UpToDate vs Antimicrobial Guide
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
UpToDate
This clinical decision support tool provides healthcare professionals with evidence-based guidance to improve patient care. It features AI-powered conversational answers, continuously updated medical content, and tools for drug reference, calculations, and patient education.
- Expert AI conversational guidance
- Gold standard clinical content
- Practice-changing updates
- Patient education materials
- Drug reference and interactions
- Clinical calculators
- Kidney dosing guidance
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UpToDate is the clinical decision support solution trusted by over 3M healthcare professionals to help improve care delivery and patient outcomes. Now powered by UpToDate Expert AI, a generative AI experience built on rigorously maintained UpToDate clinical intelligence to delivers fast, clinically grounded answers through a conversational interface. Expert AI, available in select packages and applications, brings together the latest evidence and real-world clinical expertise and provides transparent sourcing, embedded guardrails, and oversight, supporting clinical reasoning and helping clinicians make confident, informed decisions. Key features include: • Expert AI: Conversational guidance that mirrors how clinicians think. • Gold Standard Clinical Content: Clinician-authored clinical intelligence and graded recommendation, enriched with clinical algorithms, graphics, videos, and continuously updated to reflect the latest evidence and clinical care experience. • Practice-Changing Updates: Timely insights that reflect the latest evidence and how it impacts patient care. • Patient Education: Thousands of patient education leaflets in up to 19 different languages to improve patient understanding and support care plan adherence. • Key Points Panels: Quick, clinically actionable guidance to help clinicians avoid common diagnostic and treatment errors embedded in UpToDate search results. • Drug Reference & Interactions: Evidence-based drug monographs and interaction analysis to support safe and informed prescribing decisions. • Clinical Calculators: Over 200 tools to support dosing, risk scoring, and patient assessments. • Rx Transitions: Step-by-step support for switching antidepressants safely. • Kidney Dosing: Drug dosing guidance for patients with renal impairment. Available on mobile, desktop, and integrated into EHRs, ensuring you can access UpToDate’s trusted guidance where and when you need it. Access to features will vary depending on your UpToDate account. Expert AI is now available in personal trainee subscriptions and UpToDate Pro Plus subscriptions in the US, and through select Enterprise Edition accounts. To get access, explore personal subscription options on the UpToDate website or contact your Enterprise account lead. This app is designed for use by medical professionals. If you are not a medical professional, please consult a qualified healthcare provider before making any medical decisions.
Antimicrobial Guide
This app assists healthcare professionals in choosing the right antimicrobial treatments for patients. It displays recommended drug regimens based on local guidelines after a database is loaded. It's a convenient tool for distributing treatment guidelines.
- Select infection of interest
- Display recommended drug regimens
- Utilize local healthcare institution guidelines
- Distribute empiric antimicrobial treatment guidelines
- Convenient clinician tool
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The Antimicrobial Guide helps healthcare professionals select the appropriate antimicrobial treatment for their patients based on local guidelines and recommendations. Once a database is loaded into the Antimicrobial Guide, clinicians can simply select the infection of interest and the app will display the drug regimen that is recommended by their local healthcare institution and/or antimicrobial stewardship program. For antimicrobial stewardship programs, the Antimicrobial Guide is a powerful way to distribute empiric antimicrobial treatment guidelines in a format that is both easy and convenient for clinicians to use.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Antimicrobial Guide at 5.0 against UpToDate's 3.6. Antimicrobial Guide also leads on monetization model (free vs subscription) and iOS requirement (7.0 vs 18.0). UpToDate's advantage is ratings volume (579 vs 2). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Antimicrobial Guide holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: UpToDate has 579 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two.
UpToDate ships an update every 5 weeks, Antimicrobial Guide every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 14, 2026 and October 2, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | UpToDate | Antimicrobial Guide |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.6 (579 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 28.4% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 579 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 5 weeks | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Subscription | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 7.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 56 MB | 1 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 17+ |
| Developer | UpToDate, Inc. | Portable Databases |
Customer experience
UpToDate
Antimicrobial Guide
Bugs and requests
UpToDate
Reported bugs
3 issues- Inability to download offline content
- Constant need to re-authenticate
- Incompatibility with recent iOS updates
Requested features
3 requests- Highlight and annotate content
- Improved institutional login support
- Dark mode and font size options
Antimicrobial Guide
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
UpToDate
No in-app purchases
Antimicrobial Guide
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is UpToDate free?
Is Antimicrobial Guide free?
Which has better reviews, UpToDate or Antimicrobial Guide?
Do UpToDate or Antimicrobial Guide have ads?
Which is updated more often, UpToDate or Antimicrobial Guide?
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