18 reviewed · updated 2026
The best Greek and Hebrew Bible tools
We reviewed 18 Greek and Hebrew tools, and 8 of them are free to use.
Every product here has its own full review on this site. How we review →
Our picks
Best free
Blue Letter Bible
Free interlinear text, Strong's numbering, parsing and lexicon entries in a browser. The best place to start, and enough for most people permanently.
Best free alternative
STEPBible
Free, from Tyndale House in Cambridge, and often better than Blue Letter Bible for parsing and for comparing manuscript evidence.
Best paid software
Accordance Bible Software
The strongest morphological search engine here and the academic default. Libraries from around $200, bought rather than rented.
Best Greek lexicon
BDAG
The standard scholarly lexicon for New Testament Greek. Around $130, and the difference between a defensible word study and a fallacy.
Best for learning
Basics of Biblical Greek
The standard first-year Greek grammar, with a video course attached. Around $45 - a better purchase than any software if you are starting out.
Best for passage structure
BibleArc
Teaches and supports arcing and phrasing - diagramming a passage's logical flow. Nothing else here does this. Free trial, then around $8.99/mo.
How to choose
You can do serious original-language work without spending anything, and that is the most useful thing to know about this category. Blue Letter Bible and STEPBible are both free and both give you interlinear text, Strong's numbering, parsing and lexicon entries in a browser. Scripture4All provides free interlinear PDFs of the whole Bible. Start with these before you consider software.
What free tools cannot do is morphological search - queries like "every aorist passive participle in Paul" or "this Hebrew root in construct across the Prophets". That is the real dividing line, and it is what Accordance (starter libraries from around $200) and Logos ($9.99/mo Logos Pro) sell. Accordance is historically the stronger original-language engine and is the more common choice in academic settings; it is also a purchase rather than a rental, so the library stays yours.
On lexicons, be careful what you are actually using. Strong's numbering is a 19th-century index, not a lexicon, and the glosses attached to it in free tools are frequently thin or misleading. If you are drawing conclusions from a word study, you want BDAG (~$130) for New Testament Greek and HALOT for Hebrew - these are the standard scholarly references, and the gap between them and a Strong's gloss is the difference between a defensible argument and a word-study fallacy. TDNT and NIDNTTE are theological dictionaries rather than lexicons; useful, but a different tool.
If you are learning rather than looking up, the grammars matter more than the software. Basics of Biblical Greek (Mounce, ~$45) and Basics of Biblical Hebrew are the standard first-year texts and both have video courses attached. A Reader's Greek New Testament and A Reader's Hebrew Bible are the best bridge between finishing a grammar and reading fluently - they gloss rare vocabulary at the foot of the page so you can keep reading rather than stopping to look up every third word.
BibleArc (free trial, then around $8.99/mo) is worth singling out because it does something none of the others do: it teaches and supports arcing and phrasing - diagramming the logical flow of a passage. If your interest is how an argument is structured rather than what individual words mean, it is more valuable than another lexicon.
A caution that applies to this whole category: tools make word studies easy and word studies are where amateur exegesis most often goes wrong - etymology treated as meaning, a range of possible senses imported into one occurrence, a Strong's gloss mistaken for a definition. The free tools here will happily let you do all three. A good lexicon and a first-year grammar protect you from more error than any amount of software.
Everything we reviewed, compared
| Name | Type | Rating | Starting price | Free tier | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Logos Bible Software | App | 4.9 | Free, then $9.99/mo (Logos Pro) | Yes | Mac · Windows · iOS · Android · Web |
| Accordance Bible Software | App | 4.8 | Starter libraries from ~$200; new Accordance subscription from ~$9.99/mo | No | macOS · Windows · iOS · iPadOS · Android |
| Blue Letter Bible | Website | 4.7 | Free | Yes | Web · iOS · Android |
| Bible Hub | Website | 4.6 | Free | Yes | Web · iOS · Android |
| STEPBible | Website | 4.6 | Free | Yes | Web · Android (companion app) |
| BibleArc | Website | 4.6 | Free trial, then around $8.99/mo or $89.99/yr | Yes | Web (mobile-responsive) |
| Scripture4All | Website | 4.4 | Free | Yes | Web · Windows (ISA software) |
| BDAG | Book | 4.8 | ~$130 hardcover | No | — |
| HALOT | Book | 4.7 | ~$400 (set) | No | — |
| Liddell & Scott Greek-English Lexicon | Book | 4.7 | Free (older ed. online); ~$130 unabridged | Yes | — |
| NIDNTTE | Book | 4.7 | ~$200 (5-vol set) | No | — |
| TWOT | Book | 4.7 | ~$50 (2-vol set) | No | — |
| A Reader’s Greek New Testament | Book | 4.7 | ~$40 hardcover | No | — |
| A Reader’s Hebrew Bible | Book | 4.7 | ~$60 hardcover | No | — |
| Basics of Biblical Greek | Book | 4.7 | ~$45 (grammar) | No | — |
| Basics of Biblical Hebrew | Book | 4.7 | ~$50 (grammar) | No | — |
| TDNT | Book | 4.6 | ~$60 (one-volume "Little Kittel") | No | — |
| BDB | Book | 4.5 | Free (public domain); ~$40 print | Yes | — |
Apps
Logos Bible Software
The industry-standard Bible research platform for pastors, seminarians, and serious students - the software that respects your work.
Bible Study Software
Accordance Bible Software
The Mac-born academic Bible platform with the fastest original-language search syntax in the business - and a library deep enough for a PhD thesis.
Bible Study Software
Websites & online tools
Blue Letter Bible
The serious-study site for everyone who can't afford Logos - and a surprising number of people who can.
