Quick take
Quick take (July 2026): both are free and both require U.S. clinician verification, so this is a convenience call rather than a value one. OpenEvidence is the more widely adopted evidence tool, reportedly used by over 40% of U.S. physicians; Doximity Ask wins on friction if you already live in the app, adds a free scribe, and outranked OpenEvidence in an independent Stanford/Harvard safety study in July 2026. Neither works outside the U.S., and only Doximity's slower Thinking mode shows its reasoning.
Who each one is for
The fastest way to rule one out. Both are good products — they are built for different people.
OpenEvidence
- Who is it for
- Who it’s for: Verified U.S. clinicians
- Best for
- Best for: Fast questions about recent literature
- Cost
- Cost: $0
- Free: No subscription — funded by pharmaceutical advertising.
- Speed: Built for a single question answered in seconds.
- Primary literature: Answers cite peer-reviewed papers directly.
You want a tool built specifically for clinical literature synthesis and used by the largest share of your peers — a reported 40%-plus of U.S. physicians — and you do not need a reasoning mode or a scribe.
- Verification centres on a U.S. National Provider Identifier, which excludes most non-U.S. physicians and nearly all students.
- Withdrew from the European Union and the United Kingdom in April 2026, citing regulatory uncertainty including the EU AI Act.
- Advertising-funded, shows no reasoning, retains no encounter context, and has no public developer API.
Doximity Ask
- Who is it for
- Who it’s for: U.S. clinicians already on Doximity
- Best for
- Best for: Cited answers without a new app
- Cost
- Cost: $0
- Free: No subscription, inside an app many U.S. clinicians open daily.
- Zero friction: Adds no new login or tool to your stack.
- Bundled: Sits alongside U.S. CME, colleague graph, and a HIPAA-conscious dialer.
Doximity is already part of your daily routine for messaging, CME, or the dialer, and you want cited answers in the app you already have open. The value is the absence of friction rather than depth.
- Built on U.S. clinician verification and a U.S.-market product, so it is not a realistic option elsewhere.
- Reasoning is visible only in the slower Thinking mode; no encounter context, no ranked differential, and no API.
OpenEvidence vs Doximity Ask: full comparison
Every cell is a checkable fact rather than a score, verified against vendor documentation in July 25, 2026. Sources are listed at the foot of the page.
| Dimension | OpenEvidence | Doximity Ask |
|---|---|---|
| Price (individual, 2026) | Free (funded by pharmaceutical advertising) | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Verification required | U.S. NPI number required | U.S. clinician verification |
| Availability | U.S. only — withdrew from the EU and UK in April 2026 | U.S.-centric |
| Languages | English | English |
| Source base | Peer-reviewed literature | Physician-curated guidelines and literature; 2,000+ full-text journals |
| Shows its reasoning | No — returns a cited answer without showing its reasoning | Thinking mode (2026) shows its working; Instant mode does not |
| Ranked differential | No | No |
| AI scribe | No | Yes — free Doximity Scribe, a separate app in the same suite |
| Published benchmarks | None published by the vendor | Independent NOHARM safety study (Stanford/Harvard, Jul 2026) ranked it above OpenEvidence; no accuracy benchmark published |
| Developer API | No public self-serve developer API | No |
| Compliance posture | HIPAA, SOC 2 | HIPAA |
Which wins, by clinical job
“Which is better” has no answer until you say better at what. Here is a named winner for each job, including the 2 where OpenEvidence or Doximity Ask beats EvidenceMD.
| Clinical job | OpenEvidence | Doximity Ask | EvidenceMD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Serious evidence lookup you will act on | WinnerWinner. Purpose-built for clinical literature synthesis, with citations. | Answer quality is a feature of a network product, not its core purpose. | Cites peer-reviewed sources and shows the reasoning between them. |
| You are already in Doximity all day | One more app and one more login in the workflow. | WinnerWinner. Cited answers in the app you already have open — zero added friction. | Separate app, though available on web, iOS, Android, and a Chrome extension. |
| You are not a U.S. clinician | Unavailable — needs a U.S. NPI, and left the EU and UK in April 2026. | Unavailable — built on U.S. clinician verification and a U.S. network. | WinnerWinner. Free to start anywhere, in 30 languages, with no verification. |
| Diagnostic reasoning and documentation | Answers a question; no differential, no reasoning trace, no note. | Thinking mode shows its working and Doximity Scribe writes the note, but there is no ranked differential. | WinnerWinner. Specialty-trained reasoning plus differential, plan, and note in one place. |
- Serious evidence lookup you will act on: OpenEvidence
- You are already in Doximity all day: Doximity Ask
- You are not a U.S. clinician: EvidenceMD
- Diagnostic reasoning and documentation: EvidenceMD
What each costs over five years
Annual figures multiplied out, because a subscription decision is rarely for one year. Where a vendor publishes no individual price, we say so rather than estimating.
| Tool | Per year | Over 5 years | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenEvidence | $0 | $0 | Yes |
| Doximity Ask | $0 | $0 | Yes |
| EvidenceMD | $0 to start | $0 to start | Yes |
Figures are list prices for an individual subscriber before tax, as published by each vendor in July 25, 2026. Institutional and group rates differ. Check for existing hospital or university access before buying anything individually.
A third option worth knowing about
Both are free and both are U.S.-only. Neither builds a ranked differential, retains the encounter, or works if you do not hold U.S. credentials — so for any clinician outside the U.S. this entire comparison is moot.
