Deaf Bible App Review (2026): Scripture in 92 Sign Languages

Item: Deaf Bible App
Rating: 4.8
Author: Jaeden Schafer

Starting price: Free
Free tier: Yes
Platforms: iOS - Android - Web
Developer: Deaf Bible Society, Inc.
Launched: 2012
Updated: Jul 26, 2026

4.8 from 1,694 ratingsApp Store rating

92 (vendor product page, July 2026)Sign languages carried

More than 350; one has a complete BibleSign languages worldwide

144.2 MB, iOS 13.0 or lateriOS download

100,000+Android installs

The verdict

For a Deaf signer this is the first app to install and probably the only one that will ever carry their language: 92 sign languages, free, no advertising, no gate on the content. Install it knowing that only American Sign Language has a complete Bible behind it and the other 91 are portions. Skip it if you need English text study tools - the whole product is video and the interface ships in English only.

Try Deaf Bible App ↗

Opens deafbiblesociety.com

One statistic explains this app better than any feature list, and Deaf Bible Society publishes it on its own homepage: there are more than 350 unique sign languages, and only American Sign Language has a complete Bible. The others have portions of Scripture. Its about page puts a number on the portions - 15 percent of sign languages have access to any Scripture at all - against 70 million people for whom a sign language is the first or only language they use daily.

That is a different gap from the one most Bible apps address. A hearing English reader choosing between YouVersion and Olive Tree is choosing between abundances. A Deaf signer in Benin or Malawi is choosing between one partial video New Testament and nothing. Printed Scripture is not a fallback: for someone whose first language is visual and whose second is written English, a printed Bible is a translation exercise rather than a reading.

The app is free on iOS and Android and mirrored on the web at deafbible.com, and it has been shipping since 2 November 2012, thirteen years and eight months before this review, with version 5.21.1 dated 24 July 2026. The Android package name is com.faithcomesbyhearing.android.deaf.bibleis, which gives away the lineage: it sits on Faith Comes By Hearing's Bible.is platform, and the chairman of Deaf Bible Society's board is Melvin Morris, CFO of Faith Comes by Hearing. The charity is a 501(c)(3) in Arlington, Texas, EIN 47-4285852.

What a review adds to the listing is the counting. Three different figures for how many sign languages the app carries are in print right now, two for how many streams it has served, and the statistics block on the vendor's own product page renders zero.

✓ The good

The widest sign language Scripture library published anywhere - the vendor product page says 92 sign languages, against a world total the same organisation puts at more than 350
Free with no gate of any kind - $0 on iOS, $0 on Android, no advertising, no in-app purchase and no premium tier, funded by donations to a 501(c)(3)
Video is the format rather than a bolt-on - skilled signers in sharp, close-up, colour video, with the interface built around video rather than text
The complete American Sign Language Bible is in it - the ASL Version was finalised in 2020 after more than 38 years of work, and remains the only complete Bible in any sign language
Real distribution - 100,000-plus Android installs, 1,694 App Store ratings at 4.8 and 2,390 Google Play reviews at 4.7
Accountable finances - the financials page publishes the 2024 Form 990 and audited statements, ECFA accreditation, and membership of the National Association of the Deaf and the Forum of Bible Agencies International

✗ Watch out

Only one of the 92 sign languages has a complete Bible - the homepage states this outright, so 91 are portions, and no per-language completeness table is published before you pick one
No content download size is published anywhere - the 144.2 MB App Store figure is the binary, and on metered data the size of a chapter is what decides usability
Interface English only - the App Store lists a single language code, EN, across at least 100 countries and 92 sign languages
The vendor's own statistics are inconsistent - 92 sign languages on the product page, 84 on the faith.tools listing, 82 in a November 2025 press feature, and counters showing zero on the product page itself
Offline download is claimed by the listing but not by the vendor - neither the App Store description nor the product page mentions downloading, the feature this audience most needs confirmed

Best for

Deaf signers who want Scripture in their own sign language rather than in written English
Deaf ministries and interpreters serving a congregation in a non-ASL sign language
Missions teams working with Deaf communities outside the United States
Anyone who wants the complete American Sign Language Version on a phone for free

Avoid if

You need a complete Bible in a sign language other than ASL
Your connection is metered and you need published per-chapter download sizes first
You want English text study tools, commentary or original languages
You need the app interface itself in a language other than English

What Deaf Bible App is

The Deaf Bible App is a Scripture reader in which the Scripture is video. You choose a sign language, navigate to a book and chapter, and watch a signer deliver the passage. There is no text version of the translation underneath, because none exists - a sign language Bible exists as recorded video and nothing else.

