What is OpenScripture?
OpenScripture is a customisable, translation-aware Bible app that shows where published translations agree and differ, helps you study the original languages, and lets you build your own personalised reading text.
We span multiple translationsacross Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Ecumenical, Jewish, and Independent traditions — giving you one of the broadest views of any free Bible tool.
Every word connects back to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek — with Strong's numbers, morphology, and definitions available at a tap.
Hebrew Strong’s dictionary entries: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project (CC-BY-4.0).
Greek Strong’s dictionary glosses and definitions include adapted excerpts from Liddell & Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, provided by Perseus Digital Library via Greek Reference (CC BY-SA 3.0 US).
Concise word glosses, proper names, and original-language versification mapping are derived from STEPBible data — the “Translators Brief lexicon of Extended Strongs” (TBESH/TBESG, abridged Brown-Driver-Briggs and Abbott-Smith), “Translators Versification Traditions” (TVTMS), and “Individualised Proper Names” (TIPNR) — © Tyndale House Cambridge, used under CC BY 4.0 (www.STEPBible.org).
Reading Modes
Composite
The default reading experience. Shows a base text built from your enabled translations, with Translation Difference Symbols where wording differs. Tap a circled number to compare different translations side by side. Use Verse Locks and Word Locks to keep your preferred wording, and save setups as Personalised Bibles (for example "My Personalised Bible" or "Devotional Reading"). In Reading Options, adjust translation difference sensitivity to turn symbols off, show only major meaning-level differences, or include subtler ones.
Published
Read one translation as originally published. Select your translation from the dropdown in the header bar (tap the translation badge next to the book name). Publisher footnote markers shown in chapter text belong only to the selected translation, while Translation Difference Symbols can still appear if enabled.
AI Translation
Generate a translation by selecting your preferred style and emphasis. These translations are generated from the original-language text to provide a unique and independent take on what the original authors may have intended to communicate. Available styles combine tone (formal, dynamic, paraphrase) with emphasis (accuracy, readability, devotional). The Divine Name is rendered “Yahweh” in all AI combos. Free tier offers one combo; Premium unlocks all nine. AI text is generated chapter by chapter — if a combination has not been produced for the passage you are reading yet, you will see a brief holding notice rather than placeholder text.
Interlinear
A word-by-word view showing three rows for each word: the original Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek script, its transliteration, and the English equivalent with Strong's number. Tap any word to open the word study strip for detailed morphology, frequency data, and definitions. Best for in-depth language study.
Exploring the Text
Symbols
OpenScripture uses two types of symbols. Translation difference markers are circled numbers () that show where translations make different wording choices. They get darker red as the difference becomes more significant — a pale marker signals a minor word-order or synonym difference, while a deep red one flags a meaning-level divergence. Publisher footnote markers use each translation's own letters, numbers, or symbols inside a small square outline in a muted blue-grey, keeping them visually separate from translation-difference colours. In chapter text, publisher markers are scoped to the active reading version; in the verse drawer, notes and cross-references are aggregated across all available versions.
Comparison Drawer
Tap any translation difference marker, verse number, or word to open the comparison drawer. A persistent word strip at the top shows the words of the verse and highlights the tapped word. Below it, four tabs give you different views of the same verse:
- Translations — every enabled version side by side, grouped by tradition, with Lock it in and custom translation controls.
- My Notes — your own highlights and notes for the verse.
- Commentary & Footnotes — commentary from multiple sources plus publisher footnotes (see below).
- Cross-Refs — related passages from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.
The word strip itself gives a word-by-word, interlinear-style view of the verse — tap any word for its word study.
Navigate between verses using the prev/next arrows at the top of the drawer.
Word Study
Tap any word in the scripture text to open the word study strip in the comparison drawer. It shows:
- The original language word in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek script.
- Pronunciation guide (transliteration).
- Strong's number — a standard dictionary code used by most Bible study tools.
- Grammatical analysis (morphology): part of speech, tense, person, number, etc.
- How often the word appears across the entire Bible.
- A concise lexical definition.
Tap Blue Letter Bible or BibleHub in the strip to open a full concordance view for that word in a new tab. Available in all reading modes.
Study Notes & Commentary
The Commentary & Footnotes tab in the verse drawer aggregates commentary from multiple trusted sources. Each source is clearly attributed and collapsible so you can focus on the ones most useful to you:
- REV Commentary (regularly updated by Spirit & Truth)
- NET Bible Translators' Notes
- Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary
- Matthew Henry's Commentary
- Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible
- Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
- Vincent's Word Studies in the New Testament
Cross-References
The Cross-References tab shows related passages from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — one of the most comprehensive cross-reference collections ever compiled, with over 500,000 links. Tap any reference to navigate directly to that verse.
