In this category the word “free” covers at least four different things — an app that is free forever with nothing held back, an app that is free because a church funds it, a generous free tier beside a paid library, and a two-minute sample beside a trial. All four get called free. This page sorts out which is which.
Our bias, declared: we make Seraph, and Seraph has a paid tier, so we have an interest in how this comparison reads. We have tried to correct for that by ranking the apps by how much they give away rather than by how much we would like you to prefer us — which puts two competitors above us. Every claim below was read off each company's own live pages on September 3, 2026 and is quoted or linked; where a checkout renders its price only after its scripts run, we loaded it in a real browser rather than guessing. If we have got something wrong, or if you work at one of these companies and your page has changed, tell us at hello@seraphprayer.com and we will correct it.
Free forever, nothing held back. The whole app, with no paid tier in existence. YouVersion, Lectio 365 and Amen are here. There is no upsell because there is nothing to sell — all three are funded by a church, a ministry or donations.
Free tier beside a paid library. A real, permanent free allowance, with more behind a subscription. Hallow, Glorify, Pray.com and Seraph are here. The honest question is not whether a free tier exists but how much of the daily habit it actually carries.
Free, but funded by advertising. Bible Gateway and Pray.com both monetise free users with ads, and both say so on their own pages. That is a legitimate model and worth knowing before you commit.
Free download, trial-gated app. The app costs nothing to install, but the usable product begins after a trial. Abide describes its own free tier as the shortest two-minute daily meditation and a selection of sleep stories, which is candid of them.
Ordered by how much is genuinely free forever. That ordering is our judgment, not a measured fact — but it is the judgment we would give a friend, and it places Seraph third.
| App | Free forever, no payment, no trial | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| YouVersion Life.Church |
Effectively the whole app. Their listing says 3,500+ Bible versions in 2,300+ languages, audio Bibles, “Thousands of Reading Plans in 100+ languages,” and downloads for offline use. Its US App Store listing has no In-App Purchases section at all — we checked the listing directly. Their giving page explains the model: “YouVersion and the organizations we partner with make our app and content available for free because our lives have been changed by God's Word, and we want to share it with the world.” | Without an account you get only some versions, 28 Plan days, Daily Refresh and nearby churches. YouVersion says it plainly: “Although you can use YouVersion without an account, many Bible App features only work if you have one.” The account itself is free, so the gate is a sign-up, not a payment. |
| Lectio 365 24-7 Prayer |
The entire app, with no paid tier in existence. Its own listing calls it “A completely free daily devotional app.” Morning prayer inspired by Lectio Divina, midday prayer built around the Lord's Prayer, and Night Prayers that review the day — read or listened to, with or without music. Each Monday the coming week is released so you can download ahead. No In-App Purchases section on its listing either. | None on price. It is donation-funded — “We make Lectio 365 free for everyone, but this is only possible thanks to the generosity of people like you.” It is a guided-prayer app, not a Bible reader: no full Bible, no plans library, and the archive of past devotionals runs 30 days. |
| Seraph us — read accordingly |
Daily verse; 2 of 12 guided prayer sessions; the complete King James Bible, all 1,189 chapters, bundled offline in the iPhone app; every reading plan; the streak flame with a one-day grace; an opt-in daily reminder that never auto-prompts; 8 Illumination artworks earned by progress and never purchasable. No account of any kind — there is no sign-up to skip. | 10 of the 12 guided sessions and Sacred Seasons (Advent and Lent) require Seraph+. KJV only — one translation against YouVersion's thousands. On the web, chapters you have opened stay readable; the complete offline Bible is the iPhone app. And we launched on August 30 with zero ratings, which is exactly as much track record as that sounds like. |
| Hallow | Substantial, and named on their own benefits page as permanently free: Bible in a Year and Catechism in a Year with Fr. Mike, the Examen, Daily Gospel in 5-, 10- and 15-minute formats, Daily Rosary, Divine Mercy, Daily Meditation, Daily Mass Readings and a 7-day Litany of Trust challenge. “Hallow will always include free content for anyone who wants to pray.” | An account is mandatory. Their words: “You'll need a Hallow account to use the app, even if you don't have a paid subscription.” Paid sessions carry a diamond icon. Sleep prayers, music and Music Radio, audiobooks, all Rosaries and the full Divine Mercy Chaplet, and the #Pray40 and #Pray25 seasonal challenges are subscription-only. |
| Glorify | A “Glorify Basic account” gets Quote of the Day, Passage of the Day, Daily Devotional, Glorify Community, the Bible, the Journal, and limited access to the Explore library of courses, sleep stories, meditations and worship music. They also run a sponsorship scheme — see the generosity section below. | “Read Only” is the gate. Their own list marks the Passage of the Day and the Daily Devotional as read-only for free, with audio reserved for Plus — along with Faith Essentials, the calendar for revisiting missed devotionals, and unlimited Explore. Glorify also publishes no price on its own pages; their pricing article tells you to open the app to see it. |
| Pray.com | Their free article lists a new daily verse each morning, Pray Radio, podcasts, sermons and services from pastors, the text version of the Holy Bible, community prayer requests, and donating to a community. Their plans article adds Daily/Noon/Nightly Prayer, Bible in a Year with Jack Graham, Meditative Prayers, Sleep Psalms with Bishop T.D. Jakes and several podcast series as free. | Ads — and not only for free users. Their plans article marks “Advertisements: Yes” for the Free version, for Premium and for the Family Plan; only the separate “Premium Subscription No Ads” is marked No, and even that “does not currently include the removal of embedded sponsor ads within some content itself.” An account with a confirmed email is required to reach the free tier. |
| Abide | Narrow, and Abide states it without spin: “Abide is always free to download and includes: Daily guided meditation (shortest 2-min version); A selection of sleep stories.” That is the whole free tier. | Everything else sits behind the 7-day trial and the subscription. In exchange, Abide publishes something almost no one else in this category does — see the next section. |
Verified on September 3, 2026 from each app's own pages: help.youversion.com, youversion.com/giving and the US App Store listing for id282935706 · lectio365.com/the-app and the listing for id1483974820 · help.hallow.com on the free version (shown as updated August 3, 2026) and their paid-benefits article · glorify-app.zendesk.com (last updated February 7, 2025) and their Plus article · help.pray.com free article (last updated June 27, 2022) and their subscription plans article (last updated January 2, 2024) · help.abide.com (last edited July 3, 2026). Seraph's row describes our own app. Help-center articles go stale; where a page carries an old date we have given it rather than presenting the article as current.