Around that sit the ordinary conveniences of a Bible app, restated visually: Scripture of the day notifications, watch plans you can subscribe to and share, sharing of individual videos for personal or church use, and a profile holding your preferences. Apple files it under Books and Reference, rates it 4+, requires iOS 13.0 or later and lists Apple Vision support from visionOS 1.0.

The only product where the language list is the entire argument

Every other Bible app competes on features, because the translations are commodities - a hundred apps ship the ESV. This one competes on whether your language exists in it at all. The product page says 92 sign languages, which against more than 350 worldwide is 26 percent. Against the 15 percent the same organisation's about page says have access to portions of Scripture, 92 looks generous: 15 percent of 350 is 52.5 languages, not 92. Both figures are the vendor's own.

The corpus behind the count is where it gets concrete. The faith.tools listing credits the app with more than 210,000 published verses, glossed as the equivalent of 6-plus complete Bibles. That arithmetic holds - 210,000 divided by the 31,102 verses in a Protestant Bible is 6.75 - but across 92 languages it averages 2,283 verses each, 7.3 percent of a Bible. Remove the complete ASL Version at 31,102 verses and the remaining 178,898 across 91 languages average 1,966 each, 6.3 percent. That is the honest shape of the library: one finished Bible and ninety-one beginnings.

How much Scripture is actually in your language

This is the question the app is least forthcoming about, and the organisation is more candid than the app. The homepage says it in one sentence: only American Sign Language has a complete Bible, other sign languages have portions of Scripture. Neither the product page nor either store listing publishes a per-language table, so a user picking from the menu learns its extent by browsing it.

Where the ceiling sits is documented. The ASL Version was finalised in 2020 after more than 38 years of work, and it is the only complete Bible in any sign language. Below that, the November 2025 Religion Unplugged feature reports translation available in 82 sign languages, a Wycliffe estimate that roughly 220 translations would serve Deaf churches globally, and a goal of every community having Scripture by 2033. Against the pace in print - 82 in November 2025 to 92 in July 2026, about 15 a year - reaching 220 needs about 18 a year and reaching 350 needs about 37. The nearer target is roughly on pace; the wider one is not.

Bandwidth, download size and whether it works offline

Video Scripture is heavy in a way text Scripture is not, and this audience is disproportionately in places where data costs money. The faith.tools listing credits the app with offline video download, adjustable playback speed, verse search, landscape closed captions and full-screen timestamps. The vendor's product page lists none of that: its copy covers choosing a sign language, Scripture of the day notifications, watch plans, sharing and a profile. The App Store description does not mention downloading either.

So the capability that matters most to the most bandwidth-constrained audience in this market is asserted by a third party and undocumented by the vendor. What is documented is the shell: Apple shows 144.2 MB, or 144,209,920 bytes, before a single verse of video. No per-book or per-language content size appears anywhere, so a user on a metered plan cannot cost a chapter before starting it.

Distribution, ratings and the organisation behind it

The reach is real and the two stores disagree slightly about the reception. Apple shows 4.8 from 1,694 ratings; Google Play shows 4.7 from 2,390 reviews across 100,000-plus installs, so Android has 696 more raters and a rating one tenth lower. Version 5.21.1 shipped on 24 July 2026, notes reading System Maintenance.

Deaf Bible Society is unusually legible for a small ministry. Chantel Pagan has been President and CEO since 1 January 2020, and the about page lists a twelve-member team plus a board chaired by Faith Comes by Hearing's CFO, with a vice chair from JAARS and a secretary-treasurer retired from Wycliffe. The financials page publishes the 2024 Form 990 and audited financials and claims ECFA accreditation plus membership of the National Association of the Deaf and the Forum of Bible Agencies International, which is more disclosure than most ministries this size offer.

