- Starting price
- Free
- Free tier
- Yes
- Platforms
- Windows - macOS - Linux - Android (remote) - Browser (remote and stage)
- Developer
- Live Church Solutions (ChurchApps)
- Launched
- 2022
- Updated
- Aug 5, 2026
The verdict
FreeShow is the strongest free church presenter available in 2026 and the only one whose feature list genuinely overlaps ProPresenter on stage display, NDI, Blackmagic output and Planning Center sync. Take it if you have a volunteer who reads release notes and can roll back a bad update. Skip it if your church needs a vendor it can phone on a Sunday morning and hold to a contract, because that vendor does not exist at any price.
Try FreeShow ↗Opens freeshow.app
Start with a correction, because the listing that sent you here has two things off. The link points at livecs.org, which is not FreeShow - it is Live Church Solutions, trading as ChurchApps, the 501(c)(3) that publishes FreeShow alongside three other free products: B1 Church, Lessons.church and FreePlay. The product site is freeshow.app. The listing also credits FreeShow with serving "14,764+ churches in 130+ countries", which is ChurchApps' portfolio-wide count across all four apps, not a FreeShow install base. Nobody publishes a FreeShow-specific church count.
What FreeShow actually is: a desktop presenter for Windows, macOS and Linux, licensed GPL-3.0, built in TypeScript and Svelte on Electron. Its own documentation dates the project to late 2021 with a first release in February 2022, written because the free alternatives at the time did not have the features, usability or look of the paid ones. That is no longer an aspiration. The 1.6.4 release of 20 July 2026 added RTMP streaming output and media blend modes; 1.6.3 added tables and charts; 1.6.1 added Blackmagic keying layers, an audio compressor and limiter, WebRTC and full-project PDF export.
It is free in the sense that matters. No paid tier, no seat count, no feature behind a licence check. freeshow.app has no pricing page at all - /pricing, /plans and /give all return 404, because there is nothing to put on them. Funding is donations: the homepage says plainly, "Unlike other presentation software providers, we are not a business. We are a non-profit that exists solely to serve churches," and that being free "is possible due to the generous support of donors."
So the review's real job is the comparison a tech director has to make. Renewed Vision now sells ProPresenter to houses of worship only by subscription: $29/month or $289/year for one seat, $59/month or $649/year for a campus licence. EasyWorship prints $17.50/month or $210/year for Basic. FreeShow's number in that row is $0, on unlimited machines, cloud sync included. Five years of a ProPresenter campus licence is $649 x 5 = $3,245. That is the money on the table; what follows is what you give up to take it.
✓ The good
- Genuinely free with no paid tier - GPL-3.0 on GitHub, no seat count, no licence check, nothing gated behind a subscription, and no pricing page because there is nothing to price.
- Release cadence a paid vendor would be pleased with - 1.6.1 on 26 May, 1.6.2 on 18 June, 1.6.3 on 24 June and 1.6.4 on 20 July 2026, four stable releases in 56 days, each preceded by one to three public betas.
- Import from the software you are leaving - PowerPoint, ProPresenter, EasyWorship and OpenSong, with 1.6.x commits showing active work on both the .pro6 and the EasyWorship importers rather than a checkbox left to rot.
- Output stack that reaches broadcast gear - simultaneous outputs styled per audience, stage display, NDI, Blackmagic DeckLink and UltraStudio, MIDI in and out, OSC, and RTMP streaming added in 1.6.4.
- Remote and stage displays are browser-based and free - a phone, tablet or TV connects over the local network by IP and port, so nobody buys a companion app; FreeShow's own comparison table notes a rival remote "Costs $4.99".
- Scripture is broad out of the box - over 200 Bibles via API.Bible plus local XML imports and one-click passage-to-slide conversion, with the resources page pointing at Zefania and OSIS collections past 1,550 XML Bibles.
- Issue response is fast and public - issue 3576 was opened at 10:28 UTC on 4 August 2026 and closed at 10:35; issue 3574 was opened 3 August at 14:19 and closed at 14:31. Only 8 issues stand open against 2,926 closed.
✗ Watch out
- No commercial support exists at any price - FreeShow's own comparison table lists its support as "Via email or GitHub" against ProPresenter's "With subscription". No SLA, no paid tier that buys a phone call, no escalation path on a Sunday morning.
