Mere Bible Review (2026): NeuBible Renamed and Made Free

Item: Mere Bible
Rating: 4.6
Author: Jaeden Schafer

Starting price: Free
Free tier: Yes
Platforms: iOS - iPadOS - macOS - visionOS - Web
Developer: Dwell App, LLC
Launched: 2015
Updated: Jul 26, 2026

4.6 from 444 ratingsApp Store rating

11, none behind a purchaseTranslations

Free, with no in-app purchases listedPrice

138.4 MBDownload size

2026.4.3, released 16 April 2026Current version

The verdict

Mere Bible is the best free minimal Bible reader on Apple hardware, and free here means what it says: no subscription, no in-app purchases, no locked translations, all 11 versions open to everyone. Install it if calm reading in a major English or Spanish translation is the entire job you want done. Skip it if you are on Android, if you listen rather than read, or if you expect a commentary pane, because none of those exist and none are promised.

Try Mere Bible ↗

Opens merebible.app

Mere Bible is NeuBible. Not a successor, not a spiritual heir - the same App Store record, id 961857426, first released on 19 March 2015 and still carrying its original release date. Dwell App, LLC acquired the app in 2023 and renamed it in March 2026, and the faith.tools listing spells out where the new name comes from: C. S. Lewis and the Latin sense of mere as pure and unmixed. If you have used NeuBible you already know the reader. What changed is not the typography. It is the price.

The old app was free with a paid unlock for additional translations, which is what the app's earlier listings and its 2015-2025 press coverage record. That gate is gone. The App Store page for Mere Bible lists no in-app purchases at all, and the store description is blunt about it: "Completely free. No subscriptions. No paywalls. No locked Bibles. Every feature, every translation - free for everyone." The donate page says the same thing from the other direction, that Mere Bible "is free for everyone" and "will remain free whether you do or not." For a design-led minimal reader - a category where the standard business model is either a one-time unlock or a per-translation purchase - that is the story, and it is the reason this review exists.

What you get for nothing: 11 translations, listed by faith.tools as ESV, NIV, KJV, NKJV, NLT, CSB, NET, WEB, BSB, NVI and RVR1960. Highlights, bookmarks and notes, with a search that runs across your own annotations as well as the text. Five gradient themes with adjustable type. A home screen widget. An optional free account that syncs highlights, bookmarks and notes across iPhone, iPad, Mac and the web reader.

What you do not get is longer. There is no Android build - faith.tools records no Google Play id, and the site offers exactly two download paths, iOS and the browser. There is no audio, no commentary, no cross-references, no original-language tools, no reading plans and no study notes. And the vendor is not fully consistent with itself about what it does have: the homepage advertises the 11 translations as being "in English and Spanish" while the App Store description announces the app is "Now available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese."

✓ The good

Free in the plain sense - the App Store listing shows no in-app purchases, and the description commits to "No subscriptions. No paywalls. No locked Bibles. Every feature, every translation - free for everyone"
Eleven licensed translations at no cost - ESV, NIV, KJV, NKJV, NLT, CSB, NET, WEB, BSB, NVI and RVR1960, a set that most reading apps either gate behind a purchase or license only in part
Removes the exact gate its predecessor charged for - NeuBible's paid unlock for additional translations does not appear anywhere on the current listing, so the upgrade path that defined the old app has been deleted rather than repriced
Reading needs no account - the homepage states "No account needed. Just open and read," and the account exists only to sync annotations, not to unlock text
Reaches further across Apple hardware than the marketing admits - the App Store listing supports iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS 12 on M1 or later, and visionOS 1.0, while the homepage only claims iOS and the web
Maintained on a visible cadence - version 2026.4.3 shipped on 16 April 2026 to fix a bug that stopped highlights and notes saving, and 2026.4.2 improved search across verse ranges
Thin third-party surface on the web - the privacy policy names only Firebase, Stripe and Vercel, and states "We do not use third-party analytics or tracking tools on the web app"

✗ Watch out

No Android version - faith.tools lists no Google Play id and the site links only an iOS download and the browser reader, so a mixed-device household cannot sync annotations across it
Not a study tool and does not pretend to be - no commentaries, cross-references, Greek or Hebrew, study notes, maps, dictionaries or concordance appear anywhere in the listing or on the site
The site and the store disagree on languages - the homepage says 11 translations "in English and Spanish" while the App Store description says "Now available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese" and the listing carries EN, PT and ES localizations
The published privacy policy predates account sync - last updated February 2026, it says preferences are "stored locally on your device and are not transmitted to our servers" and never mentions accounts, while the App Store privacy card discloses purchase history and user content collected and linked to identity
No donation amount is published - the donate page renders its contribution options client-side and served a "Loading..." placeholder, so the page states only that giving is "completely optional" and "not tax-deductible" without printing a single figure
No Catholic or Orthodox edition - all 11 named translations are Protestant editions, and the listing names no text containing the deuterocanonical books, so readers of those canons will not find their Bible here

