Hillsong

What Hillsong is

The Hillsong app is the official mobile and TV app of Hillsong Church, the global Pentecostal-Charismatic congregation founded in Australia in 1983 by Brian and Bobbie Houston and now led by a renewed senior leadership team. It bundles three things into one product: the worship video catalog from Hillsong Worship, Hillsong UNITED, and Hillsong Young & Free; the sermon library from Hillsong’s many campuses; and Hillsong Channel, the paid premium tier built around conferences, teaching series, and longer-form content.

You do not need an account to use most of the free content, but signing in unlocks favorites, watch history, and the ability to start Hillsong Channel if you want it. The app is free to install on iOS and Android, and the same login works on Roku, Apple TV, and the web player at hillsong.com. The paid Channel tier — currently around $8.99 a month — is optional and clearly separated from the free experience.

Why worship-driven listeners use the Hillsong app

The single biggest reason people open this app is the worship catalog, and the single biggest practical difference between Hillsong and almost any other church-branded app is that the music is the main course, not a sidebar. Most denominational apps treat worship as a clip you might watch after the sermon. Hillsong treats worship as the front page — live performances from Hillsong Conference, lyric-driven videos, acoustic sessions, and behind-the-scenes content from the songwriters and musicians whose names show up in church bulletins around the world.

For worship leaders, that distinction is more than aesthetic. You can pull up the original recorded version of a song, then the live arena version, then an acoustic cut, all in a few taps. For listeners who simply want to worship in the car or at the gym, the catalog is deep enough to put on shuffle for hours. This is the thing the app does better than nearly anyone else — and it is the reason many users keep the app on their phone even if they never touch the paid tier.

The worship catalog: Hillsong Worship, UNITED, and Young & Free

The free worship library is the headliner. Hillsong Worship is the congregational arm — the songs most likely to show up in a Sunday morning setlist, from "Mighty to Save" to "What a Beautiful Name" to "King of Kings." Hillsong UNITED is the more anthemic, stadium-scale project that produced "Oceans," "So Will I," and a long list of festival staples. Hillsong Young & Free is the youth-ministry-rooted electronic and pop-leaning project. The app gives you all three under one roof, with live performance video, lyric videos, and curated playlists for moods and moments (Sunday, Quiet, Wonder, and so on).

In practice, this sounds like a small thing. It is transformative for two specific groups. For worship leaders, having every version of a song one tap away — the studio cut, the live cut, the acoustic cut — turns the app into an arrangement-and-feel reference. For everyday listeners, the catalog is broad enough that the app effectively replaces a worship Spotify playlist, with the added bonus of live video. The catch is that it is only Hillsong. If your church draws heavily from Bethel, Elevation, Maverick City, or older hymn traditions, you will still need other sources for that material.

The sermon library: weekend services and back catalog

The sermon side is broader than many casual users expect. New weekend services from Hillsong’s global campuses post regularly, and the back catalog includes years of teaching from a rotating cast of campus pastors and visiting speakers. Sermons are organized by speaker, by series, and by topic, and most are available without a subscription. Audio-only playback is supported, which matters for commute listening, and the video player is competent — chromecast and AirPlay both work cleanly.

The teaching itself reflects a Pentecostal-Charismatic posture: expectation of present-day spiritual gifts, expressive worship language, and a strong focus on personal devotion to Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit. Whether that fits your tradition is a judgment call. What is fair to say is that the production is high, the speakers are well-prepared, and the series-based structure makes it easy to follow a multi-week teaching arc without hunting through episode lists. It is also fair to say that the recent leadership history of the church is part of the context some users will bring to the sermon archive — particularly older content from departed leaders, which the app still surfaces in some cases.

Hillsong Channel: the paid teaching tier

Hillsong Channel is the paid premium layer — currently around $8.99 a month — and it is the part of the app that asks the most of users and gives the least back if you are not already a Hillsong fan. The tier unlocks conference archives (Hillsong Conference, Colour Conference, the Worship & Creative Conference), longer teaching series, leadership content, and a back catalog of Hillsong Channel programming originally produced for TV. For someone who attended these conferences in person, or who treats Hillsong as a primary discipleship source, the value is real. For everyone else, it is a niche buy.

Most users do not need Hillsong Channel. The free tier covers the worship catalog, recent sermons, and enough teaching to fill a normal week. The Channel tier is best understood as a fan-tier product — it exists for the slice of users who would have bought DVDs and conference recordings ten years ago and are happy to convert that spend into a streaming subscription. If you are not sure whether that describes you, do not start the subscription; use the free tier for a few weeks first.

Pricing

Where Hillsong falls behind

No real Bible study tooling. This is not what the app is for, but it is worth saying plainly — there is no parallel translation reader, no original-language pane, no commentary integration, no reading plan engine in the YouVersion sense. If you want Bible study, you will pair the Hillsong app with something else.

Search is not great. Finding a specific song, a specific sermon, or a specific speaker can take more taps than it should. The catalog is large; the discovery surface has not kept up with the catalog’s size, and filters are limited.

Limited offline support. Most video streams require a connection. Worship leaders rehearsing on the road and listeners on long flights will notice; YouTube Premium and Spotify have set the expectation that audio at least should be downloadable, and the Hillsong app has not fully caught up.

The organizational context is unavoidable. Between 2020 and 2023, Hillsong went through a sustained period of public scandal — Brian Houston’s resignation in 2022, the departure of several campus pastors under investigations, and high-profile documentary coverage. The app says little about any of this, which is understandable for a media product but leaves users to bring their own awareness to the experience. New senior leadership has been in place for several years now and content moderation appears to have moved on, but viewers should know the history going in.

Personalization is light. The app does not learn your taste in any deep way. Playlists are curated by Hillsong staff rather than generated for you, which has its own charm but means the app feels less responsive than a Spotify or Apple Music recommendation engine.

Hillsong app vs. Bethel TV vs. Elevation YouTube

These three are often weighed against each other because they cover the same broad slice of contemporary Pentecostal-Charismatic worship and teaching — but they have different strengths. The Hillsong app is the most polished media product of the three, with a real free tier, a clean cross-platform story (iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, web), and the deepest worship catalog. If your main use case is worship video plus weekend sermons, this is the most complete experience.

Bethel TV (the Bethel Church app and streaming service) leans further into teaching and conferences. Its worship catalog is strong — Bethel Music has its own enormous footprint with songs like "Goodness of God" and "Reckless Love" — but the platform spends more of its energy on School of Supernatural Ministry content, conference replays, and longer-form teaching. The paid tier is more central to the experience. If you want a teaching-first Pentecostal-Charismatic streaming home, Bethel TV is the more obvious choice; if you want a worship-first one, Hillsong is.

Elevation’s presence is mostly on YouTube and standard podcast platforms rather than a paid app. Steven Furtick’s weekend sermons, Elevation Worship’s music ("Graves Into Gardens," "The Blessing," "O Come to the Altar"), and Elevation Nights live recordings are largely free and unbundled. There is no paywall to learn and no subscription to cancel, but there is also no first-party app experience worth installing for most users. The trade-off is convenience: Hillsong gives you one home for the catalog; Elevation gives you everything for free in scattered places.

Different strengths. Hillsong is best for worship breadth and a clean app experience. Bethel TV is better for paid conference and school-style teaching. Elevation is the cheapest path — free YouTube — for users who do not need an app at all.

Alternatives to Hillsong