The short answer
Airpay Dental and Zentist both automate parts of the dental insurance and billing workflow, but at different scopes. Airpay Dental is a focused point solution: it verifies patient insurance eligibility ahead of appointments and flags claims likely to be denied.
Zentist is a fuller revenue-cycle-management platform built for DSOs, where eligibility is one module alongside automated payment posting, denial management, and accounts-receivable prioritization.
If you just need better eligibility verification, Airpay Dental is the more targeted tool. If you need to automate the whole claims-to-cash cycle across many locations, Zentist is built for that scale.
At a glance
| Detail | Airpay Dental | Zentist |
|---|---|---|
| Core category | Automated dental insurance eligibility verification | AI-driven dental revenue cycle management, verification is one module |
| Founded | 2022 | 2015 |
| Headquarters | New York, NY | San Francisco, CA |
| Founders | Dr. Derek Giddon, DDS (CEO), and Daniel Horowitz (CTO) | Ato Kasymov (CEO) and Paulina Song |
| Funding | One seed round, closed November 2022, amount undisclosed | Series A led by Costanoa Ventures, April 2023 |
| Primary users | Private practices and DSOs, both segments served with dedicated product pages | DSOs and multi-location dental groups, enterprise-first positioning |
What Airpay Dental does
Airpay Dental automates insurance verification across 1,200+ payers, confirming coverage ahead of appointments and centralizing standardized eligibility data in one dashboard. It also flags claims at risk of denial before submission.
- Scheduled batch verification: pulls appointments from the PMS automatically and verifies coverage up to 7 days ahead, with no manual entry
- On-demand lookups: real-time eligibility checks available directly from the dashboard
- AirPay Warnings: proactive denial-risk flags based on eligibility data and treatment history
- Multi-location dashboard: for DSOs, a central view filterable by office, payer, and plan
What Zentist does
Zentist is a cloud RCM platform built specifically for DSOs. Its core product, Remit AI, automates EOB and ERA ingestion, payment posting, denial categorization, and reconciliation, alongside a separate AR-prioritization tool called Cavi AR.
- Remit AI: automated payment posting and reconciliation, with access to 1,800+ EOB/ERA payers through multiple clearinghouse partners including DentalXChange
- Cavi AR: prioritizes accounts receivable by dollar value for collections teams
- Denial management: categorization and claims-status/aging tracking
- Verification model varies by PMS: real-time automation is strongest on Open Dental; on Dentrix and Eaglesoft, automation is paired with a human verification step due to more restrictive PMS access
Company details
| Detail | Airpay Dental | Zentist |
|---|---|---|
| Scale / clients | 1,200+ payers integrated, 90%+ of appointments verified, and a claimed 4+ hours saved per practice per day | Serves hundreds of DSOs and thousands of practices. Processed 11.2M+ claims worth $2.1B in 2025. Named clients include Dental Care Alliance, Sage Dental, and Espire Dental |
| Integrations | CareStack, Cloud 9 Ortho, Curve Dental, Denticon, Dentrix (including Ascend and Enterprise), Eaglesoft, and Open Dental | Open Dental, Dentrix, Eaglesoft, and Denticon, plus clearinghouse integrations with DentalXChange, Zelis, ECHO, and Change Healthcare |
| Compliance & security | No SOC 2, HIPAA, or HITRUST certification published | SOC 2 Type II certified, with a dedicated trust center at trust.zentist.io. States HIPAA compliance |
| Pricing | Not public. Site states a flat monthly rate with no hidden fees | Not public. No pricing page; the site routes to a demo request |
| Reviews | 5.0 out of 5 on Capterra from 8 reviews | No public G2 or Capterra listing |
Feature comparison
| Capability | Airpay Dental | Zentist |
|---|---|---|
| Insurance eligibility verification | Yes, core product | Yes, one module among several |
| Denial-risk flagging pre-submission | Yes, AirPay Warnings | Post-submission denial categorization, not pre-submission flagging |
| Payment posting / reconciliation | No | Yes, core product, Remit AI |
| Accounts-receivable prioritization | No | Yes, Cavi AR |
| Solo/independent practice focus | Yes, dedicated product page | No, enterprise/DSO-first |
| Public compliance certification | None found | SOC 2 Type II |
Which one is right for your practice?
Choose Airpay Dental if: your main pain point is eligibility verification and denial prevention, and you want a focused tool rather than a full RCM overhaul, whether you're a solo practice or a DSO.
Choose Zentist if: you're a DSO managing payment posting, denials, and collections across many locations, and want one platform to automate the whole post-claim cycle, not just verification.
Zentist's stronger compliance documentation and enterprise focus suit larger, more regulated groups, while Airpay Dental's narrower scope may suit practices that already have a billing process and just want cleaner eligibility data feeding into it.
