CBN Family

What CBN Family is

CBN Family is a first-party streaming app for the output of The Christian Broadcasting Network - a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organisation. It carries on-demand full episodes and live programming, with named strands including The 700 Club, 700 Club Interactive, CBN News, Impact Stories, seasonal content, and the animated children's series Superbook across Seasons 1 to 5. The base tier is free once you create a free CBN account with an email address.

Above the free tier the structure is unusual. Premium teachings, movies and documentaries are unlocked by becoming a CBN Partner at $20 a month or higher - a donation level rather than a subscription - while full Superbook access requires an Animation Club membership. A "My Access" screen lets you see and manage which premium levels your account holds. Sign-in is per device, and CBN Family sits alongside four sibling apps: CBN News, Superbook Kids Bible, CBN Radio and CBN Bible.

Why households install CBN Family alongside a paid service

The differentiator is the price, and it is not a marketing price. In this category the standard entry point is a trial that converts: $5.99 a month, $59.99 a year, $99 a year at the top of the range, with a seven-day window in which to decide. CBN Family asks for an email address and then keeps working. That changes what the app is for. Nobody needs to justify it against a competitor or work out whether the family watched enough this month to break even. It goes on the Roku next to whatever the household already pays for, and it earns its slot by costing nothing.

The second half of the case is that the content is first-party and specific. This is not a licensing aggregator - it is the broadcaster's own output, which means The 700 Club and CBN News are here on the day they air rather than not at all, and Superbook is here because CBN makes Superbook. For a family that watches Christian news and teaching programming and wants a route to a well-regarded animated Bible series for the children, the overlap with a general faith-and-family entertainment subscription is small enough that both can sensibly coexist. That is the honest positioning: a complement, not a replacement.

The free tier: what an email address actually buys

The free level requires creating a free CBN account with an email address, and CBN describes what it includes in its own words: "current CBN and CBN News episodes - including the latest 700 Club - special topical video series, Bible-based teachings and kids shows." On-demand full episodes and live programming both appear on the app. There is no trial period attached, no payment method requested and no stated expiry, which is what separates this from every free-tier claim elsewhere in the category. The friction is the account itself, plus one detail worth knowing before you set the household up: you sign in on each device separately, so a phone, a tablet, an Apple TV and a Firestick are four sign-ins rather than one.

The limit on the free tier is definitional rather than mean-spirited: it is current programming. "Current" is doing work in that sentence, and CBN's FAQ does not specify precisely where the free-versus-paid boundary falls - which episodes age out, how deep the back catalogue goes, whether a given documentary is inside or outside. That vagueness is the main practical complaint about the free level, and it is the reason to treat the app as a supplement rather than as the thing you check first. It also matters that no title count or hour count is published anywhere, so nobody - including this review - can tell you how large the free library is. What can be said is that it costs nothing to find out, which is not true of any rival here.

Superbook, the Animation Club and the unpublished price

Superbook is the reason most parents will hear about CBN at all. The animated series has genuine standing in Christian children's media, it appears on the free tier in some form as part of the "kids shows" CBN lists, and it also has its own dedicated companion app in Superbook Kids Bible. But access to "all 5 Seasons of Superbook" requires an Animation Club membership, and CBN does not publish what that membership costs - not on the app page, not in the FAQ, not on the access breakdown, not on the Superbook page itself. Coverage also stops at Season 5, so there is a defined ceiling to what the membership delivers.

An unpublished price is a genuine problem and should be weighed as one, particularly for a children's product. A parent comparing options can look up Minno, Yippee TV, TruPlay and Bentkey and know within thirty seconds what each costs per month and per year. Here the answer is an enquiry. That is a small barrier in absolute terms and a real one in practice, because the whole appeal of CBN Family is that it removes the decision - and the Animation Club puts the decision back, without giving you the number you need to make it. If Superbook is specifically what a household is after, it is worth noting that Yippee TV also carries Superbook inside a published subscription price, which makes the comparison easy to run once you have CBN's figure.

The $20 partner level: a donation, not a subscription

The premium tier of CBN Family is a donor relationship. CBN's own wording is that "CBN Partners ($20/month or higher)" receive "access to exclusive video content including the most powerful teachings from Pat and Gordon Robertson" and "faith-building audio teachings every month," and the access page describes the level as covering "all Premium Teachings, Movies & Documentaries." There is a further mechanical step: partner accounts need a nine-digit partner number taken from receipts before the entitlement activates, which is a second piece of setup after the account itself. The "My Access" feature exists to let you see and manage which premium levels are currently attached to your account.

Framing matters here, and it cuts both ways. In CBN's favour: a nonprofit funding its programming through partnership rather than subscription is coherent, and $20 a month to a 501(c)(3) is a different transaction from $20 a month to a streaming company - some of that money is a gift, and it is treated as one. Against it: a donation is not a purchase, and the consumer protections people expect from a subscription do not obviously transfer. If the reason you are giving is access to Pat and Gordon Robertson's teaching library, then you are paying four times what UP Faith & Family charges for a whole entertainment catalogue, via a mechanism that involves a partner number from a receipt. Anyone who wants to support CBN should give and enjoy the access as a benefit. Anyone whose primary motive is content should price it against the paid alternatives before committing.