Textual Certainty
Textual certainty shows how confident scholars are about the manuscript reading behind each English word. It is useful when you want to see, at a glance, where the underlying text is very stable versus more debated. Toggle it in Reading Options and choose a colour scheme (Warm, Cool, Monochrome, or High Contrast). High-certainty wording has no special marking; medium certainty adds a thin underline; very low certainty uses a thicker underline with a secondary thin line. Translation Difference Symbols sometimes cluster near uncertain wording, because translations often diverge where the source text is less settled. Where certainty data has not yet been imported for a passage, no marking is applied.
Personalising Your Bible
Personalised Bibles
A Personalised Bible is a named setup (for example "My Personalised Bible" or "Devotional Reading") that saves your Verse Locks and Word Locks together. Free accounts include one Personalised Bible; Premium lets you create as many as you need — one for devotional reading, another for language study. Switch between them from the mode pill popover in the header so each context keeps its own preferred wording. Verse Locks and Word Locks created in one Personalised Bible stay scoped to that setup and do not bleed into others. Manage them from the Personalised Bibles tab on your profile page.
Verse Locks
In Composite mode, open the verse drawer, go to the Translations tab, choose the translation you want, and tap Lock it in. That whole verse will use your chosen translation in Composite mode. Locked text gets a cut-and-paste treatment so you can see at a glance which verses you have personalised; hover or press and hold locked wording to reveal the original verse. Free and Guest accounts can keep up to five Verse Locks — stored locally in Guest mode, and synced across your devices once you sign in — while Premium unlocks unlimited Verse Locks. By default, Word Locks still apply to aligned words inside a verse-locked verse; go to Profile → Account → Lock appearance to change this to whole-verse wording without word substitutions. You can also adjust lock colours there. Review and remove locks from the Verse Locks tab on your profile page.
Word Locks
A Word Lock ties one original-language word (identified by its Strong's number) to your preferred rendering everywhere it appears in Composite mode — like a careful find-and-replace for that entire word family. To create one: tap any word in the text, open Word Study in the comparison drawer, then set the rendering you want for that word. Options include English, transliteration, or original script. Hover or press and hold a locked word to reveal the wording it replaced and the aligned source word when available. For example, lock the Greek word λόγος (logos, G3056) to always display as “logos” or “λόγος” throughout the New Testament. Free and Guest accounts include up to two active Word Locks; Premium unlocks unlimited Word Locks. Manage all your locks from the Word Locks tab on your profile page.
Bookmarks
Bookmarks mark whole chapters, not individual verses. Open the Bookmark control in the chapter header — on smaller screens it sits beside the chapter navigation arrows — then tap a colour to add this chapter to that named collection, or tap the same colour again to remove it. Each collection has its own name and colour; you can create as many as you need for different reading tracks. Margin stripes along the left edge of the reader and marks in the book picker show which chapters you have saved. Bookmarks are visible in every Personalised Bible and every reading mode. Manage everything, including sorting, filtering, and bulk removal, from the Bookmarks tab on your profile page.
Custom Translations
Write your own rendering for any verse. In the verse drawer's Translations tab, tap Add custom translation to enter your own text. Your custom rendering appears at the top of the translation list and can be locked in just like any published translation. All custom translations are visible and editable from the Custom Translations tab on your profile page.
Highlights & Notes
Use the Select button in the header to choose a range of text, then open Notes to add a highlight colour and optional note text. Choosing no note text saves a pure highlight. Highlights and notes are stored together — each highlight can carry a note, and each note always has an associated colour. View and manage all your notes and highlights from the My Notes and Highlights tab on your profile page, with filtering by colour and sorting by date, colour, or book order.
Display & Settings
Display Settings
Customise your reading experience via the settings cog in the header. Options include:
- Text size — six steps from XS to XXL, applied to scripture body text.
- Line spacing — four levels from Compact to Spacious.
- Font — System Default, Crimson Pro (serif), Inter (sans-serif), or Noto Serif.
- Theme — Light, Dark, or System (follows your device setting).
Enabled Translations
From My OpenScripture (your profile), open the Translations tab to choose which translations appear throughout the app, reorder them, and toggle visibility. Translations are grouped by tradition — Ecumenical, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, and Independent — so you can quickly focus on the ones most relevant to your study. At least one translation must remain enabled. The enabled set affects which translations appear in the comparison drawer, which are included in the Composite base text, and which footnote markers show in chapter text.
