BetterHelp vs. BetterUp: The Crucial Difference Explained

A surprisingly common mistake many individuals make when searching for an online therapy platform is comparing BetterHelp with BetterUp.

Both brands may sound the same and both platforms can provide support to overcome many of life’s challenges and difficulties, but the similarities just about end there.

To be candid, the debate about which is better between BetterHelp and BetterUp shouldn’t even exist—the two providers don’t offer the same services and strictly speaking aren’t competitors.

Overall Best: BetterHelp is our preferred online therapy provider for dealing with mental or emotional issues. 

Unlike BetterUp's coaching services, BetterHelp connects you with licensed therapists who have at least 3 years and 1,000 hours of direct experience. 

To get started with BetterHelp, click here to fill in their brief questionnaire.

Discussing Psychology readers get 15% off their first month with BetterHelp.

BetterHelp vs. BetterUp: Here’s How They Differ

The key difference between BetterHelp and BetterUp is that the former provides online therapy, while the latter provides coaching services.

BetterHelp is a top online therapy platform that connects individuals with licensed therapists.

If you’re looking for a globally recognized brand that provides affordable mental health support for a range of emotional and mental health conditions (such as depression or anxiety) then BetterHelp is the right choice for you.

However, if you’re looking for an online platform that provides coaching to help you progress with personal and career development, you should go with BetterUp.

Therapy vs Coaching

Now you may be asking yourself, what exactly is the difference between therapy and coaching?

BetterUp’s support page does a very good job of outlining the difference:

“Coaching is focused on personal growth and professional development, while therapy is designed to help you work through deeper issues such as anxiety, depression, or trauma.”

– BetterUp on Therapy vs Coaching.

In other words, coaching is best for self and professional development. Therapy is best for addressing mental and emotional issues.

BetterHelp vs BetterUp: How Do They Compare?

Let’s take a closer look at how BetterHelp and BetterUp compare.

Features	BetterHelp	BetterUp
Cost	From $65 to $90 per week, billed every 4 weeks.	Pricing is heavily dependent on the plan chosen and number of sessions per week.
Services offered	Therapy for individuals aiming to address mental and emotional difficulties. There is also an option for group webinars.	Coaching for personal and career development, sales performance, mental wellbeing, leadership, workplace diversity and inclusion.
Licenced therapists?	Yes	No
Communication method	Live video, audio, and chat sessions as well as the ability to message your therapist at any time.	Live video/audio sessions and unlimited messaging
Insurance accepted	No	No
Payment Method	Credit card or Paypal	Credit card or Apple Pay
Provider Website	Click here to visit BetterHelp.	Click here to visit BetterUp.

Now that we know the key differences between each service, let’s evaluate their pros and cons in greater detail.

BetterHelp Online Therapy

BetterHelp is the largest online therapy provider in the world with over 30,000 therapists and more than three million users.

The platform aims to help individuals overcome many of life’s challenges through affordable therapy provided by qualified mental health professionals.

BetterHelp requires all therapists to have a master’s degree or higher, as well as at least 3 years and 1,000 hours of direct experience.

The platform has a range of communication methods such as video, live chat and audio calls, all of which can be utilized to connect with your therapist.

You can also message your therapist at anytime.

BetterHelp’s online therapy can help address a wide range of mental health and emotional conditions, such as stress, anxiety, grief, trauma, depression, and more.

Online therapy prices starting at $65 per week. Cancel anytime.

BetterUp Online Coaching

While BetterUp markets itself as a help service, it does not provide therapy and does not employ licensed therapists.

What BetterUp does is provide professional and personal development coaching, facilitated through their online platform.

BetterUp boasts an incredible 2000+ certified coaches who have completed more than 1 million coaching sessions worldwide and with whom they can match new clients.

The platform aims to make life coaching and self-help programs cost-effective and widely accessible for people and organizations throughout the world.

While BetterUp provides services to individuals, they primarily market to businesses to boost productivity and workplace output.

In addition to the platform, BetterUp offers regular coaching sessions with tiered prices to individuals and groups.

Coaching sessions can be with a dedicated coach or one of the following options:

• On-demand coaching for immediate assistance
• Specialist coaching for specific needs
• Group coaching (described as ‘Coaching Circles’).

When you join, you fill out a short questionnaire, and BetterUp then matches you with a list of coaches from which to choose from, with an alleged 97% success rate in matching clients to coaches.

Once you’ve selected your coach, you schedule appointments based on the frequency you paid for and get started.

