Bible APIs and Tools for Christian Developers
Every Christian app starts with the same question: where do I get the Bible text, and am I allowed to use it? Licensing is the wall most projects hit first, and it is the thing nobody warns you about.
This page is the stack for building on Scripture. Free and open Bible APIs, licensed platforms that handle the copyright for you, MCP servers so an AI agent quotes Scripture instead of guessing at it, semantic search, translation tooling, icon sets, Git hosting, job boards, and the communities where Christians in tech actually find each other. Each one is reviewed against the selection criteria. If you want the projects you can read the source of, see open source.
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Bible Vector Search
A free, open-source semantic Bible search tool that uses AI embeddings to find Scripture passages by meaning rather than keywords, with a live public REST API (BBE translation) for developers. Web app and API remain fully functional and moved in October 2026 from bible-search.antioch.tech to antiochtech-bible-search.bai.uno, on the creator's own domain; creator Tim actively maintains sibling Antioch Tech projects, including a new Obsidian Bible Reference release in October 2026.
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Last Hour Hosting
Christian-owned managed hosting from Shiloh in Bonners Ferry, Idaho: WordPress and e-commerce hosting, private email, and open-source cloud services with human support, no-KYC options, and a tithe to Alliance Defending Freedom.
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The Bible Plugin
A free, open-source WordPress plugin that embeds a customizable Bible reader into any site, supporting 2,000+ translations via the Bible Brain API, with Scripture served directly from Paratext files since v2.0. Built by missionaries for global digital engagement — localized, strategic, and designed to keep seekers on your site.
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BibleLink
BibleLink is a free, multilingual website plugin by GlobalRize that converts Bible references into hoverable links showing the verse text. It supports 47 languages, with 89 Bible translations listed, is available as a WordPress plugin or lightweight JavaScript snippet, and in October 2026 moved its default English ESV text to the ESV 2025 edition.
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The Odin Project
A free, open-source full-stack web development curriculum with more than 1.9 million learners. Covers HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Node.js, and Ruby on Rails through project-based learning and a Discord community. Self-funded by donations via Open Collective since 2023. Curriculum GitHub repo has 13,100+ stars and was last updated October 2026.
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FaithTech
The largest global community for Christians in tech, active in 50+ cities across 20 countries on six continents. FaithTech gathers developers, designers, and entrepreneurs to build redemptive technology together through local city communities, Create projects, Story Nights, and hackathons. In September 2026 it held Awaken 2026, its first global gathering in 10 years, in Monterey, California, and its events calendar stays active through the end of 2026, including a new Canberra community launch in November.
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Bible MCP
A free remote MCP server by Cameron Pak that lets AI assistants fetch verified Bible text from AO Lab's Free Use Bible API instead of inventing verses. Public source on Val Town; connect at https://bible-mcp.faith.tools/mcp.
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Keep in Touch (kit)
An open-source launchpad for Christian creators to share in-progress work, capture email leads, and get promoted on faith.tools — with shared sign-in and AI spam moderation. Still in beta as a faith.tools experiment.
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Free Use Bible API
A free, open-source JSON API by AO Lab serving 1,256 Bible translations across 1,004 languages with no API keys, no usage limits, and no copyright restrictions, with an official JavaScript/TypeScript SDK, commentary and dataset endpoints, bulk downloads for offline use, and a growing ecosystem of community integrations including MCP servers, an iOS Bible Atlas (Sacra Tabula), a Minecraft plugin, and a Roblox wrapper.
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Scripture App Builder
Scripture App Builder is a free desktop tool from SIL Global that lets Bible translators create customized Android, iOS, and Progressive Web Apps with synchronized text and audio — no programming required. Ministries have used it to create over 2,600 Bible apps; Frontier Ventures reported apps for 1,960 languages in more than 140 countries with over 65 million installs. Actively maintained with nine releases between April and October 2026 (v14.0–v14.7), including YouVersion Platform integration on both Android and iOS, direct Paratext and Scripture Burrito imports, a Compare Versions view, Simple and Advanced builder views, Covenant and Acts film clips, a Quiz Preview in the builder viewer, and Gloo AI as an optional faith-aligned guardrails provider for the AI Assistant.
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Bolls Bible API
A free, open-source Bible API and reading platform offering 146+ translations in 31 languages with endpoints for chapters, verses, search (including vector/semantic search added July 2026), version comparison, Hebrew/Greek dictionary definitions, and a Reference Tagging Tool — built by a Ukrainian developer with a Sola Scriptura conviction, actively maintained as of October 2026, available on web, Android, Windows, and Linux.
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YouVersion Platform Services
Free developer platform from Life.Church’s YouVersion team with REST APIs and SDKs for embedding licensed Bible text, Sign in with YouVersion, and an open-source reader. First partners include BibleProject and Come and See (The Chosen); installable AI Skills help coding agents use the APIs.
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Bible Brain API
Bible Brain is Faith Comes By Hearing's developer API for Bible text, audio, and video across thousands of languages. Request an API key and build multilingual Scripture apps against documented REST endpoints.
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fetch(bible)
A free, open-source Bible translations platform by Gracious Tech that gives developers unrestricted CDN access to 1,404 translations across 1,116 languages, plus a TypeScript client, embeddable reader, and web enhancer. MIT-0 licensed, with no keys or rate limits.
