About Upfronte

Upfronte is an AI-powered patient advocacy platform built on a simple premise: hospital bills are often wrong or inflated, and patients deserve to know what care actually costs before they pay.

What we do

You upload a photo or PDF of a medical bill. Upfronte reads every line item, cross-references each charge against real hospital pricing data, flags overcharges and billing errors in plain English, and — if you authorize it — negotiates the bill down on your behalf. You only pay if we save you money: 20% of recovered savings, with a $49 minimum, and no fee at all if there are no savings.

The data behind it

Since 2021, federal price-transparency rules require hospitals to publish the prices they negotiate with insurers in machine-readable files. Upfronte aggregates these published rates into a large pricing database and benchmarks your specific procedure codes against them, with Medicare and FAIR Health rates as a fallback. That is how we can show that a head CT scan billed at $3,450 had a real negotiated rate of $218 — a 15.8× markup on the very same scan.

How the analysis works

A vision-capable AI model reads each page of your bill and structures the line items. We price each code against our database, run rule-based checks for duplicates and unbundling, then produce a plain-English breakdown of what you were charged versus a fair-market estimate, the issues we found, and the legal leverage that applies — for example, No Surprises Act protections or nonprofit charity care eligibility.

Privacy and trust

Your bill and personal details are stored securely. We only contact a hospital after you sign a limited HIPAA authorization for your account, and access to health information is logged for compliance. We are transparent about our limits, too: Upfronte is a billing-advocacy and analysis service — not a law firm, medical practice, or insurance adjuster — and nothing we provide is legal or medical advice.

Who's behind Upfronte

Upfronte was founded by Dara Bonakdar, who reviews the medical-billing guides and guidance published here.

Get in touch

Questions? Email dara@upfronte.com or call 680-800-2028. You can also read our guides or frequently asked questions.