Best for

Readers who want Scripture on screen and nothing else
Former NeuBible users who resented the translation unlock
Apple households reading across iPhone, iPad, Mac and browser
Spanish readers who want RVR1960 and NVI without a purchase

Avoid if

Android or Windows is your primary device
You need commentary, cross-references or original languages
Listening is how you take in Scripture
You read a Catholic or Orthodox canon

What Mere Bible is

Mere Bible is a single-purpose Bible reader for Apple devices and the browser. It opens on the text, in one of 11 translations, with page-level chrome reduced to a chapter picker, a search field and a theme control. The reading tools are the three that a paper Bible has: highlight, bookmark, annotate. Search covers both Scripture and the notes you have written, which is the one place the app is more capable than its own minimalism suggests.

It is published by Dwell App, LLC, the Austin-founded team behind the paid audio Bible app Dwell, and it is the second and quieter product in that portfolio. Dwell's about page describes a distributed team across nine US states founded by twin brothers Jonathan and Joshua Bailey in 2017, and frames its theology around the Nicene Creed and "Mere Christianity" across Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox traditions - which is where the renamed reader got its name.

Free is the feature

The interesting thing about Mere Bible is not the reader, which was already the best-looking one on iOS under its old name. It is that a product built on a paid translation unlock removed it. Licensed translations cost money to carry - the ESV, NIV, NKJV, NLT and CSB are all commercially licensed texts - and the normal way an independent app pays for them is to charge, either once or per version. Olive Tree built an entire in-app purchase catalogue on that logic.

Mere Bible now carries all 11 without a till, funded by nothing the site will name beyond optional Stripe donations that it describes as "completely optional" with the app remaining free "whether you do or not." There is exactly one other Bible app that credibly makes the same promise at scale, YouVersion, and it can do so because Life.Church funds it as a ministry. Mere Bible publishes no equivalent funding statement. The commitment is real on the listing; the mechanism behind it is undisclosed.

Eleven translations, none of them gated

The faith.tools listing enumerates all 11: ESV, NIV, KJV, NKJV, NLT, CSB, NET, WEB, BSB, NVI and RVR1960. That mixes five commercially licensed English translations, three open or permissively licensed ones (NET, WEB, BSB), and two non-English versions in NVI and RVR1960. The App Store description names ten of them and then says "and more," which turns out to be exactly one more - the CSB.

The vendor's own site never prints the list. The homepage says only "Choose from 11 Bible translations including ESV, KJV, NIV, and more in English and Spanish," and the About page, which does trouble to list all 66 books with chapter counts, does not name a single translation. Anyone deciding whether their preferred version is present has to check the store listing or a third-party directory, which is a strange gap in an otherwise careful site.

Highlights, notes and a search that covers them

The annotation set is deliberately small: highlight a passage, bookmark a location, write a note. What lifts it above a stripped-down reader is that search indexes your notes as well as the text. The store description puts it as "A powerful search lets you find your way back to any note instantly," and version 2026.4.2 extended search to work across verse ranges rather than single verses.

Sync is optional and account-gated. Creating a free account carries highlights, bookmarks and notes across iPhone, iPad, Mac and the web reader; declining one leaves you with a purely local reader, which the homepage frames as a feature: "No account needed. Just open and read." The most recent release, 2026.4.3 on 16 April 2026, exists because highlights and notes had stopped saving - worth knowing if you are trusting an annotation layer with no export path the vendor documents.

The reading surface

Five gradient themes with adjustable text sizes, plus day and night modes. That is the whole customisation story, and it is a deliberate contrast with apps that ship a dozen fonts and a line-spacing slider. The App Store copy states the position directly: "No social feeds. No devotional plans demanding your attention. No gamification. Just Scripture, beautifully presented."

The surface extends further than the homepage claims. The App Store listing supports macOS 12 on Apple Silicon and visionOS 1.0 alongside iOS and iPadOS 15, and the description names Mac explicitly as a sync target, while merebible.app advertises only "iOS and the web." A 138.4 MB download is consistent with translation text bundled into the app, but neither the site nor the listing states whether reading works offline, and the privacy policy notes that Firebase supplies "the Bible text database and search" for the web app - which implies the browser reader needs a connection.

Pricing

Best value

Free

Everything the app has. All 11 translations, highlights, bookmarks, notes, search across text and annotations, five gradient themes, adjustable type, the home screen widget, and optional account sync across iPhone, iPad, Mac and the web reader. The App Store listing shows no in-app purchases and the description states "No subscriptions. No paywalls. No locked Bibles."