Tradition Colours
Translations are colour-coded by tradition throughout the app: Protestant (blue), Catholic (purple), Orthodox (gold), Ecumenical (green), Jewish (teal), and Independent (grey). These colours appear on tradition badges in the comparison drawer, on translation row headers, and in lock indicators, so you can see at a glance which tradition each rendering comes from.
Offline Study & Syncing
Offline Reading & Search
Keep reading and studying even without a network connection. Download individual Bible translations for offline use under the Visible Translations and Downloads tab on your profile page. Downloads package searchable verse text for the selected translations. Interlinear mode and original-language word mapping require the full Original Language Morphology & Alignment dataset.
Offline Datasets
For in-depth language and commentary study offline, you can download larger datasets from the Visible Translations and Downloads tab on your profile page:
- Original Language Morphology & Alignment — required for Interlinear mode and full Composite word study offline.
- Textual Commentaries — commentary sources for offline Study Notes.
- Pre-generated AI Translation styles — cached AI translation combos for offline use.
Offline dataset downloading is a Premium feature.
Automatic Synchronisation
Your notes, highlights, bookmarks, Word Locks, and reading settings are saved locally when you are offline. Once you reconnect, your changes are automatically synchronised with the server. If changes were made on multiple devices, the most recent update is kept, so your study setups stay in sync across all your screens.
Billing & Subscriptions
Subscribing
Subscribe to Premium from the Pricingpage. On the web, payment is handled securely by Stripe; in the iOS app, by Apple In-App Purchase; and in the Android app, by Google Play. However you subscribe, Premium is tied to your OpenScripture account — one subscription covers every platform, so a subscription purchased on your phone unlocks Premium on the web too.
Cancelling
Cancel through the platform you subscribed on:
- Web (Stripe) — open Profile → Account and use the billing portal to manage or cancel your subscription.
- iOS (Apple) — on your device, go to Settings → your Apple ID → Subscriptions and cancel there.
- Android (Google Play) — open the Play Store app → Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions and cancel there.
Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period — you keep full Premium access until then, and you are not charged again.
Payment Issues
Update your card or payment method through the same place you would cancel: the billing portal in Account settingsfor web subscriptions, or your Apple / Google Play subscription settings for app-store subscriptions. If a payment fails, your subscription enters a short grace period and an in-app banner prompts you to fix the payment — Premium continues during the grace period, and updating your payment details restores normal billing.
Refunds
Refunds follow the platform you purchased on:
- Web (Stripe) — contact support and we will help. If you are in Australia, nothing in our refund policy limits your rights under Australian Consumer Law.
- Apple purchases — request a refund from Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com. Apple decides Apple refunds.
- Google Play purchases — request a refund through your Google Play order history. Google decides Google Play refunds.
The full refund policy is in our Terms of Service.
Your Data After Premium
If your Premium subscription ends, nothing you created is deleted. Premium-only items — such as extra Word Locks beyond the free allowance — are simply paused and restored automatically if you resubscribe. The one exception is downloaded offline translations, which are cleared from your device when Premium ends; this is a requirement of the translation licenses, and you can download them again on resubscribing.
Translation Catalogue
The reader currently offers 17 readable published translations for day-to-day reading. The list below covers 39 titles we track for licensing, attribution, and future releases — including editions that are not yet available to read in the app. Choose which appear for you under Enabled Translations; licensing details are in Copyright & Attribution below.
Ecumenical
The latest revision of the NRSV, widely used in academia and across traditions.
Protestant (Evangelical)
A widely-used modern English translation balancing readability with fidelity to the original languages.
Protestant (Evangelical)
An essentially literal translation in the tradition of the Tyndale-KJV legacy.
Protestant (Evangelical)
Modern evangelical translation with translator notes; app text is aligned to the licensed Second Edition XML (paragraph titles stored separately from verse bodies).
Protestant
The current NASB 2020 revision, known for literal accuracy and fidelity to the original languages.
Protestant
An extremely literal translation by Robert Young, preserving Hebrew/Greek verb tenses.
Protestant
A highly literal revision of the KJV, valued for its accuracy and the basis for many modern translations.
Protestant
A modern public-domain Bible translation from the Berean Bible project, with Strong's-linked source artifacts available for alignment work.
Protestant
A form-centric, word-aligned literal translation from unfoldingWord, released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike terms. Manually aligned to the original languages for transparent word study.
