of our first session, I didn’t find it to be especially noteworthy. The video glitches kept me a bit on edge throughout the session, and while she did encourage introspection, it didn’t feel especially revelatory. We didn’t get too deep into my feelings of anxiety and how it relates to new motherhood. However, I understood our session was just the beginning of our work together.
My next session was more of the same. I told her about a major life decision I am deliberating, and she was thoughtful in exploring my options. However, the video lag persisted, and she continued to take detailed notes that led to long pauses in our conversations. While I knew she was listening to me—it was evident in the questions she asked—I still didn’t feel a connection. I do feel like this simply wasn’t the right therapist for me. That said, not having a connection with a therapist doesn’t mean they are a bad therapist. Through her questions and note-taking, it was clear she was engaged and attuned. However, her approach didn’t lead me to feel much of a rapport, and BetterHelp’s video platform glitches certainly didn’t help.
Switching Providers
BetterHelp makes changing providers very easy. As soon as I logged in to my client portal, I was automatically taken to a private chat with my therapist. On the left-hand side of the screen, I saw the therapist’s name and photo, with a button reading “Change therapist” right under it. After clicking that button, I was taken to a page that asked me to rate how likely it was that I would recommend my therapist to others, with the options ranging from 1 to 10. Underneath that were questions prompting me to outline my preferences for the new therapist. These questions included the preferred identity of my new therapist, like sexuality and race, and issues the therapist could help with. If I chose to answer these questions and follow through with switching therapists, I would have to wait 24 to 48 hours to be matched with someone new.
When it comes to canceling a session, you need to provide 24 hours’ notice; otherwise, you will be charged $15.
Privacy at BetterHelp
Privacy has long been an issue when it comes to online therapy, and BetterHelp is no exception. The service is HIPAA-compliant (meaning it follows the federal rules about protecting personal health information, or PHI), so the information you share in sessions is private, but its privacy policy states that it collects and might share “visitor data,” like your IP address and how you interact with the website and app, with third parties like advertisers.
There is reason to double-check BetterHelp’s policies: In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission ordered the platform to pay $7.8 million as a result of data misuse. BetterHelp disclosed private data, like email addresses, IP addresses, and health information, to social media platforms for advertising purposes. There is still an open class-action lawsuit against BetterHelp regarding its privacy practices, even though it appears that BetterHelp has since revised and corrected these policies.
Be sure to take a look at BetterHelp’s privacy policy before signing up.
My Previous Experience (and How This Time Compared)
My first go with BetterHelp was underwhelming. I saw two BetterHelp therapists previously. The first one was fine, with no major issues, but just didn’t feel like a good fit, similar to my therapist this time around. I had a session with my second therapist via messaging and found both my therapist and the format of messaging as therapy to be entirely too informal. The messaging format left no room for any meaningful emotional processing; my therapist was messaging using casual shorthand, and it ultimately felt like an awkward conversation with little substance.
This go-around with BetterHelp was only slightly improved, since I didn’t have any issues with my recent session being too informal. However, I didn’t feel lit up by the care I received, and I remained frustrated by the platform’s glitches.
Final Thoughts
BetterHelp makes getting therapy quick and easy. Signing up is simple, switching therapists can happen with the click of a button, and you can have your therapy session in any format you please. It’s also half the price of regular, in-person therapy—and comparable to or even a bit less in price than other online therapy services.
Users seem to like it: We surveyed 100 BetterHelp users, and 96% of them stated they would recommend the platform to others. Another 87% rated BetterHelp’s services as very good or excellent overall. However, these numbers fall squarely in the middle of the other 54 online therapy companies whose users were surveyed, which also reflects my experience—not terrible but not great.
However, there are tradeoffs to everything. The platform may be glitchy and the quality of care you receive can vary greatly. Without the issue of data safety, I would endorse BetterHelp with just the caveat that it may take a few tries to find the right provider and format of therapy that works for you. The former data safety issues, though, give me pause.
If you’re considering BetterHelp, be sure to give the privacy practices notice a thorough read, try out a week before committing to a full monthly subscription, and don’t be afraid to change therapists or therapy formats if you’re not getting the care you’re seeking.