Optional donation

Amount not published

Processed through Stripe and entirely voluntary. The donate page says Mere Bible "is free for everyone" and "will remain free whether you do or not," that contributions support "continued development and upkeep," and that they are "not tax-deductible." The terms add that donations are "voluntary and non-refundable" and that recurring gifts can be cancelled by email or through your own payment processor. The specific amounts load client-side and are not printed in the page itself.

There is one tier and it is free. The App Store page lists no in-app purchases, formatted price is Free, and the description forecloses the usual escape hatches: "No subscriptions. No paywalls. No locked Bibles. Every feature, every translation - free for everyone."

The only money in the product is a donation. The donate page describes contributions as "completely optional," says they support "continued development and upkeep," and states plainly that they are "not tax-deductible" - so Dwell App, LLC is taking gifts as a company, not as a charity. The terms confirm donations are "voluntary and non-refundable" and that a recurring gift is cancelled by emailing the team or going through your payment processor.

No donation figure is published. The donate page builds its contribution options in the browser and served a "Loading..." placeholder where the amounts belong, so there is no printed ladder to quote. Compare Catena, which prints $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, $250, $500 and $1,000 in the page. This is a finding rather than a gap: a donation-funded app that does not publish its suggested amounts in server-rendered text is harder to evaluate, and harder to give to.

For scale, the paid alternative from the same publisher costs $9.99 per month or $59.99 per year for Dwell, the audio Bible app. $9.99 x 12 = $119.88 against the $59.99 annual plan, a 50 percent discount for paying up front. Mere Bible asks for none of that, which makes the two products a clean split rather than a funnel: no trial, no upsell banner and no cross-promotion appears in the Mere Bible listing.

Where Mere Bible falls behind

No Android build. There is no Google Play id on the faith.tools listing and no Android download on the site, which means the annotation layer cannot follow a reader who switches phones and cannot be shared inside a household running both platforms. YouVersion, Olive Tree and Bible Gateway all ship Android. The browser reader is the fallback, and on a phone a browser reader is a poor substitute for a native one.

No audio. This is the strangest omission in the product, because the publisher is Dwell App, LLC, whose flagship is a professionally narrated audio Bible with 3 million installs and 5.1 million hours listened in 2024 according to its own about page. Whatever the reason - licensing, positioning, or keeping the paid product distinct - a reader from the audio Bible company that cannot read aloud is a gap a buyer should notice.

No study apparatus of any kind. No cross-references, no commentary pane, no Greek or Hebrew, no lexicon, no maps, no study-Bible notes. The official ESV app ships the entire Global Study Bible free in a single translation; Blue Letter Bible gives away Strong's numbers on a web page. Mere Bible is competing on calm, not coverage, and if you ever want to know why a translation chose a word you will be leaving the app.

No canon beyond the Protestant 66. The About page lists 39 Old Testament and 27 New Testament books, and all 11 translations named are Protestant editions. Readers in Catholic and Orthodox traditions will not find Tobit, Sirach or the Maccabees, and the app publishes no plan to add an edition that includes them - a straightforward coverage limit rather than a fault, but one that rules the app out for a large share of Christian readers.

No documented offline mode or annotation export. Neither the site nor the store listing states whether translations are readable without a connection, and the privacy policy tells us the web app pulls text and search from Firebase. Nor is there any stated way to get your highlights and notes out. Given that the current release exists to fix highlights and notes failing to save, an export path would be the single most reassuring thing the vendor could add.

Mere Bible vs. NeuBible vs. YouVersion

The first thing to say about the NeuBible comparison is that it is not really a comparison. Mere Bible and NeuBible are the same App Store record - id 961857426, release date 19 March 2015 - under two names, and the NeuBible name covers the app as it stood before the March 2026 rebrand. So the honest framing is before and after. Before: free reader, starter set of translations, paid unlock for the rest, iOS and iPadOS only, no desktop client. After: same reader, all 11 translations free, no in-app purchases at all, plus Mac, visionOS and a browser reader with optional account sync. Every difference runs one way. If you bookmarked NeuBible and stopped there, the app you remember has removed its paywall and grown three platforms.

That also means the 4.6 average is a shared inheritance, and it should be read with the sample size in view. 444 ratings is a real aggregate by this site's standard but a small one, and because the App Store record is continuous from 2015 those 444 votes were cast across eleven years and two names - most of them against the paid-unlock version of the app, not the free one. The same listing showed 4.6 from 377 ratings when it was still called NeuBible, so roughly 67 votes have landed since the rename. The score is genuine and consistent; it is not a verdict on the rebranded product specifically.