BetterHelp vs. BetterUp: Cost

BetterHelp

BetterHelp costs approximately $260–$360, which is billed every 4 weeks on a subscription basis.

Comparing this to traditional in-person therapy, which ranges from $600–$1000 per month, BetterHelp is, in most cases, the more affordable option.

Now you may be asking yourself, does the billing amount charged every 4 weeks vary?

Typically, BetterHelp’s pricing plans change depending on three key elements:

• Preferences
• Location
• Therapist availability

In terms of payment, the platform accepts both credit card and PayPal when you sign up.

BetterUp

BetterUp’s pricing can vary dramatically based on a number of variables:

• Subscription type: Cost is heavily dependent on the subscription type you choose. For example the business-plan cost will be larger than the BetterUp Direct plan (individual coaching).
• Number of sessions: Pricing varies based on the number sessions you opt for with your coach.
• Size of company: If you subscribe to the business plan, the number of staff enrolled has an impact on pricing.

For the above reasons, it’s hard to give an in-depth overview of BetterUp pricing plans.

However, it’s been suggested that prices per session will typically range between $89 to $279 USD per month, per user.

If you miss a scheduled appointment with your coach, it won’t be refunded or roll over to the next month.

BetterHelp: Services Provided

BetterHelp’s core focus is therapeutic treatment of mental and emotional issues.

As such, the platform can help with many different types of therapy, including:

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy
• EMDR Therapy
• Trauma Therapy
• Psychotherapy
• Exposure Therapy
• Much more.

In addition, BetterHelp has more than 30,000 therapists using their platform. This means there is a very wide range of professionals to help with many different mental health conditions, including:

• Depression
• Anxiety
• ADHD
• Borderline Personality Disorder
• Trauma/Neglect/Abuse
• PTSD/CPTSD
• Dissociation
• Insomnia
• Much more.

Overall, BetterHelp’s platform is almost like a one-stop-shop for non-psychiatric support of mental and emotional issues.

With BetterHelp, you can take the first steps to addressing mental health struggles by connecting with a licensed therapist from the comfort of your own home.

Get 15% off your first month with BetterHelp here.

BetterUp: Services Provided

BetterUp provides one-on-one as well as group life and career coaching.

The platform has licensed coaches, however they do not work directly with mental health issues.

Rather, BetterUp’s coaching aims to help you overcome difficulties in your personal and professional life and maximize your potential.

As a user, you can subscribe to either the business plan or the individual plan (BetterUp Direct), each of which are structured differently.

BetterUp Direct: Coaching for individuals

BetterUp Direct provides tailored, one-on-one coaching for individuals. You don’t have to subscribe as part of a business, and the coaching itself isn’t necessarily measured by business outcomes.

Offering a direct-to-consumer platform that doesn’t rely on business subscriptions or an Employer-Assistance Program is a major edge BetterUp has over its competition.

Many coaching platforms will only allow you to receive coaching if you’re enrolled in a business/workforce plan, which is something we noticed when comparing hybrid coaching and therapy platform Ginger with BetterHelp.

The individual coaching offered by BetterUp Direct focuses on self-discovery, fulfillment, and personal/professional self-development.

The individual plan focuses on:

• Career mapping and development.
• Change management.
• Goal setting and achievement.
• Self-expression, fulfillment, and deeper authenticity.
• Professional/career development.
• Leadership and effective communication.
• Strategic management.

BetterUp Direct also provides a variety of subscription plans to choose from, depicted below.

BetterUp Direct Plan	Number of 30 minute sessions per month
Intro Plan	1
Plus Plan	2
Premium Plan	4

BetterUp Business Plan

BetterUp’s business plan is meant for large groups of staff within organizations and is primarily focused on helping boost retention, engagement, and productivity across staff.

According to BetterUp, focusing on these key areas can help businesses hit company goals and drive revenue growth.

In the business plan, each employee is paired with a personal coach that helps unlock their potential within their given roles.

Broadly speaking, BetterUp’s business plans provide:

• Individual one-on-one coaching to help staff reach their KPIs within each role.
• On-Demand specialists to assist with a wide range of life’s difficulties, such as insomnia, parenthood, emotional issues and more.
• Transparency about the impact coaching has on meaningful metrics like revenue growth.
• A People Analytics Dashboard (PAD) to track mindset and behavioral change.
• Integration with other platforms to scale coaching across the business.