Pricing

Where CBN Family falls behind

It is not a family entertainment library, and comparing it to one is a category error. The catalogue is CBN's own programming - The 700 Club, 700 Club Interactive, CBN News, Impact Stories, Superbook, seasonal content - not licensed third-party film and television. Minno, Yippee TV, Bentkey and UP Faith & Family all offer curated catalogues of shows a child will recognise. CBN Family offers a broadcaster's output. Both can be useful; only one of them fills a Saturday morning.

The documentation gap is the biggest single weakness. No published title or hour count. No published age range. No stated geographic restrictions. No specification of exactly where the free-versus-paid boundary sits. Nothing published about offline downloads, user profiles, parental PINs or simultaneous streams. And - notable in this category - no ad-free claim anywhere, which means a buyer should not assume the service is ad-free. Every one of those is a number or a promise the competition puts on its homepage.

The premium route is a donation gate. Getting the best teaching content means becoming a CBN Partner at $20 a month or higher, then entering a nine-digit partner number from your receipts. That is four times the entry price of the cheapest paid rival, through a mechanism with different expectations around cancellation and refunds, and with an extra activation step that a subscription simply would not have. It is a legitimate model for a nonprofit and an awkward one for a consumer comparison.

Superbook has an unpublished price and a hard ceiling. Full access needs an Animation Club membership CBN does not price publicly, and coverage stops at Season 5. For the app's strongest children's property, that is the wrong combination: a parent cannot budget for it, and once they have paid there is a defined end to what they get.

Five apps, not one, and support varies between them. CBN Family sits alongside CBN News, Superbook Kids Bible, CBN Radio and CBN Bible, and CBN states that "specific support varies by app." Add per-device sign-in on top and the setup cost across a household of phones, tablets and streaming sticks is higher than the free price suggests. A 12+ age rating on the App Store is also worth registering for something carrying the word Family in its name - the news and teaching programming, rather than Superbook, is presumably what drives it.

CBN Family vs. Yippee TV vs. UP Faith & Family

Three different products with the word "family" doing three different jobs. CBN Family is a nonprofit broadcaster's own output, free at the base tier with a $20/month donor partnership above it. Yippee TV, owned by TBN, is a paid children's streaming service that also carries Superbook alongside a large VeggieTales collection and its own originals, at a published subscription price. UP Faith & Family is a paid faith-and-family entertainment catalogue for the whole household - series and films, including exclusive first-run television - at $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year. If you want programming to put in front of children on a wet afternoon, the second and third do that job and the first does not.

The store signals split along scale rather than quality. CBN Family sits at 4.4 from 162 ratings on an app first released in July 2010 and last updated in February 2026 - a decent score on a small sample for a very long-lived app. Yippee TV is 4.7 from 2,875 ratings. UP Faith & Family is 4.6 from 10,899 ratings, the most heavily rated app in this whole comparison. Volume is not virtue, but ten thousand ratings tell you considerably more about consistency than one hundred and sixty do, and the two paid services are the better-evidenced products on that measure alone.

Where CBN wins outright is the absence of a decision. Yippee TV and UP Faith & Family both want a trial started and a card stored, and both are perfectly reasonable at their prices. CBN Family wants an email address. For a household already paying for one faith-and-family service, the sensible configuration is obvious: keep the paid catalogue for the children's viewing, add CBN Family for free for the news and teaching programming, and treat the $20 partner level as a giving decision rather than a media purchase. If your children specifically want all five Superbook seasons, get the Animation Club price from CBN and compare it to Yippee's published subscription, which includes Superbook inside a number you can actually see.

Alternatives to CBN Family

Superbook★ 4.8CBN's own children's Bible property with a dedicated app, and the single strongest reason parents look at CBN at all. Worth checking before paying for an Animation Club membership.→Yippee TV★ 4.7TBN-owned kids streaming that also carries Superbook, plus the largest VeggieTales collection and 250+ series - at a subscription price you can actually read before you commit.→UP Faith & Family★ 4.6The most heavily rated faith-and-family service here at 10,899 ratings, and a genuine entertainment catalogue for the whole household rather than a broadcaster feed.→Minno★ 4.5Christian streaming for ages 2-10 with VeggieTales, originals and a screen-free audio platform. A curated library for young children, which is precisely the job CBN Family does not do.→

More Christian Streaming Apps

Bethel.tv★ 4.9The streaming home of Bethel Church (Redding) and Bethel Music - sermons, BSSM teaching, conference replays, and a decade-deep worship catalog in one app.→Moody Radio★ 4.9The free streaming app for Moody Bible Institute’s Christian radio network - listen live to local and internet stations, catch favorite teaching and talk programs on demand, and take it all into the car with CarPlay.→Wild Brothers TV★ 4.8A missionary family's adventure and wildlife channel with the highest App Store score in this category - sold with no free trial, no published refund policy, and a children's chat feature whose moderation is documented nowhere at all.→TBN+★ 4.8The streaming home of Trinity Broadcasting Network, free on every major device - and surprisingly deep once you start digging.→Bentkey★ 4.7A well-rated, genuinely ad-free kids' streaming service with charming originals - sold at a price that three of the vendor's own pages describe three different ways, on an annual-only, non-refundable commitment.→The Chosen★ 4.7The Chosen has quietly become the most-watched depiction of Jesus in history, and the official app is the front door to all of it - every episode, every season, every roundtable, free.→