Telehealth Launch Cost Estimator
What it costs to launch a cash-pay telehealth brand on a white-label partner, and how many patients you need before it pays for itself.
Defaults marked published come from vendors' own 2026 price pages (sources below). Everything else is an example: replace it with your quotes.
Where the first-year money goes
One-time setup plus twelve months of fixed costs, before any patient revenue.
What it costs to start a telehealth business
For a brand built on a white-label partner, the money goes into four buckets:
- Setup: the company and legal structure, platform onboarding, LegitScript, the brand and website.
- Fixed monthly costs: the platform or partner fee, support and compliance, and annual certification and card-network fees spread across the year.
- Per-patient costs: medication and pharmacy, clinician fees and payment processing.
- Acquisition: what it costs to win each patient, which is usually the biggest number and the one that decides whether the brand works.
Building your own clinician network, medical group and software costs far more and takes longer. Most first brands start on a partner; see the partners compared and friendly PC and MSO structures.
The published prices behind the defaults
| Item | Published price (October 2026) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| LegitScript application | $975 per website | LegitScript |
| LegitScript annual fee | $2,150 per website | LegitScript |
| Visa high-risk registration | $950 a year (may be waived with LegitScript or NABP) | Helcim (processor-reported) |
| Mastercard high-risk registration | $500 a year | Helcim (processor-reported) |
| Telegra Plus platform | $2,999 a month + $5,000 onboarding; per-consult fees not published | Telegra |
| Telegra Pro platform | $5,999 a month + $10,000 onboarding | Telegra |
| Qualiphy exam (med spas, clinics) | $27.99 per exam, no monthly fee | Qualiphy |
| Healthie EHR (own clinicians) | $19–$149+ a month; e-prescribing $40 per clinician a month | Healthie |
OpenLoop, Beluga, MD Integrations, Wheel, SteadyMD, CareValidate and Bask quote on request, so get written quotes and put them in the form. Beluga publishes its structure: a per-visit fee by volume, a monthly platform fee and an integration fee credited against visits, with pharmacy at cost and no revenue share (Beluga).
How the estimate works
- Contribution per patient-month = price − medication and pharmacy − clinician fees − processing.
- Break-even patients = monthly fixed costs (including annual fees ÷ 12) ÷ contribution per patient-month. That's the number of active patients that covers the fixed costs, before acquisition spend.
- First-year fixed spend = one-time setup + 12 months of fixed costs.
- Acquisition to reach break-even = break-even patients × cost to acquire a patient, ignoring churn. Real churn makes this higher; the profit calculator models it month by month.
It leaves out taxes, refunds and chargebacks, inventory, and your own salary. Treat it as a planning sketch, not a budget.
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