- Starting price
- Free; optional donations
- Free tier
- Yes
- Platforms
- iPhone · iPad · Apple TV · Apple Silicon Mac · Apple Vision · Android · Web
- Developer
- Grace to You
- Launched
- 2024 rebuilt app; ministry since 1969
- Updated
- Aug 2, 2026
The verdict
Grace to You offers an enormous John MacArthur audio and video archive for free, with useful passage search, daily devotionals, broadcasts, and a 24/7 stream. The rebuilt app is difficult to recommend without qualification: its 3.35 rating and recurring complaints about search, playback progress, navigation, and missing migration data are unusually weak for a flagship ministry app. Use the free catalog if the teaching fits; keep the website or a podcast app ready when the mobile software gets in the way.
Try Grace to You ↗Opens gty.org
The Grace to You app is the mobile streaming library for John MacArthur’s verse-by-verse Bible teaching. It includes more than fifty-five years and thousands of hours of sermons according to the developer, plus radio and television broadcasts, daily devotionals, passage and topic search, saved content, listening progress, and Grace Stream—a nonstop 24/7 channel for listeners who do not know where to begin. The archive is free and the App Store lists no in-app purchases.
This is a new app record, not a routine update to the old Grace to You Sermons app. Grace to You launched the rebuilt product in December 2024 with a unified account shared by gty.org and The Study Bible app. Existing website and Study Bible credentials work. Accounts created only inside the old Sermons app do not transfer, and the official FAQ says earlier downloads, listens, and notes are lost. That migration decision explains some frustration but not all of the current rating.
The U.S. App Store average is 3.35 from 796 ratings. Reviews repeatedly describe trouble finding sermons in biblical order, missing chapters or items, slow loading, lost resume position, weak queue and lock-screen behavior, and navigation less efficient than the old app. Releases have added or improved history, sharing, playback speed, and player behavior, and version 1.7.8 arrived in July 2026. Yet the aggregate remains low enough that these concerns belong at the center of the review rather than in a footnote.
This is a researched assessment based on the official app FAQ, sermon library, privacy policy, live store metadata, release history, and recurring store-review themes as of August 2, 2026. We did not claim personal installation. The doctrinal perspective is also explicit: the archive reflects John MacArthur and Grace to You’s conservative evangelical, dispensational, and cessationist teaching. That coherence is the product for its audience; it is not a comparative or ecumenical commentary library.
✓ The good
- Extraordinary free archive - more than fifty-five years and thousands of hours of verse-by-verse teaching with no required subscription
- Passage and topic discovery - sermons can be approached from the biblical text rather than only through a chronological podcast feed
- Audio, video, radio, and devotionals - multiple Grace to You formats live in one ministry-owned catalog
- Grace Stream is frictionless - the 24/7 channel starts continuous teaching when a listener does not want to choose an episode
- Unified GTY account - website and The Study Bible users can reuse credentials and sync listening progress across supported devices
- Current maintenance - the rebuilt app has received frequent releases through July 2026 rather than being abandoned after launch
- Clear theological voice - listeners who deliberately seek MacArthur’s preaching know exactly whose framework organizes the archive
✗ Watch out
- Very low category rating - 3.35 from 796 App Store ratings is far below leading Christian media and Bible apps
- Search and ordering complaints - reviewers report difficulty finding complete sermon series, chapters, and logical biblical sequence
- Playback friction - lost position, slow loading, queue limitations, and weak control behavior appear repeatedly in user feedback
- Old activity did not transfer - previous Sermons-app downloads, listens, notes, and app-only accounts were not migrated
- One teacher and framework - the library does not offer Catholic, Orthodox, Wesleyan, Pentecostal, or critical-scholarly interpretations beside MacArthur
- Account can connect sensitive data - contact details, address, transaction and giving information, activity, and identifiers may live in the wider GTY profile
Best for
- Regular John MacArthur sermon listeners
- Students following verse-by-verse preaching
- Grace to You radio and television audiences
- The Study Bible users wanting the broader media archive
Avoid if
- You need a highly reliable polished player
- You want several theological perspectives
- You depended on notes from the old Sermons app
- You need original-language or academic research tools
What Grace to You is
Grace to You is a free ministry streaming app centered on John MacArthur’s sermon and broadcast archive. Users can search by Bible passage or topic, hear radio programs, watch television content, build a devotional habit, save items, and tune into the always-on Grace Stream. The 2024 rebuild unifies mobile identity with gty.org and The Study Bible.
