Prices read on Elsevier's store in October 2026
ClinicalKey AI price and subscription cost for physicians and residents
$39 a month or $349 a year for a clinician. $19 a month or $199 a year for a resident. Institutions get a quote.
Every individual plan opens with a 14-day trial that turns into a paid, auto-renewing subscription. Here is what each plan buys and where a prescribing check still needs its own tool.
Press Run check for the interaction, contraindication, dosing and alternatives on this pair.
Not matched, so not checked: .
Nothing on this pair matched a row in the reference tables behind this check. That is not a clearance: it means these references do not name this combination.
Guideline-based alternatives
That was your demo check, run on the same references the desk uses. The desk adds renal dosing against an estimated clearance, hepatic review, unlimited checks, saved history and your sign-off on every card.
The on-page check covers five prescribing scenarios and never invents clinical output, so it will not produce a card for this pair.
The full Prescriber.io desk checks any regimen against interactions, contraindications, and renal or hepatic dosing, with cited sources for you to verify.
Interaction
Contraindication / allergy check
Dosing guidance (renal / hepatic)
Guideline-based alternatives
Decision support. You verify against official sources and sign.
Clinician in the loopDecision support for licensed clinicians. Prescriber.io does not diagnose or prescribe and is not a substitute for professional clinical judgment.
Check · flag · suggest · you review and sign off
The short answer
How much does ClinicalKey AI cost?
ClinicalKey AI costs an individual US clinician $39 a month or $349 a year, which Elsevier works out to $1.28 and $0.96 a day. Residents pay $19 a month or $199 a year. Hospitals and health systems buy through sales, and no institutional price is published. Both individual plans start with 14 days free, then charge the card and renew automatically until you cancel. ClinicalKey AI is a separate subscription from the ClinicalKey library.
Read from the rendered clinician and resident plan pages on Elsevier's subscription store. Sale codes on the store banner change often, so we leave them out.
Four ways to pay
ClinicalKey AI plans and prices
Same product on every card. What changes is who you are and how often you are billed.
Individual, monthly
$39 a month
$468 over 12 months
Billed monthly, cancel any time. The flexible option for a locum stint or a trial run past the free period.
Individual, annual
$349 a year
About $29 a month, $119 less than paying monthly
Billed once a year and marked "Best value" by Elsevier. Auto-renews.
Resident
$19 a month
Or $199 a year
Shown against a struck-through $69 and $699, so the resident discount is the headline. Same product.
Institution
Quote only
No public price
Hospital and health system licenses go through sales. Epic single sign-on is offered here.
Resident list prices appear on Elsevier's page as $69 a month and $699 a year. Prices in US dollars.
ClinicalKey AI free trial
What happens between the free trial and the first charge
Day 0
You pick monthly or annual and enter a card. Nothing is charged yet.
Days 1 to 13
Full access. Query history and CME credits build up in your account.
Day 14
The trial converts to the plan you chose: $39 for monthly, $349 for annual.
Each renewal
The plan renews automatically until you cancel it in your account.
Pick monthly for the trial if you are unsure. A cancelled monthly plan costs nothing; an annual plan you forget about bills $349 on day 14.
What the ClinicalKey AI subscription buys
You type a clinical question in plain language and get a written answer with citations you can open. The difference from most chat tools is the source pool. Answers draw on Elsevier's full-text books, among them Braunwald's Heart Disease, Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics and Sabiston Textbook of Surgery, its journals including the Lancet family, society guidelines from groups such as ACC, AACE, CHEST, ACEP and AGA, plus the New England Journal of Medicine and abstracts from more than 1,100 journals.
Two features matter at renewal time. CME and Maintenance of Certification credit is earned, tracked and claimed inside the product, with support from the American Boards in eight specialties. And query history stays in your account, which is why Elsevier's upgrade page pushes you to subscribe before the trial ends rather than after.
You can add patient context to a question, such as age, comorbidities and current medications, and the answer takes it into account. It answers what you ask. It does not watch a medication list and raise the problem you did not ask about.
Monthly or annual, worked out
Twelve months at $39 is $468. The annual plan is $349, so committing up front saves $119, about 25 percent. Annual wins if you will use it for at least nine months of the year. A locum physician covering a three-month contract pays $117 on monthly and walks away.
For a resident the math is gentler: $19 a month is $228 a year against $199 annual, a $29 difference. Most residents are better off on monthly until they know whether their program or hospital library already licenses it.
If the bill goes to a practice rather than you personally, add the other tools each clinician needs. ClinicalKey AI at $349 plus a prescribing checker at $288 is $637 a year per clinician, still below a single DynaMedex with Dyna AI subscription at $675.
Cost per clinician over one year
- ClinicalKey AI, resident annual$199
- ClinicalKey AI, annual$349
- ClinicalKey AI, 12 months at $39$468
- Prescriber.io Solo, annual$288
ClinicalKey AI answers questions; Prescriber.io runs prescribing checks. Different jobs, listed together because most clinicians price both.
