KeptWell vs CaringBridge
KeptWell vs CaringBridge: a head-to-head comparison
Two tools families reach for during a serious diagnosis, built for opposite halves of the same problem. CaringBridge is the public-facing journal: a place to broadcast updates, receive support from extended family, and coordinate meals and rides. KeptWell is the private medical record hub: a place to upload every document, have an AI read it in plain English, and let the immediate family ask the chart questions. This page walks the comparison honestly — including where CaringBridge is still the right tool and we are not.
The short version
If the problem you are trying to solve is letting friends and extended family know how your loved one is doing, CaringBridge is the right tool. If the problem you are trying to solve is keeping track of what is actually happening in the chart — documents, labs, medications, what the oncology nurse said on the phone last Tuesday — KeptWell is what we built. Many families use both, because the two products do not overlap.
Feature-by-feature, side by side
Both products are free today (KeptWell has committed in writing to a fair, named price when paid plans launch). The structural choices below are what determines which one fits your family.
| Feature | KeptWell | CaringBridge |
|---|---|---|
| What the product is built for | Private medical record hub for the immediate family | Public-facing health-update journal for friends and extended community |
| Privacy model | Private care circle, invite-only, no public URL exists | Public site by default; privacy setting available |
| Uploads medical documents (PDFs, scans, photos) | Yes — The core workflow | No — Text posts and photos only |
| AI reads every document in plain English | Yes — Claude under HIPAA BAA | No |
| Extracts labs, medications, diagnoses as structured data | Yes | No |
| Chat with the entire record (citation-backed) | Yes | No |
| Audio recording transcription (visits, nurse calls) | Yes | No |
| Public journal posts and guestbook | No | Yes — The core feature since 1997 |
| Meal trains, rides, volunteer coordination | No | Yes — Built-in Planner |
| Family member roles and permissions | Admin and member; private notes per user | Site organizer and visitor |
| Cost | Free today; named price + sponsored access later | Free, donation-funded nonprofit |
| Sells data or runs ads | Never | Never |
When KeptWell is the fit
Pick KeptWell when
These are the questions families tell us pushed them from a journal-style update tool into a medical record hub.
You want the records, not the updates
If what is wearing your family down is the binder full of lab reports and after-visit summaries — not the question of how to tell people how things are going — CaringBridge is not built for that. KeptWell ingests the actual documents. Lab PDFs, discharge summaries, imaging reports, photos of paper records, audio recordings of doctor visits. The AI reads every page, writes a plain-English summary in a warm nurse voice, and pulls out the structured details — lab values, medication changes, diagnoses, procedures — so they are searchable and chartable over time. You upload; the binder organizes itself.
You want to ask the chart questions, not write a post
Two months into active treatment, no one remembers what the platinum count was at the last cycle or which medication caused the rash. KeptWell's chat has read every document in your circle and answers in plain English with citations back to the exact page in the exact document. Ask "what was the last A1C and how is it trending" or "what did the discharge summary say about follow-up" and get a real answer, not a blank text box waiting for an update.
You want private by design, not private by setting
CaringBridge sites can be set to private, but the underlying model is still a site you publish to. KeptWell circles have no public URL, no shareable link, no audience mode. The only way to see anything in a circle is to be invited by the admin. For families who want their medical information to never be a post — even an accidentally-public one — the structural choice matters more than a privacy toggle.
Honest tradeoffs
Pick CaringBridge when
These are the cases where CaringBridge is the right answer and we will not pretend otherwise. We do not do these things and have no plans to.
- You want to broadcast updates to a community
- If the most pressing problem in your family right now is the dozens of well-meaning friends and extended family members asking how things are going, CaringBridge solves that problem beautifully and KeptWell does not. The public journal, the guestbook, the way an entire community can rally around a single site — that has been their core product since 1997, and we are not building anything like it. If broadcasting is the job, CaringBridge is the tool.
- You need meals, rides, and volunteer coordination
- CaringBridge's Planner lets a family coordinate meals, rides to chemo, visits, and other concrete tasks across a network of friends and neighbors. KeptWell has no Planner. We do not do scheduling, meal trains, or volunteer task assignments. If the help you need to organize is people-and-tasks rather than documents-and-records, CaringBridge handles it natively and we will not.
- You want decades of community muscle memory
- CaringBridge has been the default place to share family health updates for over twenty-five years. Friends, neighbors, coworkers, distant cousins — all of them know how a CaringBridge site works without being taught. There is no equivalent shared convention for inviting a college roommate into a KeptWell circle. CaringBridge wins on familiarity in a way that a new product cannot catch up to soon.
Other head-to-heads families have asked us about
KeptWell vs MyChart
If the tool you are also juggling is a hospital patient portal, see how KeptWell sits as a layer above every MyChart you already have.
KeptWell vs PicnicHealth
If what you actually want is a medical record hub and not a public journal, the deeper head-to-head is with PicnicHealth — the closest functional comparison.
What we will never do with your records
These promises apply to every KeptWell account, regardless of plan or price.
- We won't sell your data.
- Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to insurers, not to pharma, not to anyone, in any form, ever.
- We won't train AI models on your records.
- Anthropic (whose Claude model powers KeptWell) is contractually prohibited from training on anything we send them, under a signed Business Associate Agreement.
- We won't lock you in.
- You can export everything in your circle as a ZIP at any time. Cancellation is one click. Account deletion removes your data within 30 days.
Common questions
- Can I use KeptWell and CaringBridge together?
- Yes — many families do. CaringBridge handles the outward-facing job: posts to friends, guestbook messages, mobilizing meals and rides. KeptWell handles the inward-facing job: documents, lab trends, medication histories, AI-assisted questions about the chart, the conversations the immediate family needs to have with the care team. The two products do not duplicate each other, so using both creates no extra work.
- Is CaringBridge free?
- Yes. CaringBridge is a nonprofit and has been free since 1997, funded by family and supporter donations. KeptWell is also free today, and we have committed in writing on our pricing page to a fair, named price when we introduce paid plans — with a sponsored-access program funded by donations from families who can pay, available to anyone who needs covered access with no income verification.
- Does CaringBridge store medical records?
- No. CaringBridge is a journal platform — text posts, photos, comments. It does not store, parse, or analyze medical documents like discharge summaries, lab results, or imaging reports. If you have been pasting lab values into CaringBridge posts because there was nowhere else to put them, that is the gap KeptWell is built to fill.
- Will KeptWell ever add a public journal like CaringBridge?
- No. The point of a private medical record hub is that nothing in it is ever broadcast, even with a privacy setting. If we wanted to compete on public journals we would have built something that looks like CaringBridge. We are deliberately building the opposite shape, because that is the gap families have told us is unfilled.
- Does KeptWell have meal trains or volunteer coordination?
- No. Scheduling, meal trains, ride coordination, and volunteer task assignments are not on our roadmap. CaringBridge's Planner does this well; we have nothing to add and no plans to build it. If that is the problem you are trying to solve, use CaringBridge for that part.
- Where can I read the deeper comparison?
- The dedicated alternatives page covers more of the structural differences — privacy model, who each product is for, what we do and do not do — and links out to the rest of our published alternatives pages from there.
See your own records the way KeptWell sees them
Upload one document — a lab report, a discharge summary, a photo of a paper record from the actual binder — and watch it come back understood. KeptWell is free today, with a one-click export if you decide it is not what you need.
Get started
No password. We'll email you a sign-in link — it works whether you're new here or already have an account.
Caring for an aging parent instead? Start there →