Protestant
The Berean Bible project's interlinear edition: per-word English glosses read in original-language order, with Strong's-linked Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek tagging. Public domain.
Protestant
A highly literal, form-centric whole-Bible translation from the Berean Bible project (literalbible.com), using brackets for supplied words. Public domain.
Protestant
A modern public-domain English translation maintained by eBible.org. OpenScripture uses the Protestant source edition until DC routing is separately verified.
Protestant
A highly literal modern English translation released for free use under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike terms.
Catholic
A revision of the original Douay-Rheims Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate.
Catholic
Ronald L. Conte Jr.'s modern English translation of the Clementine Latin Vulgate, placed in the public domain by the translator.
Orthodox
Sir Lancelot Brenton's English translation of the Greek Septuagint (Codex Vaticanus).
Orthodox
The Greek text of Brenton's Septuagint (Codex Vaticanus), structurally aligned 1:1 with the English LXX-B for side-by-side display. Public domain; plain Greek text (no morphology/Strong's tagging).
Catholic
The Latin Sixto-Clementine Vulgate (1592) — the source text the Douay-Rheims (DRA) was translated from — keyed to the DRA for original-language reference. Public domain; plain Latin text (no morphology/Strong's tagging). Foundational original-language layer; the Latin morphology + interlinear bridge is the Tier B follow-up.
Independent
A living translation by Spirit & Truth Fellowship International, regularly updated with ongoing scholarship.
Orthodox
An English translation reflecting Eastern Orthodox interpretive tradition, using the Septuagint for the OT.
Ecumenical
A modern translation created by scholars from multiple denominations for broad accessibility.
Protestant (Historic)
The most influential English Bible in history. Translated from the Textus Receptus and Masoretic Text, its language has shaped English literature and worship for over four centuries.
Protestant (Evangelical)
A thought-for-thought translation prioritizing natural English readability while maintaining accuracy to the original texts.
Catholic
The standard Catholic liturgical Bible in the United States, used at Mass and in Catholic education. Translated from the original languages with reference to the Nova Vulgata.
Protestant (Evangelical)
A modern translation using "Optimal Equivalence" — balancing word-for-word precision with natural English readability. Successor to the HCSB.
Jewish
Public-domain Jewish translation of the Tanakh (OT only), sourced from the 1917 JPS edition.
Jewish
The definitive modern Jewish English translation of the Hebrew Bible, reflecting Jewish scholarship and interpretive tradition.
Scholarly / Eastern Orthodox
A deliberately literal, defamiliarising translation by Eastern Orthodox philosopher David Bentley Hart. NT only.
Jehovah's Witnesses
The official Bible translation of Jehovah's Witnesses, known for distinctive rendering choices reflecting their theology.
Catholic
A Catholic translation rooted in the French Bible de Jérusalem, using the divine name "Yahweh" throughout the Old Testament.
Independent
A Biblical Unitarian NT translation by Anthony Buzzard emphasising the distinct personhood of God the Father and Jesus the Messiah.
Ecumenical
A translation designed for clear, simple English accessible to readers of all ages and backgrounds.
Protestant (Evangelical)
A modern evangelical translation aiming for accuracy with natural English readability.
Orthodox
An Eastern Orthodox NT translation based on the Patriarchal Text of 1904, the official text of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Messianic Jewish
A Messianic Jewish translation of the complete Bible, using Jewish naming conventions and ordering for the Old Testament.
Independent
Dr. Jay Winter’s 2015 Standard English Version of 1 Enoch, translated from the Ethiopic and logically organised into five books. Made freely distributable by the translator. Single-book translation; original-language alignment, AI generation, and most composite features do not apply.
Protestant
A careful modernization of the KJV preserving its literary cadence while updating vocabulary and grammar. Tracked for licensing; not yet readable in-app.
Protestant (Evangelical)
Eugene Peterson’s contemporary paraphrase in everyday English cadence. Tracked for licensing; not yet readable in-app.
Catholic
Current Catholic edition superseding the 1985 NJB, from the same editorial line as the Jerusalem Bible tradition. Tracked for licensing; not yet readable in-app.
Copyright & Attribution
Study fonts (NET translator notes)
Hebrew, Greek, and transliteration in NET study notes use fonts from SIL Global, loaded only when you open a note: Ezra SIL, Galatia SIL, and Charis SIL — each © SIL Global, used under the Open Font License 1.1. Full license files ship with the app under public/fonts/net/.