What else a ClinicalKey AI buyer prices
ClinicalKey AI against the other clinician AI and reference tools
Honest about the job each one does. They are not all substitutes.
| Tool | Main job | Cost per clinician a year | Read at |
|---|---|---|---|
| ClinicalKey AI | Cited AI answers over Elsevier books, journals and guidelines | $349 billed yearly, $468 paid monthly | Elsevier store, Oct 2026 |
| OpenEvidence | Cited AI answers from licensed journals | $0 for verified US clinicians | openevidence.com, Oct 2026 |
| DynaMedex with Dyna AI | Edited reference, Micromedex drug content, AI assistant | $675, or $599 without Dyna AI | dynamedex.com, Oct 2026 |
| UpToDate Pro Plus | UpToDate topics with Expert AI | Not published, shown after country and role | UpToDate store, Oct 2026 |
| Glass Health Pro | AI scribe plus AI clinical reasoning | $972 billed yearly | glass.health, Oct 2026 |
| Prescriber.io Solo | Prescribing checks: interactions, contraindications, renal and hepatic dosing | $288 billed yearly, $49 a month paid monthly | Our own pricing page |
Where ClinicalKey AI clearly wins: textbook depth with a published price. At $349 it costs $326 a year less than DynaMedex with Dyna AI, and it prints a separate resident rate. UpToDate's Expert AI sits inside Pro Plus, whose price the store shows only after you choose a country and role, as we document in UpToDate Pro Plus and Expert AI.
Where it is not the cheapest route: quick cited literature answers. OpenEvidence does that for verified US clinicians at no charge, laid out in OpenEvidence cost and pricing. If you want an AI that also writes the visit note, Glass Health pricing starts at $20 a month. And if you are weighing the ClinicalKey library against UpToDate, our ClinicalKey vs UpToDate comparison covers both.
Where ClinicalKey AI stops and a prescribing check starts
An answer engine is strong on the question you type. A new prescription raises several at once: does the drug interact with anything on a fourteen-item list, does a diagnosis on the problem list rule it out, does a documented allergy block it, and does an eGFR of 34 change the dose. Typing those one by one takes minutes, and the one that gets skipped is the one nobody thought to ask.
Prescriber.io runs all of them on the actual list every time. It checks interactions, flags conflicts through the contraindication checker, surfaces renal and hepatic dose adjustments and suggests guideline-based alternatives, each with a cited source. You review the card and sign off. It does not answer open clinical questions, which is why it costs $24 a month rather than competing with ClinicalKey AI on breadth.
Many clinicians will reasonably keep ClinicalKey AI for questions and add a dedicated checker for prescribing. If you are deciding between a broader set of AI tools first, our guide to the best medical AI for physicians groups them by the job each one does.
Straight answers
Questions people search about ClinicalKey AI pricing
How much does ClinicalKey AI cost?
ClinicalKey AI costs $39 a month or $349 a year for an individual clinician on Elsevier's US store. Residents pay $19 a month or $199 a year. Institutions get a quote, with no public price. Both individual plans start with a 14-day free trial that converts to paid and renews automatically unless you cancel.
Does ClinicalKey AI offer a free trial for individual clinicians?
Yes. The individual plan page offers 14 days free, then the trial converts to the monthly or annual plan you picked and renews automatically. You can cancel during the trial. Elsevier also runs a separate landing page with a 90-day trial button, so check which offer your link opens before you enter a card.
Is ClinicalKey AI free for residents?
No, but it is heavily discounted. The resident page lists $19 a month or $199 a year, shown against a struck-through $69 and $699. It is the same product with the same 14-day trial. Many residency programs and hospital libraries also license it, so check your institution before paying.
Is ClinicalKey AI worth it compared to free OpenEvidence?
It is worth paying for if you want answers grounded in full-text textbooks such as Braunwald and Nelson, society guidelines and CME or MOC credit tracked in one place. If you mostly need quick cited literature answers, OpenEvidence does that at no cost for verified US clinicians. Many clinicians try both during the 14-day trial.
Can I earn CME with ClinicalKey AI?
Yes. Elsevier says clinicians can earn, track and claim CME and Maintenance of Certification credits inside ClinicalKey AI, supported by the American Boards across eight medical specialties. Elsevier has also stated 0.5 CME credit per reviewed response. If credit is a reason you buy, the annual plan is the cheaper way to collect it.
Is ClinicalKey AI included with ClinicalKey?
No. ClinicalKey, the searchable library, and ClinicalKey AI, the answer engine, are separate subscriptions. Individual ClinicalKey Essentials is $299 a year, and ClinicalKey AI is another $349. An institution may license one, both or neither, so your library access to ClinicalKey does not mean you have the AI.
Is ClinicalKey AI available in the US?
Yes. Elsevier's individual plans are sold in the United States and Canada, priced in US dollars, and its store also lists a wider set of countries for individual subscriptions. Institutional access works through your hospital, with Epic single sign-on on offer.
Does ClinicalKey AI check drug interactions and renal dosing?
It will answer a question you ask about an interaction or a dose, with citations, and it can consider patient context when you type it in. It does not run every interaction, contraindication and renal or hepatic rule on a full medication list automatically. That job belongs to a prescribing checker such as Prescriber.io, from $24 a clinician a month billed yearly.
Go deeper
Other clinician tools, priced the same way
ClinicalKey subscription cost
The library itself: Essentials, specialty and extended packages.
CostOpenEvidence cost
The free AI answer engine and what free really covers.
CostUpToDate Pro Plus
Where Expert AI lives and how the store prices it.
CostDynaMed and DynaMedex cost
$599 a year, $675 with Dyna AI.
CostGlass Health pricing
AI scribe plus reasoning, $0 to $200 a month.
ToolContraindication checker
Drug, disease and allergy conflicts on the whole list at once.
Cover the prescribing step for $24 a month.
Prescriber.io checks interactions, flags contraindications, surfaces renal and hepatic dosing and suggests guideline-based alternatives, with cited sources. You review, verify, and sign.
Decision-support for licensed clinicians. Prescriber.io does not diagnose or prescribe autonomously and is not a substitute for professional clinical judgment. Always verify against official sources.