- Starting price
- Free trial, then $0.99/week to $99.99/year
- Free tier
- No
- Platforms
- iOS - Android - macOS (M1 or later) - visionOS
- Developer
- Brilliant Illustrations Inc.
- Launched
- 2021
- Updated
- Jul 26, 2026
The verdict
Brilliant Bible is the right app for a reader who has stalled out on text-only Bible apps and wants an image beside every verse, and for parents reading aloud to children who will sit still for pictures. It is the wrong app for anyone who needs a translation other than the King James, anyone who studies rather than reads, and anyone who wants to know the price before handing over an Apple ID - the company publishes no pricing page, and its Apple SKUs run from $0.99 a week to $99.99 a year.
Try Brilliant Bible ↗Opens readbrilliant.com
Brilliant Bible is a King James Bible reader in which every verse is paired with its own picture. The App Store listing puts the number at 32,357 original illustrations covering all 66 books, plus chapter summaries, reading plans, streak tracking, verse-card sharing, and graphic-novel comic adaptations of individual Bible stories. It launched on 5 September 2021, comes from Brilliant Illustrations Inc., and version 3.6.12 shipped on 9 January 2026. On Apple it has 4,373 ratings averaging 4.75, which rounds to the 4.8 stars the listing advertises; on Google Play the same app sits at 4.5 from 458 ratings with 10,000-plus installs.
The premise is not gimmickry. Illustrated Bibles are an old and respectable form, the problem Brilliant Bible attacks - that reading Scripture on a phone becomes a chore of scrolling grey text - is real, and the App Store reviews suggest the fix works. Reviewers repeatedly say the images keep them reading and help them retain what they read. That is the product's honest achievement, and it deserves stating before the criticisms start.
The criticisms start with the fact that you cannot learn what it costs without installing it. readbrilliant.com has no pricing page, plans page, FAQ, terms page or support page, and does not mention Brilliant Bible at all. What it has instead is a landing page for a different, unreleased product - The Brilliant Books App - advertising illustrated editions of Moby-Dick, Pride and Prejudice, The War of the Worlds, Flatland, The Skylark of Space and Frankenstein, marked Coming soon to the App Store, with an email waitlist and an unexplained offer of Free for Teachers and Educators. Apple lists that same site as the app support URL.
So the only published prices are the in-app purchase names on the App Store listing: eight of them at six price points, every one called a Family Plan. There is no individual tier, no lifetime purchase, and no free tier the vendor commits to in writing - the copy offers a free trial, which is a different thing.
✓ The good
- An image for every verse, not just the famous ones - the listing claims 32,357 illustrations from Genesis to Revelation, a far broader visual corpus than any other Bible app offers
- Chapter summaries throughout - a short plain-language context note on each of the 1,189 chapters, the feature most likely to keep a first-time reader from getting lost in Leviticus or Ezekiel
- Graphic-novel comic adaptations as a separate reading mode - the app's strongest artwork, and the reason several reviewers subscribed
- Genuinely well received by its own users - 4,373 App Store ratings averaging 4.75 is a large sample for a niche Bible app, and reviewers cite engagement and retention rather than novelty
- One subscription covers up to six people through Apple Family Sharing, so a household of five is not penalised for its size
- A discretionary hardship discount exists - the developer replies to reviews offering reduced rates to readers who email matthew@readbrilliant.com, unusual candour for a subscription app
- Runs beyond the phone - Apple lists macOS 11.0 or later on M1 or newer and visionOS 1.0 or later, alongside iOS 13.0 and Android
✗ Watch out
- No price is published anywhere outside the app stores - readbrilliant.com has no pricing, plans, FAQ, terms or support page, and does not name Brilliant Bible
- Eight in-app purchase SKUs at six price points, all called Family Plan - monthly at both $5.99 and $14.99, yearly at $34.99, $69.99 and $99.99, so there is no single honest answer to what it costs
- King James only - one translation, one language, and no interlinear, lexicon, cross-references, concordance or note-taking, so it reads rather than studies
- The two stores disagree on who it is for - Apple rates it 9+ with an advisory for Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Google Play rates the same build 3+
- Google Play's data safety card discloses Device or other IDs shared with third parties, and Apple's privacy card lists contact information including email and name linked to your identity
- The comic adaptations cover only selected stories and expand slowly - one subscriber's complaint that waiting for weeks for a new comic is agonizing meets no published release schedule
Best for
- Visual learners who stall on text-only Bible apps
- Parents reading Bible stories aloud with children
- King James readers who want art alongside the verse
- Households that can share one Family Plan six ways
Avoid if
- Readers who need a translation other than the KJV
- Anyone doing Greek, Hebrew or cross-reference study
- Buyers who require published pricing before installing
- People who want a permanent free tier rather than a trial
What Brilliant Bible is
Brilliant Bible is a vertical-scrolling King James Bible in which each verse sits beside its own illustration, rendered in what the listing calls original oil painting style artwork. You read a chapter the way you read a feed. Wrapped around that are chapter summaries for all 1,189 chapters, structured reading plans, a streak counter, and a share sheet that exports an illustrated verse card.
