The CPD tool market has quietly stratified. Some products are portfolios that store evidence; some are trackers that generate logs from your reading; some are learning sources that happen to certify; and one category, still rare, produces assessed evidence of knowledge. The right stack usually combines two or three, so this guide profiles nine tools honestly, including where each one stops.
BMJ Portfolio
Free for all healthcare professionals since its July 2026 relaunch. CPD logging from any provider, automatic tracking of BMJ Learning activity, dashboard of hours and appraisal deadlines, AI-supported reflection drafting, document storage, clean exports and direct FourteenFish integration. Focus: record-keeping with light learning integration. Principal limitation: no appraisal-form machinery and no assessment; it stores learning rather than generating or verifying it.
FourteenFish
The GP favourite for appraisal, paid annually at roughly £40 to £50 with RCGP discounts (last checked August 2026). Full NHS England appraisal workflow, MSF and patient surveys, trainee portfolio, excellent mobile apps and the email-to-diary capture trick. Focus: appraisal machinery with strong logging. Principal limitation: GP-centred and paid; hospital doctors on college schemes get less from it.
Clarity Doctors
Agilio's long-established appraisal and revalidation toolkit, widely deployed across English general practice, per-appraisee licensing with bundles including iLearn e-learning. NHS England template compliance, included feedback surveys, the AMP capture app, and TeamNet integration for practice-connected working. Focus: appraisal machinery at organisational scale. Principal limitation: least compelling bought individually if your organisation is not in the Agilio ecosystem.
CPDme
A multi-profession CPD portfolio, doctors alongside paramedics, nurses and allied health, with mobile capture, evidence storage, certificates and appraisal-ready exports on a subscription. Focus: straightforward record-keeping across professions. Principal limitation: a generalist log rather than a medical appraisal workflow or a learning source; the free tier of newer rivals now covers much of its ground.
MedAll
A community medical education platform hosting courses, conferences and a large catalogue of free CPD-accredited webinars, with attendance certificates into your record and tools for clinicians who teach to host events and collect feedback, making it a source of teaching evidence as well as learning. Focus: live learning and certification. Principal limitation: participation evidence rather than tracking or assessment; it fills the portfolio others store.
GPnotebook Pro
Passive CPD tracking over one of UK general practice's most-used references: reading and video activity accumulates credits automatically, reflective notes attach, and a yearly CPD statement exports, at £7.99 monthly or £71.88 annually (last checked August 2026). Focus: converting daily reading into logged CPD. Principal limitation: tracked reading evidences exposure, not learning; it proves you looked, not what stuck. Our full review: /blog/gpnotebook-pro-review-worth-it-pricing-cpd.
Monday Clinical Brief
A weekly UK-focused digest of practice-changing papers and clinical developments, built for staying current, with the reading naturally loggable as CPD. Focus: curated currency for time-poor clinicians. Principal limitation: a learning source, not a tracker or portfolio, and reading-based evidence carries the same exposure-versus-retention caveat as all passive formats.
Physicians' CPD Diary
The Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians' official diary for consultant, SAS and trainee physicians: web diary plus a genuinely capable app with voice transcription, offline entry, attachments, GMP-domain mapping and one-tap annual appraisal PDFs, free to college members and £165 annually otherwise (last checked August 2026), with a large approved-activities database. Focus: the physician credit scheme, done properly. Principal limitation: physician-shaped by design, and a diary rather than a learning or assessment tool.
iatroX
The assessed-learning layer: adaptive question banks across a doctor's scope, the Socratic Tutor on missed items, spaced re-testing, and askiatroX guideline answers during the working day, with My CPD binding topic, time, performance and your reflection into appraisal-ready records for any of the portfolios above. Free tier includes askiatroX and selected full banks; the full platform is £29 monthly or £99 annually. Focus: generating evidence of verified knowledge, the tier certificates and reading logs cannot reach. Principal limitation: it is deliberately not an appraisal portfolio; it feeds one rather than replacing it.
Building the stack
A defensible 2026 setup for a GP: FourteenFish or Clarity as the appraisal machine, BMJ Portfolio if you want a free capture layer, MedAll and a digest for learning breadth, and iatroX supplying the assessed evidence that makes the whole file mean something. For a physician: the CPD Diary plus BMJ Portfolio, with iatroX covering specialty knowledge maintenance. Two or three tools, each doing the job it was built for, beats any single product pretending to do all of them.
Frequently asked questions
How many of these do I actually need?
Two or three, chosen by layer: one system of record (your appraisal toolkit or college diary), optionally one free general store, and one or two evidence generators. Beyond that, each additional app is another login producing duplicate receipts.
What should locums prioritise?
Portability and self-sufficiency: an appraisal toolkit they own personally, a capture layer that works from a phone between sessions, and self-directed assessed learning that does not depend on any employer's teaching programme. FourteenFish plus iatroX, with BMJ Portfolio beneath, is the compact version of that answer.
Which single change most improves a weak CPD file?
Adding one assessed-learning entry a month. Nothing else on this list changes the character of a portfolio as much as moving from certificates-only to documented gaps found, corrected and re-tested; it is also the cheapest upgrade here.