- Bus-factor risk is visible in the commit log - every 1.6.x stable release commit on main is authored by one person, Kristoffer Vassbo, with community work folded in as co-authored commits. The nonprofit around him is donation-funded and volunteer-staffed.
- Cloud sync is the recurring fault line - a 34-comment thread on projects not syncing between laptops, an open report of sync failing to download shows onto a secondary device, and 1.6.x notes dense with fixes such as "Prevent old data overwriting newer cloud data". It is the feature multi-site teams would most want to trust.
- Automated CCLI reporting is not implemented - attribution renders in the output and song usage can be logged locally, but the request to upload that usage to CCLI has sat open since October 2024 and was last touched in November 2025.
- Startup reliability has needed repeated attention - a thread titled "FreeShow sometimes fails to start up properly" ran to 57 comments from December 2025 before closing in July 2026, and a separate "FreeShow does not start" report ran nine comments across June and July 2026.
- The website lags the software - the footer on every freeshow.app page still reads "2024 (c) Live Church Solutions" while the app ships monthly, and the vendor disclaims its own comparison table: "This is a general overview and may not be up to date or entirely accurate."
Best for
- Churches replacing ProPresenter to recover $289 to $649 a year
- Volunteer AV teams with one technically confident member
- Multi-output setups needing NDI or Blackmagic on no budget
- Congregations presenting in languages a paid vendor ignores
Avoid if
- Churches that require a support contract and an SLA
- Teams with no one able to roll back a bad update
- Ministries depending on automated CCLI usage reporting
- Sites that need cloud sync to be beyond question
What FreeShow is
FreeShow is a downloadable presentation program for church services. You build shows out of slides - song lyrics grouped into verses and choruses, Scripture passages pulled from a Bible source, media, countdowns, announcements - arrange them into a project for a given Sunday, and drive them to one or more screens. Text lives in a rich editor with fonts, colours, outlines and shadows, and an Edit mode lets an operator retype a line mid-service. Templates apply a house style across a show in one click.
Around that sit the things a live service needs: a stage display for musicians, simultaneous outputs styled differently for room and stream, a browser-based remote so a phone can advance slides, timers and autoplay, draw tools over the output, MIDI and OSC so a lighting desk can trigger it, and NDI or Blackmagic output so lyrics reach the streaming machine without a capture card.
The vendor publishes a comparison table, and it is worth reading closely
Most free software argues on principle. FreeShow argues on a spreadsheet: freeshow.app/features carries a public matrix scoring FreeShow against ProPresenter, EasyWorship, VideoPsalm, OpenLP and Proclaim across roughly thirty rows, prices included. It puts ProPresenter at "$289/yr, Starting at $289 yearly per seat", Proclaim at "$250/yr, Starting at $249.99 yearly", and EasyWorship at "$180/yr, Starting at $180 yearly".
That last figure does not match its source. EasyWorship's own pricing page prints $17.50/month or $210/year for Basic, and $17.50 x 12 = $210 exactly, so the annual price is not a discount and $180 is $30 below what EasyWorship charges today. Report both and move on - it reads like a stale number rather than a thumb on the scale, and FreeShow hangs its own warning on the table: "This is a general overview and may not be up to date or entirely accurate." The ProPresenter row is the more consequential omission: $289 is the single-seat price, while the campus licence a church with two computers actually needs is $649/year.
Lyrics, Scripture and getting your library out of the old software
Songs can be typed, pasted into a text mode that parses a whole show like a text file, or looked up by title so slides are generated automatically. Auto-labelling assigns verse and chorus groups, groups can be reused across layouts, and chords sit inline in the text. Scripture comes from over 200 Bibles through API.Bible or from local XML files, and a passage converts to slides in one click, with a smart split for long verses.
Migration is the part that decides whether a church can actually leave a paid product. FreeShow lists importers for PowerPoint, ProPresenter, EasyWorship and OpenSong, plus PDF import as images and Canva presentations. The importers are being worked on rather than merely advertised: 1.6.4-beta.2 carried a fix for importing .pro6 files, and three separate 1.6.x betas tightened the EasyWorship importer, including a fix for the first word of a song being dropped. Export is offered in multiple formats, and the vendor frames that as not locking you in.
Outputs, stage display and the broadcast chain
FreeShow drives several outputs at once with different styling on each - one look for the room, another for the stream, a stage view for the platform. Stage layouts are editable and multiple, can be imported and exported as of 1.6.2-beta.2, and connect from any device on the local network by IP and port. A web output lets musicians or a preaching pastor open notes in a browser instead of a dedicated screen.