A second, separate mode holds graphic-novel comic adaptations of key Bible stories - longer-form, sequential, and by the account of the app's own reviewers better drawn than the verse illustrations. The subscription covers both, is sold only as a Family Plan for up to six people, and is billed weekly, monthly or yearly. There is no web version.
The only Bible app that claims to illustrate every verse - and the arithmetic does not close
No other Bible app attempts this. YouVersion has verse images; BibleProject has animated videos on themes and books; Read Scripture pairs videos with a plan. Brilliant Bible claims a one-to-one mapping across the entire canon, and that ambition is the whole product. The published number is 32,357 illustrations, described on Apple as one for every verse in Scripture.
The King James Version contains 31,102 verses across 1,189 chapters and 66 books. So 32,357 illustrations is 1,255 more images than there are verses, a 4.0 percent overshoot. That is not a scandal - chapter headers, comic panels or title cards would explain it. But it does mean one for every verse is a marketing approximation rather than a specification, and the vendor publishes no breakdown. The website, meanwhile, offers only Tens of Thousands of Unique Illustrations, and attaches that phrase to Moby-Dick and Frankenstein, not to the Bible.
The verse-by-verse illustrated reader
This is the core surface and the reason the app has 4,373 Apple ratings. Every verse of the KJV carries an image, and store reviewers consistently report that this changes the reading experience: one says it has really improved my ability to stay engaged when reading, and that they remember more and process the info better because of the pictures. For a reader whose problem is opening the app rather than understanding it, that is the value proposition delivered.
Consistency is the weak point, and the app's own reviewers name it precisely. Multiple reviews describe anatomical errors - a person having two right arms or no left arm - and note that Jesus is wearing different clothes and even looks completely different in each slide. Reviewers on both stores attribute the verse illustrations to AI generation. The vendor never discloses how the 32,357 images were produced, a material omission for a product sold on original artwork.
Comic adaptations of individual stories
The comics are the app's best work and its clearest case of a partial corpus. Apple's own copy is careful: Key Bible stories reimagined in vivid graphic novel format. Key stories, not all stories. No count of finished comics is published on Apple, on Google Play, or on the website, and no roadmap says which books are coming.
Reviewers who value the comics feel the gap most. One subscriber writes that waiting for weeks for a new comic is agonizing; another notes that the illustrations quickly decline in quality when you move from the comics into the verse-by-verse reader. If the comics are what you are paying for, you are buying an unquantified library that grows at an unpublished rate, for up to $99.99 a year.
Pricing
Free download and trial
Free
Apple reports the price as Free, and what that buys is a free trial rather than a free tier. The listing says Try Brilliant Bible free and see the difference for yourself, but nowhere states how much of the 32,357 illustrations or the comic library stays readable once the trial lapses. No free-tier cap is published on Apple, on Google Play, or on readbrilliant.com.
Weekly Family Plan
$0.99 per week
The cheapest paid SKU and the only one priced weekly. At $0.99 x 52 = $51.48 a year it undercuts the $69.99 yearly SKU by $18.51 and the $99.99 yearly SKU by $48.51, the opposite of how subscription ladders normally work. That assumes the weekly price holds for a year, which the vendor does not promise.
Monthly Family Plan
$5.99 or $14.99 per month
Two distinct monthly SKUs, plus a third called 30 Day Sale Price at $14.99 - a sale price identical to the higher list price. At $5.99 x 12 = $71.88 a year the monthly plan costs $1.89 more than the $69.99 annual SKU, a 2.6 percent premium; at $14.99 x 12 = $179.88 it costs $79.89 more than the $99.99 annual SKU.
