- Starting price
- Free
- Free tier
- Yes
- Platforms
- iOS - iPad - Android - Mac (Apple silicon) - Apple Vision
- Developer
- Prayminder AB
- Launched
- 2017
- Updated
- Jul 26, 2026
The verdict
Prayminder is the cleanest free prayer-list app in either store, and its 4.9 from 4,844 App Store ratings is not bought with a paywall - there is no paid tier to buy it with. Install it if you want a private, uncapped list of people and burdens that resurfaces on its own through the day. Skip it if you need the list on two devices, need to pray a list with someone else, or need a backup you can prove exists.
Try Prayminder ↗Opens prayminder.com
Prayminder is a prayer-list and reminder app from Prayminder AB, a two-person company registered in Skarhamn, Sweden under org. number 559473-5531 and run by Emma Ludvigsson and Panos Karageorgakis. It reached the App Store on 6 December 2017, sits at version 1.4.3 as of 29 May 2026, and carries 4.9 from 4,844 ratings. Google Play tells a thinner story: 4.2 from about 1,170 reviews across 10,000+ installs, last updated 6 February 2026.
The premise is narrow on purpose. You write down the people and burdens you are carrying, choose how often you want to be interrupted, and the app surfaces them one at a time - in a random rotation or on a per-prayer schedule set Daily, Weekly or Once. You add notes, mark a request answered, and it keeps weekly, monthly and lifetime counts per item. Since version 1.4 the iOS build also reads Scripture in-app, powered by YouVersion.
The price is the easy part. The home page reads "No ads. No monthly plans. No premium. Freely given" and calls the app "completely free to use, with no hidden costs or locked features". Neither store lists an in-app purchase. In a category where lists are almost always the gate - so many subjects free, more if you pay - Prayminder publishes no cap on prayers, lists or reminders anywhere. There is no cap because there is no tier to sell.
What that buys and what it costs come from one architectural decision. The privacy policy states that everything you type is "stored locally on your device in the app's private database" and that "We do not upload, access, or store your prayer content on our servers" - an unusually strong claim for a product whose database is a list of other people's problems. It is also why Prayminder has no cross-device sync, no shared lists, and a policy warning that uninstalling without a backup loses your data.
✓ The good
- Free with no tier structure at all - the home page says "No ads. No monthly plans. No premium", the App Store page for id1309466339 lists no In-App Purchases, and Google Play discloses none.
- No published cap on anything - no maximum number of prayers, lists, categories or reminders appears on prayminder.com or in either store listing. In a category normally bounded by a subject count, that absence is the feature.
- Prayer content stays on the device by the vendor's own account - the policy says prayers live in the app's private local database and that Prayminder does not upload, access or store prayer content on its servers. The June 2026 newsletter repeats it: the cloud sees "anonymous numbers that stand in for them", not the text.
- Reminder scheduling is flexible rather than one daily alarm - a random rotation across your list, per-prayer schedules set Daily, Weekly or Once, and the ability to exclude individual prayers from the rotation.
- It keeps score without gamifying - notes on any prayer, an answered-prayer log kept as a standing record of gratitude, and weekly, monthly and lifetime counts per request. No streaks, no badges.
- Nine years of shipping from an unfunded team - 2017 to version 1.4.3 in May 2026, with "No investors, no churches or organizations supporting our work".
✗ Watch out
- No cross-device sync and no shared or group lists as of July 2026 - the June 2026 newsletter puts both in the future tense, describing work toward the ability to "carry your prayers across your devices and to pray together with others" with implementation still undecided.
- No backup or export path documented anywhere, against a policy that warns you need one - it states "if you uninstall the app without a backup, your locally stored data will be lost", then never says how to make that backup.
- The two store privacy cards disagree - Google Play's Data safety section declares the app may collect Location, App activity and two further categories, while Apple's App Privacy panel for the same product lists no Location at all.
- Google Play states "Data can't be deleted" - the developer's own disclosure, sitting awkwardly beside a policy built on the claim that prayer content never leaves the device.
- No GDPR section from an EU controller - the policy invokes "legitimate interest", which is GDPR vocabulary, but never mentions the regulation, names no server country, and carries no access, erasure or portability procedure.
- Android is a release behind - Play last updated 6 February 2026 against 29 May 2026 on iOS, and the rebuilt Android app that will bring "feature parity with iOS including custom reminders, statistics, and Bible reading" was still in final testing in June 2026.
Best for
- Anyone who keeps a real intercession list and forgets to open it
- Users who want prayer notes about other people to stay off a server
- People priced out of Hallow or Pray.com who need a list, not a library
- Single-device users on a current iPhone or iPad
Avoid if
- You need the same list on a phone and a tablet
- You pray a shared list with a spouse, small group or prayer chain
- You want a documented backup, export or account recovery path
- You want guided audio prayer, meditations or a content library
What Prayminder is
Prayminder is a prayer-list app with a reminder engine on top, built for iPhone and iPad, with Mac and Apple Vision builds listed and a separate Android app on Google Play. You enter the people you love, the burdens you are holding and the things you want to thank God for, organised the way you already think about them. The app brings them back one at a time through the day.
Around that core sit private notes per prayer, Scripture attachment, an answered-prayer log kept as a running record of gratitude, and per-request counts at weekly, monthly and lifetime scale. Reminders can be a loose rotation you barely configure or precise schedules tied to a weekday or a single date. A companion site, Prayminder Read, is being built into in-app monthly reading plans.