Pricing

Best value

Free

The entire product. All 92 sign languages the vendor lists, Scripture of the day notifications, video watch plans, video sharing for personal or church use, and a profile that stores preferences, on iOS, Android and the web. No advertising, no in-app purchase, no premium tier and no per-language charge. Funded by donations to Deaf Bible Society, a 501(c)(3) with EIN 47-4285852.

Donation

Amounts not published

Optional and unrelated to access. giving.deafbiblesociety.com lists four projects - Deaf Bible 365, Deaf Community Engagement, Tools and Technology, Translation Acceleration - and says overflow above project goals will be used where needed most. The dollar figures sit inside embedded forms, so no amount or tier appears in the page text. Giving unlocks nothing.

There is one price and it is zero. Free on iOS, free on Android, free on the web at deafbible.com, no advertising, no in-app purchase, no account wall on the Scripture and no charge per sign language.

The funding sits on the donation side. giving.deafbiblesociety.com splits giving into four projects - Deaf Bible 365, Deaf Community Engagement, Tools and Technology, and Translation Acceleration - and adds that overflow above project goals will be used where needed most. The dollar amounts live inside embedded forms rather than in the page text, so no preset ladder, monthly option or cost-per-verse figure is published anywhere on the site.

What the money buys is legible from the paperwork instead of a price list. The 2024 Form 990 and audited financials are both linked from the financials page, but the revenue and expense figures sit inside those PDFs, so no program-expense percentage appears on the site itself.

The number that puts the free price in perspective is the ASL Version: more than 38 years of work for one complete Bible. Sign language translation is filmed rather than typed - signers, studios, editors and community review for every book. This is not a cheap product with a generous licence; it is a very expensive one whose cost was paid by donors upstream.

Where Deaf Bible App falls behind

Counting. Three figures for the same number are in print: 92 sign languages on the vendor product page, 84 on the faith.tools listing, 82 in the Religion Unplugged feature of 10 November 2025. Streams diverge further - the listing claims over 9 million across 100-plus countries, the November 2025 feature over 2 million to date across 195 countries. The stream figures are 4.5 times apart roughly eight months apart, and the country figures move the other way. None is averaged here.

Its own dashboard. The product page carries counters for verses translated, sign languages represented and countries streaming, and the values render as zero rather than as numbers. For a product whose entire case rests on those three counts, a widget stuck at nought is the wrong first impression.

Per-language transparency. The homepage is honest that only ASL has a complete Bible, but that honesty lives on the marketing site rather than in the language picker. Nothing published says what each of the 92 languages contains - New Testament, Gospels, a story set, a handful of chapters - so the difference between a finished Bible and forty minutes of video is invisible until you are inside.

Download economics. No content size is published at any level. Where mobile data is the practical constraint, printing per-chapter megabytes and documenting offline download in the vendor's own words would matter more than any new feature.

Localisation of the wrapper. The App Store lists exactly one interface language, EN, for a product distributed across at least 100 countries. The video is in the user's heart language and the menus around it are not, which lands hardest on the users the app was built for.

Deaf Bible App vs. ASL Bible (Deaf Missions) vs. Sign Language Bible (Wycliffe Associates)

For American Sign Language users these are two routes to one translation. Deaf Missions' ASL Bible app is free on Google Play, updated 19 June 2026, and promises the complete Bible in high-quality ASL, all 66 books, plus interactive transcripts, search and a personal library. It is the specialist build: one language, finished, with transcript tooling the Deaf Bible App does not advertise. Its reach is far smaller at 1,000-plus installs against 100,000-plus.

Wycliffe Associates' Sign Language Bible app is the opposite trade. It carries New Testament video in seven African sign languages - Benin, Cameroon-Anglo, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania and Togo - explicitly supports downloading videos for offline viewing, and discloses no data collection. It is small and rough at 5,000-plus installs and 3.8 stars from 19 reviews, but it proves offline download is documentable in this category, which makes its absence from Deaf Bible Society's own copy conspicuous.