EvidenceMD
The first transparent reasoning clinical decision support tool with chain-of-thought reasoning — specialty-trained, and free to start worldwide in 30 languages. Where OpenEvidence and Doximity Ask return an answer you have to take on trust, EvidenceMD is specialty-trained rather than a general model steered by a prompt, and it streams the clinical reasoning that produced the answer — so you can check the logic, not just the citation.
- Specialties fine-tuned on
- 40+Specialties fine-tuned on
- Thinking tokens, visible
- 64kThinking tokens, visible
- HealthBench Hard, SOTA
- 54.6%HealthBench Hard, SOTA
- Languages, worldwide
- 30Languages, worldwide
- Ranked differentialEach diagnosis carries its own reasoning and peer-reviewed citations, ordered by likelihood rather than listed flat.
- Assessment & planProblem-based, built from the same encounter rather than re-entered, so the plan traces back to the findings.
- Reasoning traceUp to 64,000 thinking tokens streamed step by step and auditable afterwards for review or teaching.
- Lab trend visualisationResults interpreted over time with trend charts and clinical significance flagging, not just current values.
- Clinical noteGenerated from the encounter with documentation integrity support, so the note reflects the reasoning.
- Cited clinical Q&AFollow-up questions answered in the context of this patient, with sources attached to each claim.
Where it does not replace Doximity Ask: It is not a licensed proprietary reference corpus. If your organisation mandates citations to UpToDate or Elsevier content specifically, you will still need that subscription alongside it.
OpenEvidence vs Doximity Ask: frequently asked questions
What is Doximity Ask?
Doximity Ask is the free clinical AI assistant inside Doximity, the U.S. physician network. It was previously called Doximity GPT and then DoxGPT, and it absorbed the evidence dataset of Pathway, the clinical reference AI company Doximity acquired in August 2025. In May 2026 Doximity packaged Ask with its Scribe and Dialer products as the Doximity Clinical AI Suite, which it also sells to health systems. Ask answers point-of-care questions with inline citations from a physician-curated evidence library plus full-text access to more than 2,000 journals, offers an Instant and a slower Thinking mode, and runs a physician review program it calls PeerCheck. It is HIPAA compliant and free on desktop and mobile, but it is built on Doximity's U.S. clinician verification and network, so it is not a realistic option outside the United States.
Is Doximity Ask as good as OpenEvidence?
It is closer than it used to be. OpenEvidence is purpose-built for literature synthesis and is reported to be used by more than 40% of U.S. physicians. Doximity Ask now has its own clinical AI team, a physician-curated evidence library with full-text access to 2,000+ journals, a Thinking mode that shows its working, and — in the independent NOHARM clinical safety study led by Stanford and Harvard physician researchers in July 2026 — it outranked OpenEvidence and several frontier models on avoiding harmful recommendations. Doximity Ask's practical advantage remains friction: if you already have the app open, you are not adding a tool. Neither publishes a head-to-head clinical accuracy benchmark.
Are OpenEvidence and Doximity Ask both free?
Yes, both are free at the point of use, and both are free because someone other than the clinician is paying. OpenEvidence is funded by pharmaceutical advertising. Doximity's business is built on pharmaceutical marketing and recruitment revenue across its network. Neither charges a subscription, and neither is available without verification — OpenEvidence centres on a U.S. National Provider Identifier, and Doximity Ask on U.S. clinician verification within the network.
Do OpenEvidence and Doximity Ask work outside the United States?
Neither works reliably outside the U.S. OpenEvidence withdrew from the European Union and the United Kingdom in April 2026 citing regulatory uncertainty including the EU AI Act, and requires a U.S. National Provider Identifier elsewhere. Doximity is a U.S. professional network whose verification, CME, job listings, and colleague graph are all built for the U.S. market. This is the single most common frustration for international clinicians reading U.S.-written tool recommendations: the two most-recommended free options are both unavailable to them.
Which is better for a resident or medical student?
Awkwardly, often neither, and for the same reason: verification. OpenEvidence's requirement for a U.S. National Provider Identifier excludes most students, since an NPI is generally tied to practising status, and Doximity's clinician verification is similarly oriented to practising U.S. professionals though student accounts exist. Trainees are usually better served by a tool with no verification gate, or by AMBOSS at $149 per year which pairs reference content with exam preparation, or by their institution's UpToDate access.
Sources
Pricing and eligibility verified against vendor documentation in July 25, 2026. Subscription rates change — confirm current pricing with the vendor before purchasing.
- Wolters Kluwer: UpToDate subscription pricing — Vendor source for $579 standard, $699 Pro Plus with Expert AI, and $219 trainee.
- AMBOSS: official pricing documentation — Vendor source for the $19.99/$149 student and $29.99/$259 practitioner tiers.
- BMJ Best Practice: free access for NHS staff — Confirms national NHS funding in England, Scotland, and Wales.
- Elsevier: ClinicalKey AI — Confirms the institutional model, daily-refreshed corpus, and SMART on FHIR integration.
- EBSCO: DynaMedex — Confirms institutional and library licensing rather than published individual pricing.
- ChatGPT for Clinicians 2026: free access and HIPAA rules (Global Nurse Guide) — Independent source for the 22 April 2026 launch, NPI verification, GPT-5.4, and the optional, non-automatic BAA.
- HealthBench Professional (OpenAI, arXiv, April 2026) — OpenAI-run benchmark: GPT-5.4 in ChatGPT for Clinicians 59.0, physicians 43.7.
- OpenEvidence exits the EU and UK over AI regulation — Reporting on the April 2026 withdrawal, citing the EU AI Act.