Yearly Family Plan
$34.99, $69.99 or $99.99 per year
Three annual SKUs plus a fourth called 365 Day Sale Price at $69.99. The $34.99 tier works out to $2.92 a month and the $99.99 tier to $8.33 - a 186 percent spread between cheapest and dearest annual plan for the same app. A third-party tracker lists $79 a year, matching none of Apple's four. There is no lifetime purchase in the list.
The most important pricing fact is that there is no pricing page. readbrilliant.com carries no /pricing, /plans, /subscribe or /join; its only outbound links are its own logo and a privacy policy, and nothing on it names Brilliant Bible. Apple nonetheless lists that domain as the app's support URL.
The prices that do exist are the in-app purchase names on the Apple listing, and they are chaotic: Weekly Family Plan $0.99, Monthly Family Plan $5.99, Monthly Family Plan $14.99, Yearly Family Plan $34.99, Yearly Family Plan $69.99, Yearly Family Plan $99.99, 30 Day Sale Price $14.99, and 365 Day Sale Price $69.99. Eight SKUs, six price points, and every one of them labelled Family Plan. There is no individual plan and no lifetime option anywhere in that list.
A ninth figure comes from outside the vendor: the tracker MWM lists the annual subscription as $79, matching none of Apple's four annual price points. Report both and reconcile neither - there is no list price to check either against.
The arithmetic inverts. $5.99 x 12 = $71.88 against a $69.99 annual plan saves $1.89, or 2.6 percent, so annual billing is nearly pointless at that tier; $14.99 x 12 = $179.88 against $99.99 saves $79.89. And $0.99 x 52 = $51.48 means the weekly plan undercuts two of the three annual plans, if the weekly rate holds.
On the free side, the copy says Try Brilliant Bible free and describes a subscription renewing unless cancelled 24 hours before the period ends. That is a trial, not a tier, and nothing published states what stays readable after it lapses. The one concession is discretionary: the developer answers store reviews by conceding it would be awesome if this product were 100% free, because the Bible is meant to be heard everywhere, cites the need to pay our artists, and offers reduced rates to readers who email matthew@readbrilliant.com.
Where Brilliant Bible falls behind
No published price on the vendor's own website. Every serious competitor - YouVersion, Olive Tree, Logos, Dwell - states on the open web what it costs before you install anything. Brilliant Bible does not, and the site Apple designates as its support page markets a different, unreleased product about Moby-Dick and Frankenstein. Comparing it against alternatives requires installing it and starting a trial to learn the number.
One translation, and it is the King James. A legitimate editorial choice that serves KJV readers, but also a hard ceiling: no NIV, ESV, CSB or NASB, no modern-English option for a child or an ESL reader, and no second version to read against the first. Apple lists one language code. YouVersion offers thousands of versions across more than two thousand languages at no charge.
No web reader. The product exists only as an app: iOS 13.0 or later, Android, macOS 11.0 or later on M1 or newer, and visionOS 1.0 or later. Nothing renders in a browser, so the illustrations cannot be pulled up on a church laptop, projected in a classroom, or linked to in a message.
No disclosure of how the artwork was made. The listing says original oil painting style artwork; the reviews say AI. Both cannot be true, and the vendor resolves it nowhere - not in the listing, not on the website, not in the privacy policy. For a subscription sold on 32,357 original images, a paying reader should not have to infer provenance from one-star reviews describing missing limbs.
No study apparatus at all. No interlinear, no lexicon, no cross-references, no concordance, no commentary, no documented note export. Blue Letter Bible and Bible Hub give original-language tools away free; Brilliant Bible asks up to $99.99 a year and returns a single English translation with pictures. Defensible for the right reader, but a narrow product wearing a broad price tag.
Brilliant Bible vs. BibleProject vs. YouVersion
These three sit at the visual end of Bible reading and solve different problems. YouVersion is the baseline: free forever, no ads, thousands of translations, verse images, plans and streaks. Try it first - and note that if grey text is what is stopping you reading, it will not fix that. BibleProject sits in the middle, free and built on animated explainers that illustrate books and themes rather than verses; it teaches structure well but does not accompany you line by line.
Brilliant Bible occupies the space neither covers: continuous, verse-level imagery through the whole canon. Nothing else does it, and 4,373 ratings at 4.75 say the readers who wanted it are happy. The trade is everything else - one translation, no study tools, no web, no published price, and an art pipeline the vendor will not describe. Read Scripture and Glo Bible are the nearer comparisons, both narrower in scope than Brilliant Bible's claim.
