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We surveyed real Cerebral users and a HelpGuide staff member personally tested the platform to rate it on quality of therapy and psychiatry services, value, user experience, and overall satisfaction.
We surveyed real Cerebral users and a HelpGuide staff member personally tested the platform to rate it on quality of therapy and psychiatry services, value, user experience, and overall satisfaction.
We independently test and review all of the services we recommend. When you sign up through our links, we may earn a commission, which helps support our nonprofit mission.
Cerebral offers mental health care across all 50 states, including individual and teen therapy, couples counseling, and psychiatric services. The platform accepts a number of major insurance plans, such as Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Optum, and United Healthcare. The average insurance co-pay is $30. Out-of-pocket therapy costs $175 per therapy session and $180 for psychiatry, although prices can be substantially lower if you pay for three months at a time.
Cerebral has faced some controversy in the past for overprescribing controlled medications and sharing the personal information of users with other companies. The platform has resolved both issues with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
To review the platform, we conducted background research, surveyed over 200 real Cerebral users in May, 2025, and one of HelpGuide’s staff members conducted hands-on testing for one month. Our staff tester attended weekly online therapy sessions and had an initial consultation with a psychiatry provider. Our tester also messaged his providers, contacted customer service, and used all the app features offered, such as meditations and mindfulness exercises.
While our survey responses from real Cerebral users were generally favorable, our staff tester encountered some issues that concerned him. He was uncomfortable that messages with his provider weren’t private and felt the platform could be more transparent about therapist qualifications. He also found Cerebral’s new out-of-pocket pricing to be a little confusing. Our tester did, however, highly rate his psychiatry provider on the platform. Our survey results also reported that 90 percent of therapy users and 94 percent of psychiatry users were satisfied or very satisfied with their experience on Cerebral.
While our survey results indicated that the majority of users had a positive experience on Cerebral, our staff tester’s sessions on the platform were mixed. He encountered issues with both online therapy and online psychiatry.
Once our staff tester completed the onboarding, the Cerebral algorithm generated a list of five therapist matches. However, all of these initial matches were “associate” therapists working under the supervision of a fully-qualified therapist. In other words, they had completed the education part of their license and were now gaining clinical experience. Our tester was concerned that the platform didn’t make this clear to users and charged the same fee regardless of whether a therapist was licensed or unlicensed. He felt that offering therapy from someone not-yet-fully-licensed at a discounted rate could be beneficial for users looking to save money. Our staff member had to contact Cerebral customer service to have his matches upgraded to fully licensed therapists.
Our staff tester was disappointed when his therapist cancelled the first appointment and was unable to reschedule for another convenient time. He switched to a different therapist, noting that it was a very straightforward process. However, the second therapist also cancelled an hour before one of his sessions. Since he’d subscribed for a month of therapy and was only able to have two therapy sessions, he didn’t feel it was good value for money. With two weeks between appointments, he also found it difficult to build any kind of rapport with the therapist.
Our tester’s experience was in sharp contrast to our survey findings. Of the Cerebral therapy users we heard from, 79 percent felt they were able to make progress toward their personal goals for therapy, and 83 percent were likely or very likely to recommend Cerebral to someone they care about. Users left comments such as: “I have loved my experience with Cerebral and I finally found someone who understands me,” and “Overall, my experience with Cerebral was positive. The platform made it easy to access mental health support from the comfort of home, and the scheduling process was convenient.”
Our staff tester had a much more positive session experience with a psychiatric provider on Cerebral. He selected a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP) from a list of potential providers and found her to be thorough, professional, and very easy to talk to. The session lasted for the full 30 minutes, during which time the psychiatric nurse was happy to discuss a lot of alternative medications. Our tester reported she was very clear about any potential risks or side effects for each medication and he felt very secure in her recommendations.