Against mainstream Bible apps there is no contest in either direction. YouVersion carries thousands of text translations at 4.9 stars from roughly 13 million ratings, none of which helps a signer who does not read comfortably. This app carries 92 sign languages and no lexicon or commentary. A Deaf believer who also reads English will run both.

The bottom line

Install it. This is the widest sign language Scripture library that exists, it costs nothing, it carries no advertising, it has shipped continuously since November 2012, and it sits behind an ECFA-accredited charity that publishes its 990. Then set expectations from the vendor's homepage rather than the app store: one complete Bible in one sign language, portions in the rest, an average of roughly 2,000 verses per non-ASL language, and no published table telling you which is which before you look. If your language is ASL, compare Deaf Missions' ASL Bible for its transcripts.

Alternatives to Deaf Bible App

ASL Bible (Deaf Missions) 4.3Free, and the complete Bible in American Sign Language - all 66 books - with interactive transcripts, search and a bookmark library, funded by optional in-app donations. Only 1,000-plus installs, and only one language.Sign Language Bible (Wycliffe Associates) 3.6Free New Testament video in seven African sign languages, with documented offline download and no data collection disclosed. Small and rough: 5,000-plus installs, 3.8 stars from 19 reviews.

Bible.is 4.7Faith Comes By Hearing's free audio and text platform, and the technical family this app belongs to. Far wider language coverage, but audio-first, which is the wrong medium here.

YouVersion 4.9The default free Bible app, 4.9 stars from roughly 13 million App Store ratings, with thousands of text translations and plans. Superb if you read comfortably; it is not a sign language product.

BibleProject App 4.9Free animated explainers on biblical books and themes. Visual rather than textual, which helps some Deaf viewers, but the videos are narrated English with captions rather than signed Scripture.

Frequently asked questions

How many sign languages does the Deaf Bible App actually carry?

Three figures are in print. The vendor's own product page says 92 sign languages and growing every year, the faith.tools listing says 84, and a Religion Unplugged feature dated 10 November 2025 says 82. The 92 figure is the most recent and the vendor's own - and the statistics counters on that same page render as zero.

Is a complete Bible available in every sign language in the app?

No, and the organisation says so directly. Its homepage states that only American Sign Language has a complete Bible and other sign languages have portions of Scripture; its about page says 15 percent of sign languages have access to portions. The faith.tools listing credits the app with more than 210,000 published verses, which at 31,102 verses per Protestant Bible is 6.75 Bibles - but across 92 languages that averages 2,283 each, and once the complete ASL Version is set aside the remaining 178,898 across 91 languages average 1,966 each, 6.3 percent of a Bible.

Does it work offline, and how big are the downloads?

The faith.tools listing credits the app with offline video download. Deaf Bible Society's product page does not mention downloading, and neither does the App Store description, so the capability is asserted by a third party and undocumented by the vendor. No content download size is published at any level - not per book, chapter or language. The only size figure available is the app binary, 144.2 MB.

Is the app really free, and how is it funded?

Yes. Free on iOS, Android and the web at deafbible.com, with no advertising, no in-app purchase and no premium tier. Deaf Bible Society is a 501(c)(3) in Arlington, Texas, EIN 47-4285852, funded by donations. Its giving site lists four projects - Deaf Bible 365, Deaf Community Engagement, Tools and Technology, Translation Acceleration - with no dollar amounts in the page text.

How many people use it, and is it still updated?

Apple shows 4.8 from 1,694 ratings; Google Play shows 4.7 from 2,390 reviews across more than 100,000 installs. Version 5.21.1 shipped on 24 July 2026, and Google Play lists its last update as 23 July 2026. On reach, the listing claims over 9 million video streams across 100-plus countries while the November 2025 press feature reports over 2 million streams to date and availability in 195 countries - a 4.5-fold difference reported as published rather than reconciled.

Is the app usable if I do not read English?

The Scripture is not the problem; the wrapper is. The App Store lists exactly one interface language, EN, for a product distributed across at least 100 countries and 92 sign languages, so menus and settings are English even though the video is signed. Apple's privacy card discloses coarse location, email address, product interaction, crash and performance data, all marked as not linked to your identity, and Google Play's data safety card reports no data shared with third parties, encryption in transit and a deletion request path.

Deaf Bible App