The sensible sequence is to install YouVersion first, then start a Brilliant Bible trial only if the habit still does not stick - and watch which annual SKU you are shown, because it may be $34.99 or $99.99 for the same app.
The bottom line
Brilliant Bible does one thing no competitor does, and it does it at scale: 32,357 images across all 66 books of the King James Version, and its 4,373 App Store reviewers say the images are what get them reading. If you are a visual reader, or a parent with a child who will look at pictures but not paragraphs, it earns a trial. Go in knowing three things the vendor will not tell you on the open web: the price is unpublished and the Apple SKUs run from $0.99 a week to $99.99 a year with no lifetime option, the artwork's provenance is undisclosed and reviewers describe it as AI-generated with anatomical errors, and the graphic-novel layer reviewers like most covers only key stories with no published count. Note which SKU you are offered, and compare it against YouVersion before the trial converts.
Alternatives to Brilliant Bible
YouVersionThe free default. Thousands of translations across more than two thousand languages, verse images, plans and streaks, no ads and no paywall over the text. Try it before paying for anything, including this.
BibleProject AppFree animated explainers on books and themes. Illustrates the shape of Scripture rather than individual verses, and is the better tool if your problem is understanding structure rather than sustaining a habit.
Read ScriptureA free plan that pairs daily reading with short videos per book. Less art per verse than Brilliant Bible, but a structured route through the whole Bible at no cost.
Glo BibleThe older attempt at a media-rich Bible, built on photography, maps, virtual tours and timelines rather than illustration. Dated interface, but broader reference depth than Brilliant Bible offers.
Holy Bible KJVIf the King James text is what you actually want, free KJV readers are abundant. No illustrations, no subscription, no trial to cancel.Frequently asked questions
How much does Brilliant Bible cost?
There is no published answer, which is itself the finding. readbrilliant.com has no pricing page and does not mention the app. Apple's listing shows eight in-app purchases at six price points, all named Family Plan: $0.99 weekly; $5.99 and $14.99 monthly; $34.99, $69.99 and $99.99 yearly; plus a 30 Day Sale Price of $14.99 and a 365 Day Sale Price of $69.99. A third-party tracker lists $79 a year, matching none of those.
Is there a lifetime option?
No. Every in-app purchase on Apple's listing is a recurring subscription billed weekly, monthly or yearly. There is no one-time or lifetime purchase, and none is advertised anywhere else.
Is there a free version, or only a free trial?
The download is free and the listing offers a free trial, but no vendor document describes a permanent free tier or states what stays readable once the trial ends. One discretionary route exists: the developer replies to store reviews offering reduced rates to readers who email matthew@readbrilliant.com. That is goodwill, not a published plan.
Is the whole Bible really illustrated, or just parts of it?
Two layers, two answers. The verse-by-verse reader is claimed complete: 32,357 illustrations across all 66 books. But the KJV has 31,102 verses, so one image for every verse overshoots by 1,255, and no breakdown is published. The comic adaptations are explicitly partial - Apple's copy says key Bible stories - with no published count and no roadmap.
Which translations are available?
One: the King James Version, in English only. Apple lists a single language code, EN. There is no modern-English option, no parallel view, and no second version to compare against.
Is the artwork hand-drawn or AI-generated?
The vendor does not say. The listing describes original oil painting style artwork; reviewers on both stores call the verse illustrations AI-generated, citing anatomical errors such as a person having two right arms or no left arm, and noting that Jesus is wearing different clothes and even looks completely different in each slide. The comic adaptations are rated noticeably higher.
Is it appropriate for children?
The two stores disagree. Apple rates it 9+ with an advisory for Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence; Google Play rates the same build 3+. It is marketed for family reading and one subscription covers up to six people via Apple Family Sharing. Parents should note that Google Play's data safety card discloses Device or other IDs shared with third parties.
Sources & further reading
- Brilliant Illustrations Inc. official site ↗
- Brilliant Illustrations privacy policy ↗
- Brilliant Bible on the App Store (listing and in-app purchase list) ↗
- Brilliant Bible App Store user reviews ↗
- Brilliant Bible on Google Play (data safety and rating) ↗
- AppBrain listing for com.brilliant.bible ↗
- MWM app tracker profile for Brilliant Bible ↗
- King James Bible statistics (book, chapter and verse totals) ↗
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