It is not The Study Bible app. That related app combines Bible reading, personal study tools, more than 3,000 sermons, and an optional $5.99 MacArthur study-note purchase. Grace to You is the broader audio-video ministry library. It also is not a multi-preacher platform like SermonAudio; virtually all interpretive depth returns to MacArthur and affiliated GTY material.
Why the free archive still matters despite the app’s rating
Few single-teacher ministries offer this much organized material without a subscription. A listener can follow decades of preaching across biblical books, search a current question by topic, compare radio edits with full sermons, or leave Grace Stream running throughout the day. For someone already committed to this teaching ministry, the app replaces a scattered set of feeds and web bookmarks.
Content value and software quality must be judged separately. The archive can be excellent for its intended audience while the current player frustrates that same audience. Because the product is free, the sensible test is low risk: install it, locate a known sermon series, test resume and lock-screen controls, and compare the result with gty.org. Do not assume a huge archive guarantees an efficient mobile path through it.
Passage and topic search opens decades of verse-by-verse teaching
Grace to You’s defining asset is a teaching archive dating to 1969. Search is intended to locate sermons by a biblical passage or subject, while program pages expose radio and television output. That makes the app potentially useful for following a book of the Bible in sequence or hearing how MacArthur addresses a doctrine across different years.
Search is also the most consequential complaint area. App Store reviews describe results that are hard to order, chapters that seem missing, and a flow less predictable than the retired app. Some apparent gaps may be metadata or navigation rather than absent recordings. Either way, discovery failure has the same practical result: the listener cannot reach the material the archive supposedly contains.
Grace Stream, broadcasts, and devotionals reduce decision fatigue
Grace Stream provides nonstop verse-by-verse teaching, while radio and TV sections make scheduled ministry programs available on demand. Daily devotionals offer a shorter entry point. Together they support both deliberate study and passive listening without requiring a user to know a sermon title.
Continuous audio is helpful during commuting or household work, but it should not become decontextualized background authority. A radio edit or randomly entered stream may begin midway through an argument. For important doctrinal conclusions, locate the complete sermon, read the biblical passage, and compare accountable sources.
Unified accounts improve sync but imposed a costly migration
The rebuilt app accepts existing gty.org and The Study Bible logins. Signed-in users can track progress, save sermons, and synchronize activity across devices. Releases have added listening history, sharing, playback-speed controls, and player improvements, showing active work on the initial rebuild.
Users whose only account came from the old Grace to You Sermons app had to start again. The official FAQ says their downloads, listens, and notes would not transfer. That is more than a cosmetic inconvenience for people who organized years of study. A unified future system is beneficial, but the migration cost should have been mitigated with export or import tools.
Pricing
Sermon and media archive
Free
Search and stream John MacArthur sermons, radio and television broadcasts, daily devotionals, and other Grace to You media. Apple lists no paid in-app purchase.
Grace Stream
Free
Continuous 24/7 verse-by-verse teaching for listeners who prefer a live programmed channel to selecting individual sermons.
GTY account
Free and optional for basic browsing
Sign-in enables progress tracking and saving sermons for later. Existing gty.org and The Study Bible credentials work in the rebuilt app.
Optional giving and store purchases
Choose separately
Grace to You accepts donations and sells physical or digital products elsewhere in its ecosystem. Those transactions are not required to stream the app archive.
The entire app catalog is presented as free, and Apple lists no in-app purchase. Listening does not require a premium subscription or a payment trial.
Grace to You is donor-supported and may present giving opportunities. Donations sustain the ministry but are not feature unlocks; evaluate them as charitable gifts rather than app purchases.
A free GTY account adds saving and sync. The broader account can also store address and payment information, transaction history, and giving details when those services are used, so users should distinguish a media login from anonymous listening.
Related products can cost money. The Study Bible’s full MacArthur note set is a separate $5.99 purchase, and store items are priced independently. None is necessary to hear the free Grace to You archive.
