How much does a white-label telehealth platform actually cost?
Published fees, percentage models, and the line items that do not appear on the first page of a proposal. With the real arithmetic at 300, 1,000 and 3,000 patients.
Key takeaways
- Two models dominate: a published flat fee, or a percentage of patient billings. They diverge permanently as you scale.
- Benchmark any transaction fee against Stripe's published 2.9% plus 30 cents. Anything materially above that is a payments markup.
- The add-ons decide the real number: storefront build, data migration, per-order support fees, per-category fees and LegitScript are all commonly billed separately.
- A platform that does not publish pricing is a platform that can price you after learning how badly you need it.
- At 1,000 patients the gap between models is measured in six figures a year, not in dollars per month.
The two models, and why they diverge
A flat fee prices software as software: the platform costs roughly the same whether you bill $50,000 or $500,000 in a month, because the cost of running the infrastructure is broadly the same either way.
A revenue share indexes the fee to your success instead. Software does not become more expensive to run because your ad account performed well, but a percentage fee behaves as though it does.
The practical test is simple. Ask what your platform bill becomes if you double your ad spend and it works. Under a flat fee it barely moves. Under a percentage it doubles.
What a published flat fee looks like
PharmaBro publishes every tier, which makes it usable as a benchmark whether or not you buy it. Launch is $15,000 setup and $1,500 a month for 0 to 500 patients. Grow is $25,000 and $3,000 up to 2,000. Scale is $50,000 and $5,000 up to 5,000.
The transaction fee falls as you grow: 3% on Launch, 2% on Grow, 1.5% on Scale. Since Stripe's own published direct rate is 2.9% plus 30 cents, from Grow onward the platform fee on a transaction is below what the processor itself charges.
| Tier | Setup | Monthly | Patients | Transaction fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Launch | $15,000 | $1,500 | 0 to 500 | 3% |
| Grow | $25,000 | $3,000 | 501 to 2,000 | 2% |
| Scale | $50,000 | $5,000 | 2,001 to 5,000 | 1.5% |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | 5,000+ | Custom |
What a percentage model costs at volume
Take 1,000 patients at $249 a month, so $2,988,000 in annual billings. A 20% revenue share is $597,600 a year. At the same volume, a flat $3,000 a month plus a 2% transaction fee is $95,760, against $2,988,000 of billings.
The gap is not a line item. It is a different business. And it widens every month your marketing works, which is the opposite of how a cost should behave.
| Active patients | Annual billings | Flat fee model | 20% revenue share | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 300 | $896,400 | $44,892 | $179,280 | $134,388 |
| 1,000 | $2,988,000 | $95,760 | $597,600 | $501,840 |
| 3,000 | $8,964,000 | $194,460 | $1,792,800 | $1,598,340 |
The line items that are easy to miss
The monthly number is rarely the whole cost on either side. When comparing proposals, price these explicitly rather than assuming they are included.
- Storefront build, commonly $5,000 to $10,000 one-time, sometimes tiered as basic, advanced and custom.
- Data migration, commonly around $2,500.
- Per-order patient support fees, often included up to a threshold then charged at $2 to $5 per order per month. This scales with volume.
- Per-product-category fees, where a plan includes a few categories and charges for each additional one.
- LegitScript, commonly $2,450 to $3,000, sometimes billed monthly at around $205.
- Payment processing, which can run materially above the processor's own rate.
Ask what the transaction fee is really for
Every card payment carries a real processing cost, so a transaction fee is legitimate. The question is whether it tracks that cost or exceeds it.
A platform charging 3.9% through its own Stripe account is adding roughly a full percentage point over the processor's published rate. On $2,988,000 of annual billings, the difference between 3.9% and 2% is about $57,000 a year for an identical payment moving through an identical card network.
A transaction fee that falls as you scale behaves like a cost line. One that stays flat or rises behaves like a revenue share wearing different clothes.
Price the exit, not just the entry
Two contract terms determine what a bad platform choice costs you later, and neither appears in the monthly fee.
The first is contract length. A twelve-month minimum term means a mistake is a year long. The second, and larger, is card token portability. If the platform holds your stored payment credentials and will not release them, migrating means asking every active subscriber to re-enter their card details. A meaningful share never do, so the switching cost is paid in churned revenue rather than in engineering hours.
Every number above is on our pricing page
PharmaBro publishes each tier, the transaction rate, the consult fee and what is included, so you can model your entire first year before speaking to anyone.
Zero revenue share. Zero medication markup. LegitScript at $0. No per-order support surcharge, no per-category fee, no separate storefront build fee, and no contract term.
Conclusion
The honest answer to what a white-label telehealth platform costs is that it depends entirely on the model, and the range between models is wider than the range within them.
Get four things in writing before you sign: the percentage if there is one, the transaction rate, every one-time and per-order add-on, and whether your card tokens are portable. A vendor unwilling to put those in writing has told you something useful.
Frequently asked questions
Is a flat fee always cheaper than a revenue share?
Not at very low volume. At a handful of patients a percentage of almost nothing is less than a fixed monthly fee. The crossover comes quickly, and after it the flat fee wins by a widening margin. Model it at the volume you expect in month six, not month one.
What is a reasonable transaction fee?
Benchmark against Stripe's published 2.9% plus 30 cents. At or slightly above that is a pass-through. A full point above it is a payments markup, and you should ask what you are buying for the difference.
Why do some platforms not publish pricing?
Because a price you cannot see can be set after the vendor has learned how badly you need it. It also prevents you modelling your own unit economics before signing, since you cannot compute contribution margin against a fee you have not been told.
What should I budget beyond the platform?
Entity formation and healthcare counsel for the MSO structure, acquisition spend, and working capital for medication and fulfillment if you are buying it directly rather than having the platform carry it out of a revenue share.
Marcus ElleryHead of Payments and Billing
Works on the rebill engine, merchant routing and recovery logic. Spends most of his time on the unglamorous half of subscription telehealth: why a card failed, and whether it had to.