It’s important to note that BetterUp’s business subscription comes with four different plans to choose from:

• BetterUp Sales Performance: Dedicated solutions for sales teams to help reach sales KPIs and goal attainment.
• BetterUp Diversity & Inclusion: A solution to help increase diversity, belongingness, and inclusion in the workplace.
• BetterUp Lead: A solution catering specifically to developing leadership skills.
• BetterUp Care: A coaching service that can support mental wellbeing.

It’s important to note that despite the focus on mental health, BetterUp Care is not a therapy service like BetterHelp is. The former do not use licensed therapists—nor do they claim to.

Rather, BetterUp Care connects you with behavior-change and wellness experts who specialize in areas such as sleep, nutrition, stress-management and more as a way of supporting mental health.

In their FAQ, BetterUp explicitly state the platform is not meant to be used as a therapy service to treat deeper issues such as anxiety or depression.

BetterUp Coaching Services: Tying It All Together

Overall, if you feel stuck or like you’ve hit a roadblock in your personal or professional life, BetterUp is the way to go.

Having an unbiased mentor who can look over your shoulder and coach you through obstacles is a major asset.

Many people comfortably pay tens (or sometimes hundreds) of thousands of dollars on university degrees to gain a foothold in their industry. There’s a commonly agreed upon notion that to progress in something, you must first be educated.

Why should that education stop after university? Investing in a coach for personal and professional development can be a very powerful way to fast-track career growth.

Visit BetterUp here.

BetterHelp vs. BetterUp: Therapy and Coaching Details

Features	BetterHelp	BetterUp
Help-service provided.	Therapy	Coaching
Can you choose who you work with?	You can choose your therapist after your initial match.	You will be matched with several coaches to choose from.
Time taken to match with a professional.	Members can get matched within 48 hours.	Matched within minutes after completing your questionnaire.
Frequency and duration of sessions.	Subscriptions include weekly sessions via video, phone or live chat.	Plans start at one session per month; however, you can purchase more. Each Session is 30 minutes.

BetterHelp Therapist Qualifications

Each therapist who works for BetterHelp is licensed and has a masters degree or higher in their field.

The specific requirements to become a therapist with BetterHelp are:

• Proof of identity.
• Master’s degree or higher in psychology and/or appropriate licenses in professional counseling, clinical social work, or therapy.
• Qualification and certification from the respective state board by completing relevant examinations, practices and training where required.
• At least three years and 1,000 hours of direct experience.

Currently, BetterHelp has over 30,000 licensed therapists and has helped over 4 million people receive mental health treatment.

BetterUp Coach Qualifications

Each counselor at BetterUp is a licensed coach certified by the International Coaching Federation (ICF).

While some coaches at BetterUp may be licensed therapists, this is not a requirement and is not representative of their workforce.

BetterUp claims that they put their coaches through a rigorous vetting process that only accepts 9% of applicants to ensure the highest quality individuals work with clients.

In addition, BetterUp has over 20,000 coaches in over 70 countries, who have expertise in over 30 industries, making it a very diverse platform to suit your coaching needs.

Account Setup

The setup for both platforms follows this process:

1. Complete a short questionnaire which can help you match with your therapist or coach.
2. Set up billing information and account.
3. Once matched, contact your therapist or coach to set up your first appointment via the platform or app.

Communication

BetterHelp

For BetterHelp, one-on-one therapy sessions are 30-45 minutes each, once a week.

BetterHelp has a range of communication methods. Live sessions can be conducted via any of the options below:

• Live chats
• Live video calls (phone or laptop/desktop)
• Audio calls

The BetterHelp platform also allows you to message your therapist anytime and has dedicated customer support.

BetterUp

BetterUp offers a base frequency of one session per month on their BetterUp Direct Intro Plan, which is the starting-tier individual coaching plan they offer.

You can increase the number of sessions you receive each month by subscribing to a different Direct plan.

In BetterUp business subscriptions, your number of sessions per employee each month depend on the selection you make during sign up.

In both plans, each one-on-one coaching session is done virtually via video or audio calls. BetterUp also supports unlimited messaging.

BetterHelp vs. BetterUp: Resources

Both platforms offer additional resources related to the services they provide.

BetterHelp

• Website information: BetterHelp’s website has a dedicated resources section, which is publicly available at no cost.
  
  The resources range from information regarding mental health topics to articles answering common questions about online therapy.
  