Where Grace to You falls behind
Software reliability is the primary failure. A 3.35 average from 796 ratings is not one angry review; it is an aggregate signal. Search, load time, playback state, queues, controls, ordering, and missing-content perceptions recur often enough to affect the recommendation.
Migration discarded valuable user work. Old app-only accounts became inactive, and downloads, listens, and notes did not transfer. A ministry centered on long-term study should treat years of user organization as durable data.
The archive needs clearer information architecture. A passage-led library should expose books, chapters, series order, dates, complete/incomplete coverage, and resume state consistently. “Robust search” is not a substitute for dependable browsing.
Theological breadth is absent by design. MacArthur’s conservative evangelical, dispensational, and cessationist framework gives the archive coherence. It also means the app should not be used as the only source for passages disputed across historic Christian traditions.
Privacy spans more than listening. Apple says physical address, email, name, phone number, and user ID may be linked to identity, with product interaction and crash or performance diagnostics also collected. GTY’s unified account can connect media habits with store, transaction, address, and donation records depending on use.
Grace to You vs. The Study Bible vs. SermonAudio vs. Grace Media
Grace to You is the broad free MacArthur media archive. The Study Bible is the better-rated Bible-reading and note experience from the same ministry, with a 4.85 average, multiple translations, more than 3,000 sermons, and complete MacArthur study notes for $5.99 once. SermonAudio aggregates a vast range of conservative Protestant preachers and churches. Grace Media distributes sermons, conferences, music, and other content from Grace Community Church.
Choose Grace to You for the widest free GTY audio-video catalog and Grace Stream. Choose The Study Bible when Scripture text, personal notes, and passage-linked study annotations matter more than broadcasts. Choose SermonAudio for preacher breadth, and Grace Media for a wider view of the local church’s ministries rather than MacArthur’s archive alone.
The current rating changes the order of recommendation. A MacArthur reader wanting stable passage study should start with The Study Bible and use the Grace to You website when necessary. The Grace to You app remains useful when its search and player work for the listener’s device, but it has not earned an assumption of polish.
The bottom line
Grace to You is a content bargain and a software caution. More than fifty-five years of sermons, broadcasts, daily devotionals, passage search, and 24/7 streaming cost nothing. Yet the rebuilt app’s 3.35 rating, lost migration data, and repeated discovery and playback complaints prevent an unqualified recommendation. Listeners who deliberately want MacArthur’s teaching should try it because the financial risk is zero. They should also bookmark gty.org, use The Study Bible for text-centered study, and avoid making any one preacher’s archive their only interpretive source.
Alternatives to Grace to You
Frequently asked questions
Is the Grace to You app free?
Yes. The sermon archive, radio and television programs, devotionals, passage and topic search, and Grace Stream are presented as free. Apple lists no in-app purchases. Donations and store purchases elsewhere are optional.
What is Grace Stream?
Grace Stream is a nonstop 24/7 channel of John MacArthur’s verse-by-verse teaching. It is useful when a listener wants continuous programmed audio rather than choosing an individual sermon.
Why is the App Store rating only 3.4?
The live raw average is 3.35 from 796 U.S. ratings. Recurring reviews mention difficult search and sermon ordering, loading and playback-position problems, limited queue or control behavior, and frustration with the rebuilt app compared with its predecessor.
Can I use my old account?
A gty.org or The Study Bible account works in the new app. An account created only in the old Grace to You Sermons app does not; the official FAQ says those users must create a new account.
Did my old downloads and notes transfer?
No. Grace to You says downloads, listens, and notes from the old Sermons app did not transfer to the rebuilt app. New signed-in activity can synchronize through the unified GTY account.
Is Grace to You the same as The Study Bible?
No. Grace to You is the broader sermon, broadcast, devotional, and streaming app. The Study Bible is a Bible reader and study app with an optional $5.99 MacArthur notes purchase. They share GTY accounts and some sermon material.
What theological perspective does the app represent?
The archive centers John MacArthur and Grace to You’s conservative evangelical teaching, commonly characterized by dispensational and cessationist commitments. It is a coherent ministry library, not an ecumenical or multi-tradition commentary collection.
