Amen

What Amen is

Amen is an audio-first Catholic prayer app for iPhone, iPad and Android. Four tabs on iOS - Today, Sleep, Topics, Profile - front a library of about a dozen categories. Today carries the daily Mass readings, Dr. Tim Gray's reflection on them, a monthly featured series, Bible in a Year, the Rosary and a sleep story, plus Novena of the Month, Devotion of the Month and the Daily Rosary Meditations podcast.

The Scripture is narrated rather than browsable: daily Gospel and Mass readings in the RSV-2CE, and the whole Bible in a Year in the Augustine Institute's ESV Catholic Edition at roughly 20 minutes a day. Around that sit guided Lectio Divina, Examinations of Conscience, meditations in 2, 5, 10 and 15 minute lengths, Evening Psalms, sacred music and family audio including the Brother Francis series, with a prayer journal, favourites and playlists over the top.

Free without an asterisk, from a publisher that owns its Bible

Most free Catholic apps are free the way a supermarket sample is free. Hallow's free tier is real but bounded, and its paid tier is $69.99 a year. Amen has no tier structure at all: no In-App Purchases section on its App Store page, none disclosed on Google Play, and a help centre answer reading 'Yes. All content on Amen is completely free.' There is nothing to compare against, because nothing is withheld.

The second thing Amen has that free rivals do not is rights. The Augustine Institute publishes the ESV Catholic Edition itself, which is why a free app can hand you an unabridged audio Bible, and it holds permission for the RSV-2CE on the Mass readings. That is also the honest limit - Amen gives you two translations it controls or licenses, not a shelf of them, and they arrive as audio rather than text you can search.

Daily Mass readings and Bible in a Year, in two translations

The daily Mass readings refresh every 24 hours and sit first on the Today carousel, in the RSV-2CE, with a See All view for back-dated days. Dr. Tim Gray's Daily Reflections run alongside them, and Opening the Word adds Sunday reflections from other Catholic theologians. This is the part that competes with a printed missalette: it wins on convenience and loses on reference value, because there is no text to scan.

Bible in a Year is the heavier commitment - all of Scripture at roughly 20 minutes a day from the Augustine Institute's own ESV Catholic Edition (2020), with per-chapter checkmarks in the Topics view. Two separate help articles exist purely to tell users which verses a given day covers, which measures how little text the format shows.

The Rosary, Novenas and Lectio Divina

The Rosary covers all four sets of Mysteries in standard, meditative and scriptural formats, with background music you can change or switch off. The two routes behave differently: the Topics collection records completion checkmarks, the Today carousel's Daily Rosary does not. Transcripts are not included; the help centre sends you to the School of Faith site for those.

Novenas get a Topics category plus a Novena of the Month slot, and Lectio Divina is a standing guided category. Examinations of Conscience sit on the publisher's featured list, which points at the specifically Catholic audience: content built for confession preparation, not generic mindfulness with Scripture bolted on.

Sleep, music and the narration itself

The Sleep tab is a full section, not a token one: sleep stories inspired by Scripture, Evening Psalms, audio dramas, a length selector at 15, 30, 60 and 90 minutes, and a stop-audio timer from 5 minutes to 8 hours. Music is its own category, holding Gregorian chant under 'In the Silence of the Word' from the Dominican House of Studies, plus Floriani Sacred Music and Dedric Terry.

Narration is where the production budget went, and where disclosure thins. The help centre says only that 'all of our narrators are Christian professional voice artists', names none publicly, and confirms you cannot change the narrator - you tap the three dots mid-session to see who is reading. The teaching voices are named and are the draw: Tim Gray on the readings, Chris Stefanick on the One-Minute Inspirations, Brother Francis for children.

Pricing

Where Amen falls behind

No Liturgy of the Hours, and no pretence of one. Eleven Topics categories, and the Divine Office is not among them; neither is a chaplet, a Missal, or a saint-of-the-day feed. For a breviary you still need iBreviary or Universalis, and for reference text you still need Laudate. Amen replaces neither.

No desktop, no browser, no way in from a computer. The help centre is unambiguous - Amen is for smartphones, iPads and tablets and 'is not accessible through a desktop or laptop computer' - and the workaround it offers is a daily email carrying the featured prayer, one item rather than the library. The same help centre elsewhere says Amen 'can be accessed on your computer through our Daily Emails'; take the first statement as the capability and the second as a mailing list.

