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Woebot Health

Conversational CBT chatbot that withdrew from consumer distribution and now sells only to payers and providers

As of 1 September 2026, Woebot Health's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. Woebot shut its consumer app in June 2025 because the founder judged FDA marketing authorisation unattainable at the cost required. Softwr lists it under Healthcare. Woebot Health is available on iOS, Android, Web.

Overview

What Woebot Health does

Woebot Health builds a conversational agent that delivers structured cognitive behavioural therapy techniques through chat. Unlike most current chat products, Woebot has historically been rule-based and clinically scripted rather than generatively open-ended, which was a deliberate safety decision: the responses are written and reviewed by clinicians so the tool cannot improvise in a crisis. It is offered as a between-sessions or pre-treatment layer, not as therapy replacement, and the company also licenses it into research settings. The fact that should shape any evaluation is the 2025 withdrawal. Woebot closed the direct-to-consumer app in June 2025, with founder Alison Darcy attributing the decision largely to the cost and difficulty of meeting FDA requirements for marketing authorisation on a digital therapeutic. The product had held Breakthrough Device designation but never obtained clearance for a treatment indication. What is sold now is positioned as a wellness and behavioural health support product to payers and providers rather than as a cleared treatment, which is a materially weaker regulatory claim than the clinical literature around Woebot might lead a buyer to assume. Buyers are health plans, provider organisations and researchers rather than employers or individuals. Validation is genuine but limited in scope: randomised work, including an early Stanford trial, reported reductions in depressive symptoms over short study periods among young adults, and further studies have examined postpartum and substance use populations. These are short-horizon symptom studies in selected populations, not evidence of durable outcomes at population scale. The trade off for a buyer is commercial risk: a vendor that has already retired its main distribution channel is a vendor whose continuity you should price into the contract.

What people use it for

  • A health plan wanting a low intensity behavioural health option for members on a waiting list for therapy
  • A provider organisation offering structured between-session CBT practice to patients already in treatment
  • A research group running a trial that needs a clinically scripted rather than generative conversational agent for safety reasons
  • A payer targeting a specific population such as postpartum members where scripted CBT content already exists

The honest half

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Woebot Health.

  • The company withdrew its consumer app in June 2025 after concluding FDA marketing authorisation was not achievable at acceptable cost, which is a plain signal about both regulatory position and commercial durability.
  • It is not an FDA cleared treatment for any indication, so it cannot be positioned to members as therapy and cannot substitute for a covered behavioural health benefit.
  • The scripted, non-generative design that makes it safe also makes it feel rigid next to current conversational AI, and engagement drops off quickly once users hit the edges of the script.
  • Published evidence is short-horizon symptom change in selected populations, mostly young adults, with little evidence of durable benefit or effect at whole-population scale.
  • With consumer distribution gone, the remaining business depends on a small number of payer and provider contracts, so a buyer should assume real vendor continuity risk over a multi-year term.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Woebot Health

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Pricing

What Woebot Health costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Woebot for payers and providers

On request

  • Contracted per member per month or as a population licence
  • Sold to health plans and provider organisations, not to employers or individuals
  • No consumer purchase route since the app closed in June 2025
  • Research licensing negotiated separately

Capabilities

Features

  • Scripted CBT dialogue

    Clinician-written conversational flows delivering cognitive behavioural techniques

  • Mood tracking

    Repeated check-ins that build a symptom trajectory over time

  • Crisis routing

    Detection of risk language with escalation to human and emergency resources

  • Between-session support

    Designed to sit alongside human therapy rather than replace it

  • Payer deployment

    Distribution through health plan member populations

  • Provider copilot positioning

    Integration into provider workflows as an adjunct to clinical care

  • Research licensing

    Availability to academic groups for study use

  • Population reporting

    Aggregate engagement and symptom trend reporting for the contracting organisation

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Is Woebot still available?

Not to consumers. The consumer app closed in June 2025. The company continues to offer the product to payers, providers and researchers.

Is it FDA cleared?

No. It held Breakthrough Device designation but never obtained marketing authorisation, and the founder cited the cost of that pathway as the reason for closing the consumer app.

Is it generative AI?

Historically no. The dialogue is clinician-written and rule-based, a deliberate safety choice that limits how naturally it converses.

What does the evidence show?

Randomised studies reported reduced depressive symptoms over short periods in selected populations, notably young adults. That is symptom change in a trial, not demonstrated population outcomes.

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Woebot Health, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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