The hardware end is where FreeShow stops looking like a hobby project. NDI output is native, so lyrics reach an OBS or vMix machine without SDI cabling or converters. Blackmagic DeckLink and UltraStudio devices are supported, with keying layers added in 1.6.1-beta.3. MIDI works in both directions, so a slide change can trigger lighting. RTMP streaming output landed in 1.6.4 with configurable fps and bitrate, Icecast audio streaming arrived earlier in the 1.6 line, and a documented FreeShow API plus a Bitfocus Companion module put slide control on a Stream Deck.
Pricing
Free
Free
Everything, on every platform, on as many computers as you like. Windows, macOS and Linux builds, stage display, browser remote, NDI and Blackmagic output, RTMP streaming, MIDI and OSC, Planning Center sync, over 200 Bibles via API.Bible, and cloud sync between machines. No account is required to present; no feature is licence-checked. The source is GPL-3.0 on GitHub, so a church can fork and build it itself if the project ever stops. Funded by donations to Live Church Solutions, a 501(c)(3) with EIN 45-5349618.
Partner (optional donation)
Donation - amount set by the giver
ChurchApps asks churches and individuals that can afford it to fund development and hosting, and takes GitHub Sponsors as well. Nothing in FreeShow is gated behind it: partners get no priority queue, no support tier and no extra features, which is worth knowing in both directions. Paying does not buy you a Sunday morning phone number, and not paying does not cost you anything.
There is one price and it is zero. No trial, no seat tier, no upgrade path, nothing time-limited. Because there is no product to sell, freeshow.app has no pricing page - /pricing, /plans and /give all 404 - and that absence is the most honest pricing disclosure in the category.
The saving is only real against a specific number, so use the vendor's own. Renewed Vision sells ProPresenter to houses of worship at $29/month or $289/year for a single seat and $59/month or $649/year for a campus licence, and no longer sells perpetual licences to new customers at all; ProPresenter 6 and older perpetual licences still run without annual fees, but you cannot buy one. Monthly against annual: $29 x 12 = $348 versus $289, and $59 x 12 = $708 versus $649, a $59 penalty either way for paying monthly.
EasyWorship is $17.50/month or $210/year for Basic and $27.50/month or $330/year for Premium, both including a campus licence for multiple machines at one site. Note $17.50 x 12 = $210 and $27.50 x 12 = $330 exactly, so the annual price is a convenience rather than a discount. Premium's differentiator is 47,800-plus supplied backgrounds and countdowns; FreeShow ships no media library and instead points at a resources page of third-party and CC0 sources. That is the free-software pattern in miniature: the tool is free, the assets are your problem.
What churches lose with FreeShow is not a feature, it is a purchase order. EasyWorship advertises unlimited free support and live onboarding inside its subscription. ProPresenter support comes, in FreeShow's own words, "With subscription". FreeShow's row in that same table reads "Via email or GitHub". Nothing you can pay converts that into an SLA.
ChurchApps is a 501(c)(3) with EIN 45-5349618 and asks for partnership donations and GitHub Sponsors. Because the code is GPL-3.0, the worst case is bounded in a way a subscription's is not: if funding failed tomorrow, the last build keeps running and the source stays forkable. A cancelled subscription just stops.
Where FreeShow falls behind
Support has no purchasable floor. This is the fact to weigh above every feature row. FreeShow discloses its own channel as email or GitHub, and the evidence says that informal channel works unusually well - 8 issues open against 2,926 closed, with issue 3576 opened and closed inside seven minutes on 4 August 2026. But volunteer goodwill on a Tuesday is not a contract on a Sunday, and no amount of money buys the second thing.
Continuity rests visibly on one developer. Every 1.6.x stable release commit on main is authored by Kristoffer Vassbo. Community contribution is genuine - the 1.6.4 line credits a dozen named co-authors who landed real fixes to Linux Spotify controls, chord autosizing and stage layout import and export - but release engineering runs through one person inside a small nonprofit. GPL-3.0 and a public repository with 1,200-plus stars and 269 forks mean the code survives that person leaving. Sunday the week after would not be comfortable.
Cloud sync is not yet a feature to bet a multi-site on. The concept is right and it is free, but it is where the open reports cluster and where the release notes spend their fixes. Keep the local backups FreeShow can write, and test the round trip on a weekday before trusting it on a weekend.
