Yes, it is free, and it is not a trial. There is no credit card, no session limit, and no clock cutting you off mid-hour. For a talking therapy delivered by video, the free plan does the job and a great many practitioners use nothing else.

The single thing to know is that screen sharing is not included. It sits with the paid tier, alongside group calls, HD video and a customisable waiting room.

If your sessions are conversation, that costs you nothing. If you ever put anything on screen — a worksheet, a diagram, a measure, a bilateral stimulation target — the free plan cannot do it, and there is no partial version of that limitation to work around.

What you get without paying

One-to-one video visits, with no cap on how many and no time limit on the call.

A waiting room the client lands in, so they are not arriving unannounced. A browser-based join, meaning the client does not install anything — which remains the most underrated property of the whole product, because the most common reason a first session fails is a client who cannot get in.

That is a real product, not a crippled demo. It is worth saying plainly because "free tier" usually means something much thinner.

What sits behind the paywall

The paid tier adds screen sharing, group calls of up to twenty-five participants, higher video quality, a waiting room you can brand, a dialer, virtual backgrounds, call transfer and team management.

Most of those are clinic features that a solo practitioner will never open. Group calls matter if you run groups or couples work with two devices. Team management matters if there are several of you.

Screen sharing is the one that crosses from convenience into capability.

Why screen sharing is the line that matters

Because a surprising amount of therapy is visual, and none of it survives being described out loud.

A formulation diagram. A thought record you are filling in together. A psychoeducation slide. A measure you want to walk through. Anything you would have turned your notepad around for in a room.

And bilateral stimulation. In a virtual EMDR session the client's visual target arrives by screen share — it is rendered on your side and shared across, which is what keeps you in control of starting and stopping the set. No screen share, no shared visual target. You are down to auditory or tactile stimulation, both of which are legitimate and neither of which is what most practitioners planned.

So "is the free plan enough for EMDR over video?" has a specific answer: not for the visual protocol.

The other thing to watch during a set

Even with screen sharing paid for, the practical complaint from EMDR therapists is that the shared screen takes over the window and the faces shrink or disappear. You lose the client's face at exactly the moment you most need to be watching it — that is the whole of the dual-attention task, and abreaction shows up on a face before it shows up in words.

That is a layout problem rather than a licensing one, and it varies by platform. Worth testing with a colleague before you test it with a client.

When free is the right answer

You do talk therapy by video, one client at a time, and you do not put things on screen. Take the free plan. Nothing on this page should push you off it, and paying for capability you never use is the most common way practice costs creep.

You are starting out and want to see whether video suits your practice at all. Take the free plan, and decide later.

When it stops being the right answer

You do EMDR with a visual target. You run groups or couples sessions. You share worksheets or diagrams as a matter of course. You need the client's face and the shared material on screen at the same time.

At that point you are choosing between the paid tier and a platform where those things are simply included, and it becomes a straight comparison of what else each one gives you for the money.

One Canadian note

Wherever you land, check where the service stores client information and what it publishes about that, because it is the question a College is most likely to ask and the one practitioners most often have not looked up. The comparison of Canadian video options covers where each one stands.

About Rivet

Rivet is a Canadian practice line built for therapists — a separate number for calls, texts and voicemail, with video sessions and clinical tools in the same place. Your data stays in Canada, and transcription runs on Rivet's own hardware rather than a third-party AI service.

One plan, $65 CAD a month, everything included. Fourteen-day trial, no card.

See what's included · Start the trial