Greek & Hebrew Tools
Bible Hub
The most-cited free Bible study site on the internet - a thirty-translation parallel view, a Strong's-tagged interlinear, and a wall of classical commentaries on every verse, all one click apart and all completely free.
Greek & Hebrew Tools
STEPBible
A free, open-source original-language Bible study site built by actual textual scholars at Tyndale House Cambridge - and the best-kept secret in serious Bible study.
Greek & Hebrew Tools
BibleArc
The diagramming workbench seminarians swear by and most casual readers have never heard of - and the reason that gap exists is the same reason its fans will not give it up.
Greek & Hebrew Tools
Scripture4All
A quiet, donor-run project that gives the whole Bible away as a word-for-word interlinear - Hebrew and Greek under a literal English gloss, with grammatical parsing on every word, free and downloadable.
Greek & Hebrew Tools
Books
BDAG
The standard scholarly lexicon for New Testament Greek - the reference scholars, translators, and serious students reach for when they need to know what a Greek word actually means.
Original Language Reference
HALOT
The standard scholarly lexicon for Old Testament Hebrew and Aramaic - the Hebrew counterpart to BDAG, and the reference serious students of the Old Testament reach for first.
Original Language Reference
Liddell & Scott Greek-English Lexicon
The standard lexicon of the entire Greek language - classical, koine, and everything between - the reference scholars mean when they say "look it up in Liddell."
Original Language Reference
NIDNTTE
The major modern wordbook of New Testament Greek - tracing each word from classical usage through the Septuagint into the New Testament, organized for serious word and concept study.
Original Language Reference
TWOT
The Old Testament word study tool built for readers with limited Hebrew - concise entries on the theological weight of Hebrew terms, keyed to Strong’s numbers so you can use it from the English text.
Original Language Reference
A Reader’s Greek New Testament
The Greek New Testament with rare words glossed in a footnote on every page - so a student who has finished a year of Greek can finally read continuous text instead of stopping at every unfamiliar word.
Original Language Reference
A Reader’s Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Old Testament with the less-frequent words glossed in footnotes on every page - so a student who has finished introductory Hebrew can read continuous text instead of stopping for the lexicon at every turn.
Original Language Reference
Basics of Biblical Greek
The first-year New Testament Greek grammar most students in the English-speaking world actually learn from - a full course with workbook, video lectures, and an app, built to get a true beginner reading the Greek text.
Original Language Reference
Basics of Biblical Hebrew
The first-year Biblical Hebrew grammar most students in the English-speaking world actually learn from - a full course with workbook, video lectures, and resources, built to get a true beginner reading the Hebrew text.
Original Language Reference
TDNT
The monumental ten-volume wordbook of New Testament Greek - the landmark "Kittel" that defined the genre, available whole or in the one-volume abridgment everyone calls "Little Kittel."
Original Language Reference
BDB
The classic Hebrew lexicon, organized by root and still widely used - dated in places, but free in the public domain and built into nearly every Bible study app and site.
Original Language Reference
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free Greek and Hebrew Bible tool?
Blue Letter Bible and STEPBible, both free in a browser, both offering interlinear text, Strong's numbering, parsing and lexicon entries. STEPBible, from Tyndale House in Cambridge, is often better for parsing detail and manuscript comparison; Blue Letter Bible is easier to navigate. Scripture4All adds free full-Bible interlinear PDFs.
Do I need to know Greek to use these tools?
No, but you need to know your limits. Interlinear text and Strong's numbers let anyone see the underlying words, and that is genuinely useful. What they do not give you is the ability to judge which of a word's possible senses applies here - that requires grammar and context. The most common error in amateur word study is importing every possible meaning into a single occurrence.
Is Strong's Concordance reliable?
It is a reliable index and an unreliable lexicon. Strong's numbering, from 1890, lets you find every occurrence of a word - that part is sound. The short glosses attached to those numbers in free tools are often thin or misleading, and treating them as definitions produces bad conclusions. For anything you intend to teach, check BDAG for Greek or HALOT for Hebrew.
Accordance or Logos for original languages?
Accordance, generally. Its morphological search engine has historically been the stronger of the two and it is the more common choice in academic settings, with a cleaner syntax for complex grammatical queries. It is also a one-time purchase, so the library remains yours. Logos has the larger overall catalogue and better mobile apps, so it wins if original languages are one interest among many.
What is the best Greek lexicon?
BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich) for New Testament Greek, around $130 - the standard scholarly reference. Liddell & Scott covers classical Greek more broadly, which matters for Septuagint work. TDNT and NIDNTTE are theological dictionaries organised around concepts rather than lexicons, and they are a different tool: useful for tracing a theme, not for establishing what a word means in one verse.
How do I start learning biblical Greek?
Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek (~$45) is the standard first-year grammar and has an accompanying video course. Work through it, then move to A Reader's Greek New Testament, which glosses rare vocabulary at the foot of the page so you can build reading fluency without stopping constantly. Biblingo is a good app-based alternative if you prefer a structured digital course.
What is arcing or phrasing?
A method of diagramming a passage to show how its clauses relate logically - which statement grounds which, where the main assertion sits. BibleArc is built to teach and support it and is effectively the only tool in this category that does. It is more useful than another lexicon if your question is how an argument works rather than what a word means.
Can I do a word study without making mistakes?
Follow three rules and you will avoid most of them. Do not treat etymology as meaning - what a word once derived from is not what it means now. Do not import the full range of possible senses into a single occurrence; context selects one. And check a real lexicon rather than a Strong's gloss before drawing a conclusion. Those three cover the large majority of amateur exegetical error.