Automated CCLI reporting is missing. CCLI attribution renders in the output for each song and usage can be logged locally, but the tracker's request to push that log to CCLI has been open since October 2024, last active November 2025. Churches whose licence compliance workflow depends on software-side reporting will still be doing it by hand.
Platform coverage is desktop-first and unevenly used. Windows, macOS on both Intel and Apple silicon, and Linux as .deb, .rpm and AppImage on x86_64 and arm64 - broader than most paid rivals. But 1.6.4 installer downloads in the 16 days to 5 August 2026 ran about 24,030 Windows .exe against 2,703 Apple silicon .dmg, 1,241 Intel .dmg and roughly 1,900 across all Linux formats, about 29,900 in total. Windows is around 80 percent of that. If you are on Linux you are using a real build with a small tested population.
FreeShow vs. ProPresenter vs. EasyWorship
ProPresenter is the incumbent and the price is now recurring: $29/month or $289/year per seat, $59/month or $649/year for a campus licence, with no perpetual licence available to new buyers. It buys polish, a deep third-party ecosystem, AV integrators who already know it, and support inside the subscription. If your service has a switcher operator and a lighting desk and you are paying anyway, the argument for it is continuity rather than capability.
EasyWorship at $17.50/month or $210/year for Basic and $27.50/month or $330/year for Premium sits below ProPresenter, includes a campus licence at both tiers, advertises unlimited free support and live onboarding, and bundles 47,800-plus media assets at Premium. Its weakness against FreeShow is on FreeShow's own table and easy to verify: English interface only, against FreeShow's 20-plus languages. A congregation presenting in Korean, Portuguese, Polish or Chinese has fewer options than the price comparison suggests, and FreeShow's tracker carries active work on Chinese text overflow and CJK input handling in the editor.
Among free tools the field is thinner than it looks. OpenLP is mature and multi-platform with a web remote and stage view, and FreeShow's own table credits it with at least 26 languages and forum-based support; it is the conservative choice and looks its age. VideoPsalm is free with around 50 languages but is single-background-per-slideshow on FreeShow's reading of it. Faithlife's Proclaim is quoted at $249.99/year on FreeShow's table, and Faithlife's own product page prints no price at all, only a 14-day trial. FreeShow is the only free option whose feature list reaches NDI, Blackmagic, MIDI, OSC, RTMP and Planning Center sync, which is why it is the one worth the risk assessment.
The bottom line
FreeShow has closed the capability gap far enough that money is no longer the reason to choose ProPresenter - four stable releases in 56 days, NDI and Blackmagic output, browser stage and remote, over 200 Bibles, working ProPresenter and EasyWorship importers, and a $0 line against $649/year. What it cannot sell you is a support contract, and that is not a gap a future release will close: it is what a donation-funded nonprofit is. Weigh it honestly. If your Sunday can absorb a bad update because someone on the team reads release notes and keeps the previous installer, FreeShow is the best value in church presentation software in 2026. If your Sunday needs somebody else to be accountable, pay the $649 and treat it as insurance rather than software.
Alternatives to FreeShow
ProPresenterThe incumbent, now subscription only for new buyers: $29/month or $289/year per seat and $59/month or $649/year for a campus licence. Buys polish, integrator familiarity and support inside the subscription.
EasyWorship$17.50/month or $210/year for Basic, $27.50/month or $330/year for Premium, campus licence at both tiers, unlimited free support and 47,800-plus bundled media at Premium. English-language interface only.
OpenLPThe long-running free alternative: multi-platform, web remote, stage view, PowerPoint import, forum support. More languages than FreeShow by its own count, and a considerably older interface.
Faithlife ProclaimCloud-first presentation tied to the Logos ecosystem, with one subscription covering unlimited installs and collaborators and a 14-day trial. No price printed on the product page; FreeShow quotes it at $249.99/year.
WorshipTools PresenterAnother free presenter, bundled with planning and chord tools, backed by a commercial company rather than a nonprofit. Worth a look if you want free software with a corporate entity behind it.Frequently asked questions
Is FreeShow really free, or is there a paid tier later?
Really free, and structurally so. It is licensed GPL-3.0 on GitHub, which means the source cannot be closed retroactively on the versions already released. There is no seat count, no licence check and no paid tier; freeshow.app has no pricing page because there is nothing to price. Funding is donations to Live Church Solutions, a 501(c)(3) with EIN 45-5349618, plus GitHub Sponsors. Donating buys no priority and no support tier.
