The Pillar · iPhone, iPad & Android · from thefrenchpressedone LLC
Tap any word and The Pillar opens the Greek or Hebrew underneath it, the classic commentaries on the passage, five Bible dictionaries, and every cross-reference. No account. No ads. Nothing about you leaves your phone.
7 days free, then $4.99/month or $39.99/year. Cancel anytime.
How it works
Every study tool sits inside the passage. You never leave the chapter to use them.
One
The whole Bible, in the King James, New King James, NASB, Christian Standard Bible, New Living Translation, The Message and more — and, below English, three Spanish Bibles. The KJV is built into the app, so the text is there whether or not you have a signal.
Two
Any word opens its Greek or Hebrew, its Strong's number, what it actually meant, and every other verse it appears in. Eighty-nine of the words that carry the most weight have a study written in plain English.
Three
Matthew Henry, Adam Clarke, John Gill, Calvin, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown and more, on the passage you're in — beside five Bible dictionaries, Nave's topical index and every cross-reference.
Four
Highlights, notes and sermon notes — with recording, so Sunday isn't gone by Tuesday. It all stays on your device, and on iPhone and iPad it syncs through your own iCloud, not ours.
“Did not our heart burn within us … while he opened to us the scriptures?” — Luke 24:32
Go deeper
Original languages
Press and hold a word. Strong's, the lexicons, the interlinear and the commentaries open right there in the chapter.
How word study works →iPad & Apple Pencil
Ink that stays tied to the verse it sits beside, in every translation, on every device.
Bring back the margins →Sunday
Type a reference and the verse drops in. Mark a moment and tap it later to hear exactly what was said.
Sermon notes →Maps
A map for every chapter and more than 1,200 places, all of it on the device, none of it needing a connection.
Maps and places →There is no Pillar account to create and nothing to log in to — the subscription is handled by Apple or Google, with the account you already buy apps with. No tracking of any kind, and no advertising. Your notes, highlights and recordings live on your device — on iPhone and iPad, in your own private iCloud account if you turn it on, and on Android, in the backup Android already keeps of your apps. We have no server that can read them.
Pricing
The Bible is free, in every public-domain translation, with notes, highlights, plans and the audio Bible. Your first week has every study tool open. After that, Premium keeps them.
Free
$0
Pillar Premium
$39.99/year
$3.33 a month · or $4.99 monthly
Premium starts with 7 days free. Cancel any time in your App Store or Google Play settings.
Questions
No. That's the point. The Pillar shows you the original word, how it's pronounced, what range of meaning it carries and everywhere else it's used — in English. Eighty-nine of the most important words have a written study you can read in two minutes.
The King James text is built into the app, along with Strong's, the lexicons, the five dictionaries, the topical index and the maps — none of those need a connection. Chapters you read are kept automatically, and whole translations can be downloaded where their license allows. Commentaries are fetched a chapter at a time and do need a connection. The New King James, NASB, Christian Standard Bible, New Living Translation and The Message are never stored offline, as their licenses don't permit it.
Yes — one purchase covers iPhone and iPad. Handwriting is the one part that is iPad-only: it needs an Apple Pencil. Everything else is the same on both.
Yes, on Android phones and tablets, from Google Play. Everything is there except handwriting and the journal, which need an Apple Pencil. Your notes stay on the device you write them on: they don't sync between Android and an iPhone or iPad, and a subscription bought on one doesn't unlock the other, because Apple and Google bill separately.
Reading. Every public-domain translation, notes, highlights, plans, the audio Bible, maps and the Library, for as long as you like. Premium is the study apparatus — the Greek and Hebrew on every verse, the commentaries and dictionaries, the five licensed translations, sermon recording and Apple Pencil — because that content costs money to license and keep accurate, and the alternative is selling your attention or your data. Your first week has all of it open.
Why I built it
As an Air Force veteran, I traveled at a time when we were only allowed to bring one Bible with us, along with limited study material — more than one Bible could be viewed as proselytization, strictly forbidden in most of the countries I traveled to. That restriction changed the way I studied the Bible. I fervently studied the Word, using commentaries, dictionaries, and books, writing notes in the margins of my Bible so that five or six months into a deployment I could look back and remember what each verse meant — the context, the Greek and Hebrew, along with my own reflections.
The Pillar is that whole desk in one place — the Bible, the commentaries, the word studies, and the margin notes — on the device you already carry.
— David Hagedorn, founder · the whole story
Seven days free. Then $4.99 a month, or $39.99 a year.