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Here are the 3 best Android Bible study apps for 2019. This focuses on serious study and not just Bible reading apps.

It’s been a while since we rounded up the best Android Bible study apps so lets take another shot at it for 2019. This list of the best Android Bible study apps for 2019 includes Bible study apps as opposed to Bible reading apps. What’s the difference?

  • Study original language with more than just Strong’s
  • Offers modern translations and powerful searching
  • Offers modern scholarly, pastoral and devotional commentaries
  • May also offer other eBooks and digital reference books like dictionaries, lexicons and atlases

Please note that we’ve updated this to the 5 Best Bible Apps for Android. Click here to see it.

3 best bible apps on android
Here are the 3 Best Bible Apps on Android!

Many Bible apps will include a few of the above, but they usually only include public domain or just one or two. Instead the Android apps we’re offering helps users study the Bible on a deeper level. A scholar or pastor could use them while mobile. Maybe they won’t fully replace a desktop Bible research tool, but they can help the studier stay productive on the go while they wait at a restaurant for a spouse who’s shopping or while sitting in the car picking up their child from school or soccer practice.

To test these out and compare them, we’ll give them a score of 1 to 20 in a five different areas.

  • Ease of Use
  • Cost of Ownership (app plus books)
  • Quality of Features
  • Library Size and Quality
  • Attractiveness of the App’s Design

To get a full score in each of these the app would mean the app’s perfect in that area. So let’s take a look at the 5 Best Android Bible Study Apps for 2019!

Olive Tree Bible

It’s not surprising that we’d put Olive Tree Bible (Free plus cost of add-on books) on this list since it made our list of top Kindle Fire Bible apps.

Olive Tree looks beautiful on most platforms. It’s not as pretty on Android as it is on other devices, but does look nice and professional. You can tell that designers made the buttons and menus instead of just coders cobbling together something that’s functional.

On the left you see the Look Up popup which helps you look up words by tapping them. The right side shows the main window with a Bible open and the Resource Guide or Study Center as it is also called.

Olive Tree does a great job of quickly showing the user all of their content thanks to the Resource Guide. This section looks at the current passage and then display all the content in the user’s library related to that passage. You can quickly find all the commentary entries, all the cross references and more.

For original language study, you tap a word with Strong’s tagging added and a popup will show a definition of the Greek or Hebrew word. This will also let you look the word up in other lexicons and dictionaries as well as search the Bible for that word.

It’s one of the easiest of the five to use, but could be easier. For example, it’s a little clunky to add personal notes. A pop up note editor blocks your content. You can also use the Resource Guide to add and view notes, however, you can’t do that and see your Bible and commentary or lexicon or dictionary at the same time.

The app is free but add-on books cost extra. They aren’t the most expensive, but you can end up paying thousands for a scholarly level library. The company offers one of the biggest libraries of add-on books and their not just public domain books. You can get high-quality content.

Olive Tree packed more features into this app in a way that’s easy to get at them.

Score based on strong library quality and size, nice features and ease of use, however the cost can add up for a scholarly library.
  • Ease of Use – 3
  • Cost of Ownership (app plus books) – 2
  • Quality of Features – 3
  • Library Size and Quality – 4
  • Attractiveness of the App’s Design – 3
  • TOTAL SCORE – 15

We could say a lot more about this excellent app. Instead read my full review over at ChurchTechToday. Also see the video above.

Logos

Faithlife publishes the Logos Bible suite of apps. They don’t just offer one, but multiple apps. You can get the following apps.

Logos offers an excellent collection of training videos, so that’s one of the best ways for you to learn more about the Logos Bible apps.

The app opens to show you how to the main features work the first time you start it. Then it shows the main home page. From there you can use the tabs at the bottom to view the various sections of the app.

The app shows Bibles and books in a tabbed environment. The center button is where you open these tabs. You can connect them so they all advance to the same passages or just connect certain tabs.

The above video covers the iPad app, but the Android app works much the same.

The library shows all your books and lets you check out new books in the store. There’s also a store button on the toolbar of the app. Open the menu to see all the advanced features like the Passage Guide (looks for content related to a passage and shows a list of entries), Exegetical Guide (same as passage guide but focuses on language study tools) and more.

The app includes a ton of features. In fact it’s the most feature packed app in our roundup. You can use things like…

  • Atlas
  • Prayer lists
  • Clippings (collections of things you find in your study)
  • Word studies
  • Text comparisons (show more than one translation at a time)
  • Audio books
  • Courses (Faithlife has a rich collection of high-quality courses similar to what you might get in a seminary or Bible college)
logos bible study tools score 14
Logos scores highly in the size and quality of the library and the quality of the features. It has more than any other app. However, it’s more challenging to learn to use it and the books cost more on Logos than any other platform. Ask if they will match and sometimes they will. Also the app isn’t exactly beautiful.

We scored Logos as follows:

  • Ease of Use – 2
  • Cost of Ownership (app plus books) – 2
  • Quality of Features – 4
  • Library Size and Quality – 4
  • Attractiveness of the App’s Design – 2
  • TOTAL SCORE – 14

We’re just scraping the surface in this description. Take a look at my post about which Logos Mobile App to Use and my series on how to do creative digital sermon prep using Logos. I also wrote a review last year at ChurchTechToday.

Accordance Mobile

Accordance Mobile brings us one of the latest entries into the Android Bible app space. Their iOS version never really measured up till recently, but now they’re doing a great job on both iOS and Android.

The app seems deceptively simple at first. However, under the hood, it has a lot of advanced features for you to discover. You can view two books at once with the main book and secondary book syncing up to scroll through a passage together if you wish.

Tap on verses to get more study options and tap on words to learn more about the word, especially if the Bible has strong’s numbers attached.

The powerful Accordance search engine comes to mobile in the app. They’re still adding more advanced features and it’s growing more powerful all the time.

Accordance wins big in the area of library size/quality, but is harder to learn. The books cost less than others. It cool be more attractive and have more features compared to others.

Here’s how I’m rating the app:

  • Ease of Use – 2
  • Cost of Ownership (app plus books) – 3
  • Quality of Features – 3
  • Library Size and Quality – 4
  • Attractiveness of the App’s Design – 3
  • TOTAL SCORE – 15

While the app looks deceptively simple, it does have some powerful features. However, it’s not as strong as it could be. In a year I expect that to change. You also have to play around to discover the advanced language study features it does have. Be sure to check out their excellent tutorials. Accordance also offers a great library of add-ons available to buy at great prices. If you already own a book on another platform, ask the company and they will likely give you a deal. I’ve saved hundreds by buying that way from Accordance.

I should probably add a category for support, because Accordance really shines in this area with some of the best training post purchase of any of the companies. They have live webinars both online and in person. Here’s a recent podcast covering the Accordance Mobile app on iOS.

This covers iOS, but the Android app behaves similarly.

Here’s a link to an episode of their podcast covering Android.

2 thoughts on “3 Best Android Bible Study Apps for 2019

  1. Sorry, i am an Accordance user on PC and wife on her Ipad, and I have placed the Android app on my kindle, one small missing item that makes one giant short fall. No Bookmarks!

    1. I asked Rick Mansfield who is their social media person and he said it’s coming very soon, so you will soon get what you want.

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