Ever asked a pastor or professor, "What's the best commentary on Romans?" Best Commentaries answers that question for every book of the Bible — by crowdsourcing the collective wisdom of scholars, journals, and thousands of everyday readers.^1
Created in 2008 by John Dyer — a coder, professor, and VP for Enrollment and Educational Technology at Dallas Theological Seminary — the site was inspired by Rotten Tomatoes. Dyer wanted to aggregate the trusted recommendation lists of scholars like D.A. Carson and Tremper Longman III into a single, searchable database with a transparent scoring algorithm.^2 Today the site catalogs more than 10,700 volumes with over 7,100 reviews and 430 curated libraries from seminaries, scholars, and organizations like The Gospel Coalition.^1
The scoring system weighs average ratings, review volume, and library inclusions so that a well-reviewed, widely recommended commentary rises above one with a perfect score but few reviews.^3 The result is a practical starting point for seminary students building a library, pastors preparing a sermon series, or any believer who wants to go deeper in the Word.
Why Christians Love It"If you're willing to purchase physical commentaries, I'd recommend bestcommentaries.com. I use it all the time." — Reddit user^4
"Best Commentaries is trying to cover ALL the audience from the devotional follower to the scholar." — Ross D. Harmon, pastor and commentator reviewer^5
Notable- In 2025–2026, the site expanded to support Chinese, Spanish, German, Korean, and Portuguese, driving a 400% increase in active users and serving the global church across multiple languages^6
- Dyer has written openly about the "problem of religious algorithms," acknowledging how the site's ranking methodology can reflect cultural biases and actively working to highlight a wider range of scholarship — including curated collections of commentaries by female scholars, Jewish scholars, Roman Catholic scholars, and BIPOC authors^7
- Watermark Community Church (Dallas) pastor Timothy Ateek referenced Best Commentaries in a 2025 sermon on eschatology, calling it "extremely helpful" and noting its DTS roots^8
- Dyer spoke at the 2025 Digital Ministry Conference on a biblical framework for understanding AI, noting Best Commentaries serves half a million pastors annually^9
- John Dyer is the author of People of the Screen: How Evangelicals Created the Digital Bible (Oxford University Press), which The Gospel Coalition called a powerful tracing of "the unique role evangelical entrepreneurs and coders" played in shaping digital Scripture^10
- Free to use; the site earns through affiliate partnerships with Amazon, Christian Book, and Logos^3