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GitHaven
Free, open-source Git hosting for Christian developers, running on a Gitea fork and hosted by Shiloh — a confessionally orthodox Christian tech company also behind Last Hour Hosting, Remnant Chat, the Touch Grass Show, and the annual Shiloh Echo family retreat in North Idaho. NOTE: the platform's own Gitea fork has not received a new commit since Aug 2024 (4 minor versions behind upstream); the service itself remains operational.
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route.bible
A free, open-spec tool that turns Bible references into app-agnostic links and QR codes — letting anyone open a passage in their preferred Bible app or browser. Ships with a live Chrome extension that linkifies references across the web, and a Skills.sh agent skill (Bible Links) that teaches AI agents to emit portable route.bible Markdown links automatically.
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Christicons
Christicons is a free library of 61 hand-crafted Christian SVG icons with a browser customizer and npm packages for React, Vue, and JavaScript. Dimitri Conejo Sanz, the Catholic designer behind Cathopic and several other evangelization projects, licenses the set free for personal and commercial use — not as a redistributable icon pack, and not for AI training.
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LightNet - Media Library Kit
Open-source developer tool from OM's MediaWorks team for building fast, static digital media libraries that help ministries share gospel-centered media in any language. Eight libraries are now online, and more ministry teams are exploring it.
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Literal Word BibleTagger
A free, lightweight JavaScript widget from the Literal Word team that automatically turns Bible references on any website into clickable links with hover-pop-up verse previews — supporting NASB, LSB, ESV, NKJV, and KJV. Now also available as an official WordPress plugin for one-click installation on WordPress sites.
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API.Bible
A Bible API for developers: access hundreds of text and audio Bible versions in 145+ languages through clean REST endpoints, built by American Bible Society's Digital Bible Lab and reliably maintained for over 15 years. Free Starter and Pro plans, per-translation commercial licensing, negotiated Enterprise plans, and an official TypeScript SDK (React and Python SDKs coming soon).
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American Cloud
American Cloud is an independent, U.S.-operated cloud provider with compute, Kubernetes, databases, storage, WordPress hosting, and colocation across three U.S. regions, zero egress fees, and published SOC 2, PCI DSS, and HIPAA coverage. Founded by Army veteran Aron Wagner, it also ships official SDKs, a Terraform provider, and an MCP server for AI-assisted cloud management, with flat monthly pricing through a public pricing calculator.
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Bible APIs and Christian Dev Tools: Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a free Bible API?
Several, and they differ in the ways that decide a project rather than in raw translation counts. Free Use Bible API from AO Lab is the least friction of any of them: over a thousand translations, no API key, no usage limits, no copyright restrictions, and an official JavaScript/TypeScript SDK. fetch(bible) by Gracious Tech is MIT-0 licensed and serves a similar breadth over a CDN, with a TypeScript client and an embeddable reader. If you need audio and video rather than text, Bible Brain from Faith Comes By Hearing reaches thousands of languages and is free for non-commercial use. API.Bible, from the American Bible Society's Digital Bible Lab, carries the widest catalogue of text and audio versions, with free Starter and Pro tiers and commercial licensing negotiated per translation. And YouVersion Platform Services deserves a serious look now that Life.Church has been investing hard in developers: REST APIs, SDKs for Swift, Kotlin, JS, React, React Native, and TypeScript, and an embeddable reader, free to build on as long as you keep to the license terms, non-commercial use included.
Can I use the ESV or NIV in my app?
Not by simply calling an API and shipping. Modern translations like the ESV, NIV, and NLT are copyrighted, and the publisher decides the terms — which is why the no-restriction APIs above mostly serve public domain and openly licensed texts instead. You have two honest routes. Build on an openly licensed translation and say which one you're using. Or go through a platform that handles the licensing for you: YouVersion Platform Services fast-tracks Bible licensing across more than a thousand versions and is free to build on within its license, non-commercial use included, and API.Bible licenses commercially per translation. Read the actual terms in either case, because "free API" and "free to ship what you build with it" are different claims. Sort this out before you design the UI, not after.
How do I stop an AI app from making up Bible verses?
Retrieve the text; never let the model recall it. A language model asked to "quote John 3:16" is predicting tokens, and prediction is where fabricated and subtly reworded verses come from. Fetch the passage from a licensed source and pass it into the context instead. Bible MCP does exactly this as an open-source MCP server, giving Claude, Cursor, and other agents verse lookup, chapter fetch, and translation browsing against freely licensed text — it's built by faith.tools, so weigh that recommendation accordingly. route.bible is the other half of the problem: it turns a reference into an app-agnostic link so your output opens in whatever Bible app the reader already uses.
Where do Christian developers find work, tools, and community?
Christian Tech Jobs is the job board, listing roles at hundreds of faith-driven organizations with salary data and a candidate network. FaithTech is the community, active in dozens of cities across twenty-odd countries, and runs the annual BUILD hackathon. For the rest of the stack: GitHaven offers free Git hosting on a Gitea fork, Christicons ships a hand-crafted Christian SVG icon set via npm for React, Vue, and JS/TS — free for commercial use, though not open source and not licensed for AI training — and The Odin Project is the free, open-source full-stack curriculum a couple of million self-taught developers have worked through. If your work is Scripture translation rather than app development, Scripture App Builder, Scripture Forge, and Codex Translation Editor are built for that.