The Foundation Stone vs Sha'ar
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side β with what reviewers say about each.
The Foundation Stone
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Description Welcome to The Foundation Stone, your digital gateway to profound wisdom, timeless teachings, and interactive spiritual exploration. Designed for students, educators, and anyone seeking deeper insights, this application brings rich theological source texts and cutting-edge artificial intelligence together into a seamless, modern mobile experience. Whether you are studying at home or exploring on the go, The Foundation Stone empowers your learning journey with powerful, native features designed to make ancient text universally accessible. Key Features Interactive 'Ask AI' Torah Assistant: Engage with an intelligent AI companion built to provide contextual, insightful answers rooted in the core teachings of The Foundation Stone. Ask complex questions, explore deep concepts, and receive immediate structural guidance. Global Language Translation Engine: Break down language barriers instantly. With our permanent, global language toggle accessible from any screen, you can seamlessly switch text strings and interfaces into your preferred language without losing your place. Dynamic Performance & Local Caching: Enjoy an incredibly snappy user interface. The app utilizes smart local caching to ensure that once a text is loaded or translated, it opens instantly on subsequent views, minimizing latency and saving data. Streamlined UI with Safe Area Integration: Experience a beautiful, modern design that adapts perfectly to your device hardware, keeping your view clear, un-obscured, and visually polished across all iPhone layouts. Dive deep into the wisdom. Download The Foundation Stone today and transform the way you study, engage, and connect with foundational truths. Note: The AI assistant is designed to synthesize foundational educational teachings. Users are encouraged to verify important contextual references within the source materials.
Sha'ar
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Sha'ar teaches you to compute gematria β the numeric value of Hebrew words β and it never hands you the table. THE SILENT TABLE The first act shows no values at all. You place letters, watch a total move, and work out what each letter is worth from the arithmetic alone. By the time the table appears, you have already built it. FIVE ACTS Each act introduces a cohort of letters and one new way of reading them β a Vessel. Units, then tens, then hundreds, then the closing forms, where position becomes part of the arithmetic. Eight readings in all: standard (hechrachi), great number (gadol), small number (katan), ordinal (siduri), and the cipher readings atbash, albam, kidmi and perati. GATES A gate names a value. You have five places on the altar and a hand of letters, and you have to reach that value exactly, with a word that is really a word. Your multiplier starts at five and drops by one each time you pay to be shown what a letter is worth. Nothing makes you guess blind; everything charges you for not knowing. THE DAILY GATE One gate a day, seeded from the date, identical for everyone playing it. Nothing is shown, nothing can be bought, and there is no second attempt. Free, every day. A CORPUS TAKEN FROM THE TEXT 583 words, and they are not a selection anybody made up. 580 of them are attested in the Hebrew Bible, 578 carry their Strong's number, every one is vocalised, and each is stored with how often it actually occurs in the text. 582 are read aloud in Hebrew β all of them except the Name. That matters for a reason beyond size: every gate you are asked to reach is reachable with a word that a reader of the Bible would recognise, spelled the way the text spells it. THE CODEX Four tabs. The twenty-two letters laid out as nine families by three magnitudes, so a letter's value is its column times its row. The corpus, with meanings and with what else comes to the same number. A calculator that shows the working letter by letter under all eight methods, computed from what you type and never looked up. And your own name in Hebrew letters, spelled however you decide to spell it. ARITHMETIC, TRADITION, OR COINCIDENCE Fifteen notes remark on numbers that meet. Every one carries a badge saying which kind of claim it is making. β Arithmetic. ΧͺΧΧ¨Χ is 611; the two commandments heard at Sinai bring it to 613. Not open to argument. β Tradition. Χ ΧΧ©, the serpent, and ΧΧ©ΧΧ, the messiah, both come to 358 β a reading of the Zohar and later commentaries. The source is named, so you can check it. β Coincidence. Χ©ΧΧ is 314, which people like to line up with Ο. The app says plainly that the tradition makes nothing of this. That separation is the reason the app exists. Nothing here is offered as hidden knowledge, and no number is claimed to predict anything. THE PROOF Five gates, cold, with no help of any kind. It changes no score. It is there to tell you what you actually know. WHAT IS FREE Free, permanently: the calculator and all eight methods, the letter grid, the Daily Gate, your name in Hebrew letters, and the first two of the five acts β long enough to find out whether deducing values is something you enjoy. One purchase, once, opens the remaining acts and their Vessels, the full corpus and its recordings, and the Proof. No subscription. PRIVACY No account, no advertising, no tracking. Everything on screen is computed on your iPhone from data carried inside the app, and your progress never leaves the device. The only network the app uses is the one the purchase needs. THE NAME The four-letter Name is never scored and never spoken aloud. How it appears on screen is yours to set. iPhone, portrait, iOS 26 or later. Privacy Policy: https://shaar-prod.web.app/privacy Support: https://shaar-prod.web.app/support
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Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: The Foundation Stone at none against Sha'ar's 1. The Foundation Stone also leads on device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.1 vs 26.0). On price and ads there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price Β· Rating Β· Positive reviews Β· Number of ratings Β· Update frequency Β· Ads Β· In-app purchases Β· Monetization Β· Best chart rank Β· Devices Β· Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Sha'ar sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. The Foundation Stone asks for nothing beyond the download.
| Parameter | The Foundation Stone | Sha'ar |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | β | Daily |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No β better | Yes |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod β better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 β better | 26.0 |
| Further details β not scored | ||
| Size | 30 MB | 19 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | MORDAKHAY KHOLDAROV | Laury Karin MOUBAMBA |
In-app purchases
The Foundation Stone
No in-app purchases
Sha'ar
- The whole path$6.99
Questions
Is The Foundation Stone free?
Is Sha'ar free?
Do The Foundation Stone or Sha'ar have ads?
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