Building a website or digital ministry tool around the English Standard Version? The ESV API is Crossway's official REST interface for accessing ESV text with a customizable presentation in multiple formats.^1 Crossway describes the service as primarily for personal, church, and Christian ministry organization use.^2
Create an API application to receive a key, then send that key in the Authorization header with each request.^1 Four endpoints return passage text in plain text, passage HTML, passage audio, and search results across the ESV; a passage query is the only required parameter.^1 Crossway suggests uses such as a daily devotional, displaying a sermon passage, automatically adding a passage when someone types its reference, and creating a Bible search for a website.^2 Although Crossway recommends the API mainly for website integration, it says use in mobile apps or other digital media is allowed without formal permission when all the general conditions are met.^2
Check the access path before building. Crossway offers the API free of charge for non-commercial use only: the site may not charge for access to any part of it or specifically for ESV text.^2 Published limits allow up to 500 verses per query and 5,000 queries per day, with no more than 500 verses stored locally.^2 Pages using the text must carry the standard ESV copyright notice and link to ESV.org.^2 Commercial use, or use beyond the stated guidelines, requires a formal Crossway license; Crossway says its policy is to license to organizations, not to individuals or solo developers, and points organizations to its licensing request form.^2 The conditions also reserve the service for uses consistent with Crossway's foundational doctrines, including the Bible as inspired and inerrant, one God in three persons, Jesus as fully God and fully man, and salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.^2
Crossway began in 1938 as a not-for-profit ministry publishing gospel-centered, Bible-based content to honor Christ and serve his church.^3 The ESV itself is an “essentially literal” translation created by more than 100 evangelical scholars and pastors and first published in 2001.^4
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