Two stores, two privacy stories. Apple's App Privacy panel, completed by Augustine Institute, Inc., lists Contact Info and Identifiers under Data Used to Track You - data that may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies - and lists Email Address, Name and User ID as linked to identity for 'Developer's Advertising or Marketing'. Google Play's Data safety card for the same app says no data is shared with third parties. Both are the developer's own disclosures, and they do not agree.

A storefront nobody is watching, and an Android build that trails. On 26 July 2026 the App Store description opens 'Celebrate Easter with Amen' while Google Play's opens 'Celebrate Lent with Amen' - neither season is current, and they are not even the same one. Play was last updated 27 June 2026 against 23 July 2026 on iOS, playlists are documented as iOS-only, and the ratings split the same way: 4.9 from 45,320 against 4.7 from 5,085.

Amen vs. Hallow vs. iBreviary vs. Laudate

Hallow is the product Amen is measured against, and the price gap is the headline: Hallow's help centre publishes $9.99/month, $69.99/year, or $119.99/year for up to six people, while Amen publishes nothing. Hallow's free tier is not empty either - a Bible in a Year with Fr. Mike Schmitz, the daily Gospel, Rosary and Mass readings, an Examen, content from Bishop Barron - so the honest framing is everything free against a large free tier plus a much larger paid one. What $69.99 buys is breadth Amen does not attempt: community and prayer-group features, challenges and streaks, guest content at scale, music radio, a far bigger session count. A 4.9 from 45,320 votes says Amen delights its users; it does not say it out-features Hallow.

iBreviary and Laudate hold the ground Amen leaves untouched. iBreviary is built around the Liturgy of the Hours - Office of Readings, Morning Prayer, Daytime Prayer, Evening Prayer, Night Prayer - alongside the Missal and the day's readings as text, free. Laudate is the long-standing free utility: Rosary, chaplets, prayer texts and reference material in one dense menu. Both are text-first and neither sounds good; both are useful in ways Amen cannot be, because Amen has no Divine Office and its Rosary has no transcript.

The practical shape: install Amen first, because it costs nothing and its production quality is the best in the free tier. Keep iBreviary or Universalis for the Office and Laudate for reference text. Pay Hallow $69.99 only for the community layer and the volume - if what you wanted was narrated Mass readings and a good Rosary, you already have them free.

Alternatives to Amen

Hallow★ 4.9The dominant paid Catholic prayer app at $9.99/month or $69.99/year, with a genuine free tier. Buys community features, challenges, music radio and far more sessions.→iBreviary★ 4.1Free, text-first, and the thing Amen is not: the full Liturgy of the Hours plus the Missal and the day's readings. Plain interface, no audio production.→Laudate★ 3.9The long-standing free Catholic utility - Rosary, chaplets, prayers and reference texts in one dense menu. Dated design, but it answers reference questions Amen cannot.→Ascension App★ 4.9Home of the Bible in a Year and Catechism in a Year podcasts with Fr. Mike Schmitz. The obvious second install if Amen's own Bible in a Year narration does not suit you.→Universalis★ 4.9A paid, no-frills Divine Office and Mass-readings app with offline text and a desktop version. Covers both gaps Amen leaves open, and looks like a 2009 app while doing it.→

More Catholic Apps

Hallow★ 4.9The largest Catholic prayer app in the world, by a wide margin - and the one that has reshaped what a guided prayer app is allowed to feel like.→Ascension App★ 4.9The home of Fr. Mike Schmitz, the Bible in a Year podcast, and the Great Adventure reading plan - and the most quietly influential Catholic app of the last five years.→Word on Fire★ 4.9The mobile front door to Bishop Robert Barron’s ministry - daily Gospel reflections, the Word on Fire Show, and the Catholicism documentary in your pocket.→iRosary★ 4.9A small, paid, single-purpose iOS app that does one thing - pray the Rosary, bead by bead - and does it better than the multi-tool suites that try to bolt the Rosary on as a feature.→Universalis★ 4.9The pay-once, fully offline Liturgy of the Hours app that quietly became the standard for English-speaking Catholic clergy - and the reason most of them stopped carrying a four-volume breviary.→iPieta★ 4.7A one-time-purchase Catholic library that fits a seminary shelf into a phone - and runs entirely offline.→