However, our staff tester’s psychiatry experience suffered when he used the platform to message his prescriber with a medication question. The platform immediately sent back an automated response that included the line: “We will also have our clinical coverage team review your concerns to see if additional action is needed prior to you seeing your assigned prescriber.” When you message one provider on Cerebral, your other provider, such as your therapist, can also see the message. More troubling, customer support was very vague about who else was in Cerebral’s “clinical coverage team.” Our tester was simply told they were “qualified professionals.” On other platforms we’ve tested, messaging a provider has always been private.
Only 19 percent of Cerebral users we surveyed in May 2025 shared our tester’s privacy concerns and 94 percent were satisfied or very satisfied with the overall online psychiatry services provided by Cerebral. “I overall like it. I just wish it were slightly cheaper with the co-pay,” said one user.
Since HelpGuide conducted user surveys and hands-on testing of the Cerebral platform in April and May, 2025, it has changed its pricing structure. The following are the updated prices displayed on its website, not those paid by our staff testers. Out-of-pocket prices on Cerebral can be a little confusing as they’re quoted as a mix of “per session,” “monthly,” and “3 months,” making it difficult to compare.
| Cerebral cost | Average competitor cost | Average in-person cost | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Therapy, out-of-pocket | $175 | $60-200+ | $100-200+ |
| Therapy, with Insurance | $30 average copay | $0-50 average copay | $0-50 average copay |
| Psychiatry, out-of-pocket | $180 initial appointment, $180 per follow-up | $95-299 initial appointment, $95-200 per follow-up | $150-700+ for initial appointment, $150-400 per follow-up |
| Psychiatry, with Insurance | $30 average copay | $0-50 average copay | $0-50 average copay |
These aspects of Cerebral stood out the most for us:
Ease of use. 93 percent of Cerebral therapy users and 86 percent of psychiatry users rated the platform as easy or very easy to navigate. Our hands-on tester agreed. The website, on both desktop and mobile, as well as the Cerebral app are intuitive and easy to use, whether you’re booking an appointment, changing providers, or using the extra features (Cerebral has some basic exercises covering things such as grounding, challenging negative thoughts, and quick stress relief). The only area where our tester felt the user experience fell short was when logging out of the website, which took an unnecessary extra step.
Appointment reminders. Our staff tester appreciated the extensive text and email reminders he received from Cerebral about his upcoming appointments. As our tester noted, “It would be challenging to miss an appointment on this platform.”
Based on our testing and user feedback, we feel Cerebral could improve in the following areas:
Provider transparency. In our testing, the first providers offered were all “associate” therapists who had completed the education part of their license and were gaining clinical experience under the supervision of a fully-qualified therapist. We’d like to see Cerebral offer fully-licensed therapists without the user having to reach out to customer support. We also think the platform could price associate therapists at a discounted rate, appropriate to their experience.
Messaging privacy. Other platforms ensure that communication between user and provider are secure and private. Having his messages to his psychiatric provider read by unspecified other people at Cerebral greatly concerned our tester.
Out-of-pocket pricing. A live therapy session costs $175 on Cerebral, which is at the high end of the platforms we’ve tested. Since the price structure has changed since our hands-on testing, we’d like to see Cerebral make the out-of-pocket pricing clearer for users. On different pages of Cerebral’s website, the price of additional therapy sessions varies, which can make it confusing. 33 percent of therapy users and 19 percent of psychiatry users received surprise charges on Cerebral.
In our extensive testing of online therapy and psychiatry platforms, we didn’t score Cerebral highly enough to be one of our top picks for Best Online Therapy Platforms, Best Online Therapy Platforms that Take Insurance, or Best Online Psychiatrist Platforms.
If the platform accepts your insurance, Cerebral may be worth taking a look at for its ease of navigation. If you’re paying out of pocket, though, we would recommend other platforms above this one. Self-pay costs are expensive if you pay per session. While it works out much more affordably if you pay for three months at a time, that still requires a substantial investment before you’ve even tried out the platform. We also had some privacy concerns about messaging on the platform.
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