Against YouVersion the picture inverts. YouVersion is the other Bible app that is permanently, unconditionally free, and it is free for a disclosed reason: Life.Church funds it as a ministry. It carries thousands of translations against 11, 10,000-plus reading plans against none, Android against nothing, and audio against silence. What it also carries is a streak counter, a social feed, plan invitations and notifications - precisely the things Mere Bible names in its store copy as what it refuses to ship. The two are not competing on features; they are competing on whether you want the features. Mere Bible wins only on the one axis it chose, and now that the unlock is gone it wins on that axis without asking for money, which it could not say a year ago.

The bottom line

Mere Bible is a narrow product that got materially better by giving something away: the same reader that made NeuBible the most admired Bible app on iOS, now with all 11 translations open, three more Apple platforms and a browser version, for nothing and with no in-app purchase to find. Judge it on what it is - a reading surface, not a study tool, not an audio Bible, not available on Android, not carrying a Catholic or Orthodox canon, and not paired with a privacy policy that has caught up to its own sync feature. If those are acceptable, it is the calmest free way to read Scripture on Apple hardware, and the price is no longer an argument against it.

Alternatives to Mere Bible

NeuBible 4.6The same app under its former name, reviewed before the March 2026 rebrand - useful mainly to see what changed, since that version was free with a paid unlock for additional translations and shipped on iOS and iPadOS only.

YouVersion 4.9The other genuinely free Bible app, and the one with a disclosed funder in Life.Church. Thousands of translations, 10,000-plus reading plans, audio and Android - at the cost of the streaks, feeds and notifications Mere Bible exists to avoid.

ESV Bible 4.7Free, clean, and ships the full Global Study Bible plus named-voice audio, which Mere Bible has no answer to. The trade is that it is a one-translation app, so version comparison happens somewhere else.

Dwell 4.9The paid audio Bible from the same publisher, at $9.99 per month or $59.99 per year. It is the listening product Mere Bible deliberately is not, with professional narration and ambient scoring rather than a reading surface.

Olive Tree 4.8Free app, then paid in-app purchases for translations, commentaries and study resources. The right upgrade if Mere Bible leaves you wanting a commentary pane next to the verse, and the clearest example of the pricing model Mere Bible just abandoned.

Frequently asked questions

Is Mere Bible actually free, or is there a subscription?

Free, with no subscription and no in-app purchases listed on the App Store page. The store description states "Completely free. No subscriptions. No paywalls. No locked Bibles. Every feature, every translation - free for everyone," and the donate page adds that the app "will remain free whether you do or not." The only payment path in the product is an optional Stripe donation, and no donation amount is printed on the page.

Is Mere Bible the same app as NeuBible?

Yes. It is the same App Store record, id 961857426, with an original release date of 19 March 2015. Dwell App, LLC acquired the app in 2023 and renamed it Mere Bible in March 2026, taking the name from the Latin sense of mere as pure and unmixed by way of C. S. Lewis. The reader is the same one; the paid translation unlock that the NeuBible version used is gone.

Which translations are included?

Eleven, listed by faith.tools as ESV, NIV, KJV, NKJV, NLT, CSB, NET, WEB, BSB, NVI and RVR1960. None of them requires a purchase. The vendor site itself never prints the full list - the homepage says only "Choose from 11 Bible translations including ESV, KJV, NIV, and more in English and Spanish." No Catholic or Orthodox edition is named, so the deuterocanonical books are not present.

Is there an Android version?

No. There is no Google Play listing and the site offers only an iOS download and the browser reader at merebible.app. The App Store listing does cover iPhone and iPod touch on iOS 15, iPad on iPadOS 15, Mac on macOS 12 with an M1 chip or later, and Apple Vision on visionOS 1.0 - more Apple platforms than the homepage advertises, but nothing outside Apple except the web.

Do I need an account, and what does it collect?

Not to read. The homepage states "No account needed. Just open and read." A free account only exists to sync highlights, bookmarks and notes across iPhone, iPad, Mac and the web. Worth noting the gap between two disclosures: the privacy policy, last updated February 2026, says preferences are "stored locally on your device and are not transmitted to our servers" and does not mention accounts at all, while the App Store privacy card lists purchase history and user content as collected and linked to your identity, plus unlinked crash data.

Can I use it offline?

The vendor does not say, which is itself the answer for now. Neither the site nor the App Store listing states whether translations are readable without a connection. The 138.4 MB download size is consistent with text bundled into the app, but the privacy policy says the web app uses Firebase for "the Bible text database and search," so the browser reader almost certainly needs a connection.

Should I use it for Bible study?

No, and it does not claim otherwise. There are no commentaries, cross-references, study notes, maps, dictionaries or original-language tools. Search covers Scripture and your own notes, and that is the extent of the apparatus. For verse-level study, Olive Tree, Logos or the free Blue Letter Bible web tools do work Mere Bible has no mechanism for.

Mere Bible