Comparison

Lantern Bible vs Reform Study

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Lantern Bible

This app offers in-depth Bible study with multiple translations, inline commentary, and personalized reading plans. It includes tools for highlighting, bookmarking, and taking notes, all accessible offline.

Highlights
  • Four Bible translations included
  • Inline commentary and study notes
  • Structured reading plans with streak tracking
  • Highlighting, bookmarking, and personal notes
  • Full offline functionality
  • Simultaneous full-text search across translations
Features
Read full description

Lantern Bible is a Bible app for readers who want to go deeper — built around commentary, reading plans, and the tools that turn reading into study. FOUR TRANSLATIONS — ALL BUNDLED IN - BSB — Berean Standard Bible (modern, accurate) - KJV — King James Version (1769) - NET — New English Translation (full study-note edition) - MSB — Majority Standard Bible (Textus Receptus base) All four are included at install. No separate downloads. COMMENTARY & STUDY NOTES Inline commentary and study notes accompany the text so you can read and understand Scripture in context. Notes sit right alongside the passage you're reading. READING PLANS - M'Cheyne One-Year Plan: read through the whole Bible in a year across coordinated Old and New Testament passages each day - 5x5x5 Plan: five minutes a day, five days a week through the New Testament - Streak tracking keeps your momentum going across sessions. PERSONAL TOOLS - Highlights: mark verses in multiple colors and return to them later - Bookmarks: save any passage for quick access - Personal notes: write your own reflections directly alongside the text OFFLINE READING Everything works without a network connection once installed. Read on a plane, in a remote area, or anywhere without signal — full text and all tools available offline. SEARCH Full-text search across all four translations simultaneously. Find any word, phrase, or passage across the entire Bible instantly. WHY LANTERN Commentary, study notes, four translations, reading plans, offline access, and personal tools in one focused, distraction-free app. The BSB and MSB are modern and accurate finding both alongside the full-note NET edition and the KJV in a single app is rare. PERFECT FOR - Daily Bible readers who want commentary alongside the text - Readers following a structured one-year or New Testament plan - Students preparing for small group, Sunday school, or personal devotion - Anyone who wants to highlight, bookmark, and note their way through Scripture Download Lantern Bible and read Scripture the way it was meant to be studied. Support: support@lanternbible.app Privacy: https://lanternbible.app/privacy

About

Reform Study

This app offers in-depth Bible study tools, combining a digital library with intuitive reading features. Explore original languages, commentaries, cross-references, and visual aids. Collaborate with others and take notes offline.

Highlights
  • Word-by-word analysis of original languages
  • Integrated classic commentaries
  • Ranked cross-references and theological connections
  • Visual passage mapping
  • Side-by-side translation comparison
  • Note-taking with version history
  • AI-assisted study assistant
  • Offline access to all study materials
Features
Read full description

Reform sits in the space between a Bible app and a research library. It is built for reading that goes deep, without asking you to learn a desk full of software first. Open the app and the passage is simply there, set like a book, in the translation you choose. Read a chapter, or turn reading straight on and go through the end of one book into the next. Then go as far down as the text invites: - Turn any chapter word by word: the tagged Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, each word with its pronunciation, its gloss, and its full parsing said in plain English. Tap a word for its dictionary entry and a concordance of everywhere it is used. - Set a classic commentator beside the text: Matthew Henry, Calvin, Gill, Clarke, Keil and Delitzsch, Spurgeon on the Psalms, and more, folded at the divisions the commentator himself made. - Tap a verse and see what speaks there: cross references ranked by usefulness, where the passage is told again across the testaments, which articles of the creeds and confessions stand on it, and which of the church fathers cite it, out of eighteen centuries of reading. - Or see that drawn. The same shelf as a picture: the passages that speak to a verse, and the ones that turn out to be speaking to each other rather than only to the verse in the middle. It is walked in both directions, so what points at a passage is there as well as what it points at, and only a third of that is the same set. Pan it, zoom it, glance at any place to read it, and draw the picture again around wherever you land. - Read one verse as the other translations have it, side by side, without leaving the page. - Leave your own mark on a verse. A mark waits in the margin it was made in, and the record of everywhere your hand has rested reads in the order a printed Bible has. - Keep your notes beside the passage, in plain markdown, saved as you pause, with every save a version you can return to. Study one passage, or walk a whole book chapter by chapter. - Talk it through with an assistant that will not do your reading for you. It opens only after your notes hold a first pass of your own, and then it reads the same text and the same library you do, questions your claims, and tells you when it is recalling rather than reading. - Read offline. Take a book down and everything that speaks to it comes with it: every translation, the marks, the original languages, and all nine reference shelves. What you have already opened stays with you as well. - Read at night with the lamp turned down, the page black and the words grey. Dark mode is a daytime thing; this is for a dark room. Nobody should prepare alone. Share a study with a link, send a sermon to somebody to read and argue with, or prepare on a team's shared desk, with the discussion riding alongside the work and a tap on the shoulder when somebody answers. A small group leader gets the sheets: the leader's copy of each week's handout, blanks filled, on the phone that is actually in the living room on a Sunday. A group is joined in the room it meets in: hold the door up on your screen as a code, and whoever scans it asks to come in. On an iPad the whole desk opens: a sermon's five files beside the passage, the handout and the slides built by hand, the lectern for standing up to preach, and printing straight from the page. Reform is not a devotional feed, and it is not a seminary workstation. It is a study desk: the text, the library, your own thinking, and nothing between you and the passage. The reader and the library are open: install it and all of it is there, with no account and nothing to buy. Signing up adds what is yours, the studies, the notes, the marks, and the team. The assistant runs on a shared key and opens once your account has been approved.

Screenshots

Lantern Bible4 screens
Reform Study4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Reform Study at every 2 days against Lantern Bible's every 6 weeks. Reform Study also leads on ratings volume (3 vs 1). On price, rating, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Lantern Bible against 5.0 for Reform Study. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 3 respectively.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Lantern Bible ships an update every 6 weeks, Reform Study every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 13, 2026 and October 8, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
Lantern Bible versus Reform Study: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLantern BibleReform Study
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings)5.0 (3 ratings)
Number of ratings13 — better
Update frequencyEvery 6 weeksEvery 2 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad — better
Requires iOS18.018.0
Further details — not scored
Size117 MB16 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperTywon MUCKLERElliott Maguire

Customer experience

Lantern Bible

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Reform Study

All ratings3 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

Lantern Bible

No in-app purchases

None

Reform Study

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Lantern Bible free?
Lantern Bible is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Reform Study free?
Reform Study is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Lantern Bible or Reform Study?
Lantern Bible and Reform Study are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 1 and 3 ratings respectively.
Do Lantern Bible or Reform Study have ads?
Neither Lantern Bible nor Reform Study shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Lantern Bible or Reform Study?
Lantern Bible ships an update every 6 weeks, and Reform Study every 2 days. Most recently, Lantern Bible was updated on October 13, 2026 and Reform Study on October 8, 2026.

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