Reform Study vs Bible Explorer by OCC
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- 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
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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.
Bible Explorer by OCC
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The whole Bible, with the tools to study it, on your phone. No signal needed. Bible Explorer is built by Ontario Community Church, a congregation of about sixty-five in Ontario, Oregon. Everything in it is public domain, and the Bible and its study tools ship inside the app, so it works on a plane, in a canyon, or in the back row — what a small church can do with a little, given back. READ • Twelve translations: King James, American Standard, World English, Young's Literal, Darby, Webster, Douay-Rheims, Geneva (1599), Revised Version, Tyndale New Testament, JPS Tanakh, and Brenton's Septuagint • The church's own serif type, gold verse numbers, four reading themes (OCC, Parchment, Slate, Midnight), your text size and spacing • Tap any verse for commentary in a split-view pane, cross references, Strong's, and the verse in every translation at once • Tap any reference inside a commentary and it opens right there in a half sheet, with translation chips to compare it on the spot • Type a reference like John 3:16 and jump straight there, or search a phrase across the whole Bible • Focus mode, a verse of the day, top verses, your own reading streak, and picking up right where you left off STUDY • Nine commentaries, all built in: Matthew Henry, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Adam Clarke, Keil & Delitzsch, John Wesley, Barnes' Notes, the 1599 Geneva Bible's own marginal notes, John Calvin, and John Gill • Strong's Hebrew and Greek under every word, with that word's occurrences across every translation • Nearly a million cross references and more than 32,000 topics • Six Bible dictionaries: Easton, Smith, Hitchcock, ISBE, Nave's, and Torrey's • More than 3,000 people and 1,300 places, each with a map, its dictionary entries, and every verse that mentions them • Gustave Doré's 1866 Bible engravings, a downloadable illustrations pack linked right to the people, places, and chapters they depict • 718 hymns tied to the verses that inspired them • 24 reading plans, each with a preview before you start SAVE • Bookmarks, highlights, and your own notes and study notes, sorted by reference • Share cards for any verse, in four scenes to match the app's own themes • Everything syncs across your devices through your own iCloud account ALSO • An Apple Watch app: verse of the day, today's plan reading, bookmarks, and a full KJV reader on your wrist • A Messages app: send a verse card in iMessage straight from Verse of the Day, Bookmarks, or a KJV search OFFLINE • No account, no ads, no tracking, no subscription, no AI. Every translation, the nine commentaries, and the six dictionaries are built in. More books and art, and the Greek and Hebrew originals, are free optional downloads • Every translation, every commentary, and every dictionary in Bible Explorer is public domain WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT No account. No ads. No tracking. No subscription. No AI. Just the Bible and the tools to study it, built by a small church and given away.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Reform Study at every 2 days against Bible Explorer by OCC's weekly. Bible Explorer by OCC's advantage is device support (6 vs 2) and iOS requirement (16.0 vs 18.0). On price, 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Reform Study ships an update every 2 days, Bible Explorer by OCC weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 8, 2026 and October 16, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Reform Study | Bible Explorer by OCC |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 3 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 days — better | Weekly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Vision Pro — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 16.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 16 MB | 219 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Elliott Maguire | Patrick Dailey |
In-app purchases
Reform Study
No in-app purchases
Bible Explorer by OCC
No in-app purchases