Who actually develops it - one person or a team?
Both, in a specific ratio worth knowing. Every 1.6.x stable release commit on the main branch is authored by one developer, Kristoffer Vassbo, and community work is merged in as co-authored commits - the 1.6.4 release line alone credits about a dozen named co-authors, who landed fixes to Linux Spotify controls, chord autosizing, stage layout import and export and search relevance. The organisation around him is ChurchApps, trading as Live Church Solutions, a donation-funded nonprofit that also publishes B1 Church, Lessons.church and FreePlay.
Can I import my ProPresenter or EasyWorship library?
Yes, and the importers are actively maintained rather than legacy. FreeShow lists PowerPoint, ProPresenter, EasyWorship and OpenSong importers plus PDF-as-images and Canva. In the 1.6.x cycle alone, 1.6.4-beta.2 fixed importing .pro6 files and three separate betas improved the EasyWorship importer, including a fix for the first word of a song being dropped. Expect to check formatting afterwards: a July 2026 tracker thread deals specifically with imported EasyWorship songs not keeping their text alignment.
How often is it updated, and does it break?
Monthly, roughly. Stable releases landed on 26 May (1.6.1), 18 June (1.6.2), 24 June (1.6.3) and 20 July 2026 (1.6.4), each preceded by one to three public betas you can test before a Sunday. The tracker is unusually clean - 8 open against 2,926 closed - and regressions do appear and get fixed: a "FreeShow sometimes fails to start up properly" thread ran to 57 comments before closing in July 2026. Keep the previous installer and you have a rollback.
What support can our church get if it breaks mid-service?
Email and GitHub, which FreeShow states on its own comparison table against ProPresenter's "With subscription". There is a Facebook community for users, GitHub Issues and Discussions, a Slack channel for contributors, and dev@freeshow.app. Response on the tracker is genuinely fast: issue 3576 was opened at 10:28 UTC on 4 August 2026 and closed at 10:35. But there is no SLA, no phone queue for the product and no paid tier that creates one. That is the trade for $0 and it should be a deliberate decision, not a surprise.
Does it handle Scripture and CCLI reporting?
Scripture, yes and broadly: over 200 Bibles through API.Bible, plus local XML Bible import, one-click passage-to-slide conversion and smart splitting of long verses, with the resources page pointing at Zefania and OSIS collections past 1,550 XML Bibles. CCLI is partial: attribution renders in the output for each song and usage can be logged locally, but automated upload of that log to CCLI has been an open request since October 2024. Reporting is still manual.
What does it run on, and is there a mobile app?
Windows, macOS on Intel and Apple silicon, and Linux as .deb, .rpm and AppImage for x86_64 and arm64 - wider coverage than most paid rivals. The remote and stage displays are browser-based, so any phone, tablet or TV on the local network can control the show or display stage notes by entering an IP and port, and there is a free Android companion remote. FreeShow notes on its comparison table that a rival charges $4.99 for its remote. Presenting itself is desktop only; there is no phone-based presenter.
Sources & further reading
- FreeShow - official site and feature claims ↗
- FreeShow - published feature comparison table ↗
- FreeShow documentation - Getting started ↗
- FreeShow on GitHub - GPL-3.0 licence, README, issue tracker ↗
- FreeShow releases and download counts ↗
- ChurchApps / Live Church Solutions - publisher ↗
- Renewed Vision - ProPresenter pricing and renewal process ↗
- EasyWorship pricing ↗
More Worship Websites
Hymnary.orgThe largest hymn database on the open web, cross-referenced across thousands of hymnals - and it costs nothing to use.
BibleProjectA nonprofit studio that turned the entire Bible into animated explainers, free seminary-grade courses, and a deep-dive theology podcast - and somehow gave it all away.
SefariaA Jewish nonprofit quietly rebuilt the entire rabbinic library online - and serious Christian students of the Hebrew Bible keep showing up to use it.
The Joseph Smith PapersA complete, scholarly, free documentary edition of every extant Joseph Smith document - the kind of archive most religious traditions only dream about.
The Bible RecapThe chronological year-through-the-Bible reading plan with an 8-minute daily podcast that quietly became the on-ramp for first-time Bible readers everywhere - and the reason your friend who never finished Leviticus finally did.
Blue Letter BibleThe serious-study site for everyone who can't afford Logos - and a surprising number of people who can.