  
• Phone App: BetterHelp’s phone app has tabs for:
  
  – Messaging your therapist
  – Journaling
  – Scheduling sessions with your therapist
  – Goal setting section
  – Worksheets section
  – More/Settings tab

• Personalized Resources: Throughout sessions, your therapist may give you resources tailored to addressing the challenges you’re going through. Resources can include:
  
  – Homework tasks and worksheets
  – Downloadable PDF resources
  – Goal-setting tasks (in-app feature)
  – Journaling requirements (in-app feature)

The resources supplied are a fantastic way to provide hands-on, tailored exercises to work through your specific challenges.

In my experience using BetterHelp, the worksheets my therapist gave me were incredibly helpful. 

One such resource was the 'Challenging Negative Thoughts' PDF. This worksheet helped me identify many irrational beliefs and thoughts that were causing unnecessary stress and anxiety.

I learnt how to objectively analyze uncomfortable thoughts and draw logical, reasonable conclusions, instead of jumping to highly emotional, worst-case scenarios.

It’s important to note that some of the tasks, worksheets, and goals you and your therapist set may make you uncomfortable. Anything outside of your comfort zone will often feel quite intimidating.

However, discomfort is often the gateway to progress and having a therapist by your side holding you accountable can be very powerful indeed.

Get started with BetterHelp here.

BetterUp

BetterUp has an incredibly extensive range of resources to guide you through your coaching journey.

These include:

• Content Library: The platform has an extensive content library featuring thousands of articles, podcasts, and videos. BetterUp also has a resource recommendation engine that presents tailored, relevant content for the right person at the right time.
  
• Publicly Available Resources: Freely available on the BetterUp website are events, blogs, resources, and additional library info.
  
• Gated Resources: Worksheets, interactive tests, and personalized goal-setting are included to help you reach your goals and track your progress as you go.
  
• Coach Resources: During one-on-one sessions, some coaches may share their own personal resources to fast-track your progress.

Interestingly, when we compared mental health & coaching platform Lyra with BetterHelp, we noticed Lyra also had an incredibly comprehensive library of resources.

This is an interesting trend, indicating that coaching platforms in general seem to offer very robust resource support to help their users.

Final Verdict

Both BetterUp and BetterHelp are increasingly popular brands that both aim to help individuals overcome life’s many challenges.

However, each platform solves different problems, and as such, renders different services.

BetterHelp is a very well known online therapy platform that provides a wide range of therapeutic services by licensed therapists to support mental and emotional well-being.

To match with a therapist at BetterHelp, simply fill in this questionnaire to get started.

Online therapy prices starting at $65 per week. Cancel anytime.

BetterUp is a fantastic coaching platform for personal development, wellbeing, sales development, leadership skills, career progression, and business-wide change management that focuses on productivity and retention.

Click here to get started with BetterUp.

FAQ

When deciding which of the online platforms to use for your personal goals, there are some essential questions to consider.

Below are the most frequently asked questions when comparing both platforms.

Are the services covered by insurance?

Neither program is covered by insurance, Medicare or Medicaid. Expenses will typically come out of pocket.

Can I cancel my subscription?

Both platforms allow you to cancel your subscription at any time. Cancellations are not retroactive.

This means that if you cancel halfway through a given billing cycle (where billing cycles are either one month or every four weeks, depending on the platform), you will not be reimbursed for that specific cycle.

In order to cancel your subscription with either platform, be sure to do it before your next billing cycle, so you won’t be opted into the following billing cycle.

BetterUp does not offer refunds. In some cases BetterHelp may offer a refund, but it will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Do either platforms have a free trial?

Neither BetterHelp nor BetterUp offer a free trial.

However, BetterUp does provide a free demo program for businesses that sign up. The demo program offers free consultation and advice for business owners but does not include all features of their service.

Are there customer support services available?

Both services offer customer support. Individuals can contact each respective company with concerns and receive feedback.

Which companies has BetterUp worked with?

Some of the companies BetterUp has worked with include:

• Google
• Hilton Hotels
• Twilio Communications
• Intercom
• Mars Inc.

Are BetterUp direct flex sessions refundable?

No, Flex Sessions are not refundable. However, they also do not expire.

How We Select Products

Product reviews, comparisons and write-ups are based on personal testing experience, customer review analysis and/or product research.

All product review information is liable to our product review process.

For Emergencies

In the case of an emergency, online therapy is not suitable. If you are at risk of self-harm or require emergency mental health assistance, contact your country/states emergency or suicide hotline.

If you are in the US, your emergency line is: 911. US Suicide Hotline: 988.

For an international list of suicide hotline numbers, visit this link here.