| App | Account to use it | Ads, per their own pages | Trial | Paid price today |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| YouVersion | Not to read — but materially limited without one | Nothing to buy: no paid tier exists | n/a | Free, donation-funded |
| Lectio 365 | Not stated on their pages | Nothing to buy: no paid tier exists | n/a | Free, donation-funded |
| Seraph | None — no sign-up exists. One exception, disclosed: restoring a web subscription on a new browser emails you a magic link | None, anywhere | None; the free tier stands in for one | $59.99/yr or $6.99/mo |
| Hallow | Required, stated explicitly | Not addressed on their pages | Yes on individual plans — length not published; Friends & Family has none | $9.99/mo · $69.99/yr · $119.99/yr for up to 6 |
| Glorify | Implied by “Basic account” | Not addressed on their pages | Not stated on their pages | Not published on their own pages |
| Pray.com | Required, with email confirmation | Yes — Free, Premium and Family alike | 7 days on their web checkout today; their help centre says a trial is “usually 3 days but can vary” | $14.99/mo on their web checkout today; annual not published |
| Abide | Not stated on their pages | Not addressed on their pages | 7 days | $9.99/mo · $39.99/yr, shown struck through from $69.99 |
Verified September 3, 2026 from the sources listed above, plus Hallow's pricing article, Glorify's pricing article, Pray.com's trial article, pray.com/subscribe (loaded in a browser today, where it reads “Try 7 days free, cancel anytime” and “then $14.99/month” beside a benefits list that includes “Ad Free Listening”) and abide.com/sub-selection (“Get 7 days free, then only $39.99 per year”; yearly shown as $69.99 struck to $39.99, monthly $9.99). Two deliberate blanks: Glorify publishes no price on its own pages, and Pray.com publishes no annual price, though its help centre says subscriptions renew yearly — a direct conflict with the monthly figure on its own checkout, which we are reporting rather than resolving. Both apps' App Store listings show many purchase entries at once — Glorify's run from $4.99 to $69.99, Pray.com's from $1.99 to $109.99 — so quoting one as “the price” would be inventing a fact. Promotional pricing moves; check before you buy.
This is the section a comparison page written by a competitor usually skips. Ours does not, because if you subscribe on the strength of this page and reality disappoints you, we have lost more than a sale.
Three things are genuinely unusual about it, and beyond these three we would not claim much. There is no account — not an optional one, not a skippable one; no sign-up screen exists, so there is nothing to abandon. There are no ads, at any tier. And the complete King James Bible, all 1,189 chapters, is bundled inside the iPhone app, readable with no signal and no payment. On the web, chapters you have opened stay readable; the full offline Bible is the iPhone app, and we will not call the website offline without that qualifier.
The rest of the free tier is the daily habit itself: a verse each morning, 2 of the 12 guided sessions, every reading plan, the streak flame that forgives one missed day instead of punishing it, and 8 Illumination artworks that are earned by progress and cannot be bought at any price. Prayer data stays on your device and we have made a public vow of no prayer analytics — which is not the same as collecting nothing anywhere: this website counts cookieless aggregate page views, and iPhone subscription status is checked through RevenueCat under an anonymous ID.
Seraph+ opens exactly two things: the remaining 10 guided sessions, and Sacred Seasons (Advent and Lent). It does not unlock reading plans, and it does not unlock Illuminations — those are free and always will be. Two more disclosures most pages bury: the web subscription and the iPhone subscription are separate purchases and do not unlock each other, so buy on the platform you actually pray on; and although Seraph has no accounts, restoring a web subscription in a new browser sends a magic link to an email address, which is the one place we handle an email at all.
Every figure here came from the company's own live pages or its US App Store listing, read on September 3, 2026 — not from comparison sites, which get this category wrong often. Two things make that easy to get wrong. First, App Store listings show every purchase entry at once: Glorify's runs from a $4.99 “Pay it Forward” to a $69.99 year, Pray.com's from $1.99 to $109.99, with introductory, promotional and legacy prices sitting side by side. Pick one and you have invented a fact. Second, some checkouts render their price only after their scripts run — fetch pray.com/subscribe as plain text and there is no price on the page at all, which is precisely how a stale number gets copied from one comparison article to the next.
So we loaded that checkout in a real browser, and report what it said today: 7 days free, then $14.99 a month. Where a fact was genuinely unavailable we left a hole instead: no Glorify price, because Glorify does not publish one; no Pray.com annual price, for the same reason; no Hallow trial length, because Hallow states only that individual subscriptions begin with a free trial. The “7 days” for Hallow you will see quoted elsewhere has no first-party source we could find.
Free to begin · Seraph+ $59.99/yr or $6.99/mo · auto-renews · cancel anytime · web and iPhone are separate purchases
And if Lectio 365 or YouVersion is the better fit for you, take those instead. They are free, and we mean the recommendation.