In July 2026, BMJ Group relaunched BMJ Portfolio: a free CPD recording, tracking and reporting platform open to all healthcare professionals, with no subscription required. In a market where doctors have long paid annual fees for portfolio software, a free entrant carrying the BMJ name is a genuinely significant event, and the feature list is more substantial than a loss-leader. This review covers what it does, where it fits alongside the established appraisal toolkits, and how to combine it with sources of actual learning evidence.
Who it is for
BMJ Portfolio is deliberately profession-agnostic: doctors of any specialty, nurses, allied health professionals, anyone with CPD to record. That breadth is a positioning choice with consequences. Unlike FourteenFish or Clarity, it is not built around one profession's appraisal form; it is a general CPD home designed to keep you organised year-round and appraisal-ready, whichever formal process you feed. For doctors, that makes it most naturally a CPD layer that sits beneath or beside an appraisal toolkit, and for professions with lighter formal tooling, it can plausibly be the whole system.
What it does
The core is external CPD logging: record learning from any provider in one secure place, with reflections and supporting documents stored against each entry. Around that sit the features that distinguish it. BMJ Learning activity is tracked automatically, so modules completed there arrive in the portfolio without manual entry, a meaningful convenience for the many doctors already using BMJ Learning through BMA membership or institutional access. A personalised dashboard shows accumulated CPD hours, learning progress and upcoming appraisal deadlines. Personalised CPD recommendations draw on your role and recorded needs. And portfolio summaries and supporting documentation export cleanly when appraisal season arrives.
The AI reflection support
BMJ Portfolio includes AI-powered support for drafting, improving and refining reflective entries. Used well, this is the acceptable-use territory current college guidance describes: prompts, structure, completeness checks and clearer expression around substance that remains yours. The standing cautions apply here as everywhere: the reflection must stay genuinely your own, AI use should be declared to your appraiser, and no patient-identifiable information belongs in any reflection tool. Within those lines, a free, mainstream platform normalising AI-assisted reflective writing is a notable moment for how UK CPD gets done.
The FourteenFish integration
The most practically interesting feature for GPs: BMJ Portfolio integrates directly with FourteenFish, reducing manual re-entry between the two systems. Since FourteenFish remains the appraisal toolkit of record for a large share of UK GPs, a free CPD layer that feeds it addresses the classic annoyance of logging learning twice. The sensible division of labour: BMJ Portfolio as the year-round capture and organisation layer, FourteenFish as the appraisal submission machinery.
Against FourteenFish, Clarity and CPDme
The comparison is really about category. FourteenFish and Clarity Doctors are appraisal platforms: NHS England form support, MSF and patient feedback surveys, appraiser workflows, paid annually. CPDme is a multi-profession CPD portfolio with evidence storage and export, on its own subscription. BMJ Portfolio undercuts all three on price, being free, and matches none of them on appraisal-form machinery, having none. It competes hardest with the plain CPD-logging function: if what you currently pay for is somewhere to keep certificates and reflections, the free option now does that with AI support and a trusted name attached. If what you pay for is the appraisal workflow itself, you still need the toolkit; you may just stop doing your logging inside it.
The gap it does not fill, and how iatroX fits
A portfolio, however good, stores evidence; it does not generate any. The learning still has to come from somewhere, and the strongest evidence to store remains assessed learning: performance records showing what you knew, what you got wrong and that the gap closed. That is the layer iatroX supplies, adaptive question sessions across your scope of practice, Tutor dialogue on the misses, spaced re-testing, bound into appraisal-ready records by My CPD, which can then live in BMJ Portfolio alongside everything else. Free portfolio, assessed learning feeding it, appraisal toolkit receiving it: that stack now costs less than the toolkit alone did two years ago.
Verdict
Worth using, with clear eyes about category. As a free, well-built, AI-assisted CPD home with BMJ Learning capture and FourteenFish integration, BMJ Portfolio immediately earns a place in most doctors' stacks, and for non-doctor professions it may be the whole answer. It replaces paid CPD logging; it does not replace appraisal toolkits, and it does not generate learning evidence. Pair it accordingly.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a catch to "free"?
None visible at launch: no subscription tier is required for the core logging, storage, AI reflection support or exports. The strategic logic is ecosystem, a free portfolio strengthens BMJ Learning and the wider BMJ stack, which is a sustainable reason for a product to stay free. As with any platform holding your professional record, keep periodic exports as your own backup, a habit worth having whichever tool you use.
Should I move years of history into it?
Start forward-looking: log new CPD there from today and let history stay where it is, exporting the old platform's summary as an archive. Wholesale migration is rarely worth the evenings, and appraisal only ever needs the current cycle presented well.
Does it replace my college CPD diary?
No; college schemes, like the Federation's for physicians, remain the system of record where they apply. BMJ Portfolio sits comfortably beneath as general storage.