The list stays on the phone, and the vendor says so plainly
Most prayer apps solve the reminder problem by putting your list in an account. That is what makes sync and sharing possible, and it also means a company holds a searchable record of who is sick, who is unfaithful, who has lost a job. Prayminder took the other road: the policy states prayer names and notes live "locally on your device in the app's private database" and that "We do not upload, access, or store your prayer content on our servers".
The June 2026 newsletter shows how far the team will bend that for reliability rather than convenience. Reminder selection moved to the cloud to make the rotation fairer and hit better than 99.9 percent reliability, but the vendor says the cloud handles "anonymous numbers that stand in for" prayers, never the text. That is the whole product thesis, it is why sync and shared lists are unbuilt, and it makes the honest question not what Prayminder costs but what happens when the phone is lost.
The reminder engine, random and scheduled
The default behaviour is a rotation: you choose how often you want to be reminded, and Prayminder surfaces items one at a time rather than presenting the whole list and hoping you work through it. This is the mechanism the app is named for.
Layered over that is per-prayer scheduling in three shapes: Daily, Weekly for prayers tied to particular days, and Once for a single moment you do not want to forget - a surgery date, an anniversary. Individual prayers can be excluded from the rotation, and the two systems combine rather than replacing one another.
Notes, answered prayers and counts
Every prayer takes private notes, which is where the app stops being a to-do list. You follow how a situation develops, then mark the request answered, at which point it moves into a standing record of gratitude rather than being deleted. Over months of intercession that is the difference between a list and a history.
The statistics layer is deliberately modest: how often you have prayed for each request, at weekly, monthly and lifetime scale, described in the store listing as being "for those who find keeping count useful". No streaks, no badges - so nothing makes you feel worse for missing a day.
Bible reading powered by YouVersion
Version 1.4 put Scripture inside the app rather than bouncing you to a browser, in the reader's own language, powered by YouVersion. The point is attachment: a verse can be saved onto a prayer item so the words you pray are shaped by the text.
It is a first pass and the vendor says so, calling the release a starting point rather than a finished piece. It is also the clearest platform gap: the June 2026 newsletter lists Bible reading among the things a rebuilt Android app will bring to parity, so Android users in July 2026 do not have it.
Pricing
Free
Free
Everything the app does. Unlimited prayers as far as any published figure goes, random reminder rotation plus per-prayer Daily, Weekly and Once schedules, notes, answered-prayer records, weekly, monthly and lifetime counts, and in-app Bible reading powered by YouVersion on the current iOS build. No ads, no in-app purchases on either store, no premium tier, no trial.
Optional monthly gift
$3, $7 or $10 per month
A recurring donation on prayminder.com/donate. It unlocks nothing - the founders write that they "keep it free because we don't want prayer to have a price of entry", and that recurring gifts let them keep improving the app and protect user privacy.
Optional one-time gift
$25, $50, $100 or a custom amount
A single gift, again with no feature attached. Organisations are invited to contact the team about funding community prayer tools, but no organisational, per-seat or per-church price is published anywhere.
There is one price and it is zero, on both stores, with no in-app purchase list on either. The home page is blunt: "No ads. No monthly plans. No premium. Freely given." The App Store description commits to the future - "Prayminder is completely free and always will be." Nothing is marked premium, trial or locked.
The list cap that gates almost every rival in this category does not exist here, or at least is not published. No maximum number of prayers, lists or reminders appears on prayminder.com, in the App Store description, or on Google Play - an absence of a published limit rather than a guarantee of infinity.
Funding is donation-only and the amounts are printed: monthly gifts at $3, $7 or $10, one-time gifts at $25, $50 or $100, or a custom amount. At the top monthly tier that is $10 x 12 = $120 a year, more than Hallow's $69.99 annual subscription - the difference being that with Prayminder you are choosing to pay for something you already have in full.
The founders describe the economics without spin: Prayminder has "largely run on our own savings", with "No investors, no churches or organizations supporting our work". The practical risk in a free app is not a price rise but abandonment - and a two-person company on savings and donations has no institutional backstop, against nine years of releases that say otherwise.
Where Prayminder falls behind
No sync, no shared lists, no account. The vendor is straightforward about it - the June 2026 newsletter describes the ability to "carry your prayers across your devices and to pray together with others" as work in progress with details undecided. So in July 2026 there is no way to keep one list on an iPhone and an iPad, no way for a husband and wife to pray a single list, and no prayer-chain feature. PrayerMate has offered small-group sharing and Dropbox export for years; Echo Prayer is built around sharing. Prayminder's architecture is what prevents it - a design consequence rather than a missing checkbox.
No documented backup, and a warning that you need one. The privacy policy contains the sentence "if you uninstall the app without a backup, your locally stored data will be lost", and the site never explains how to make one. No export button is described, no file format named, nothing about whether iCloud or Android device backup captures the private database. For a product holding years of intercession history, a warning without a procedure is the weakest thing about it.
Three privacy disclosures, three different pictures. Google Play's Data safety card, completed by Prayminder AB, says the app may collect Location, App activity and two further data types, shares no data with third parties, encrypts data in transit, and that "Data can't be deleted". Apple's App Privacy panel for the same product lists no Location whatsoever - only Analytics, App Functionality and Diagnostics, all as Data Not Linked to You. The policy sits in between at "general geographic region", collected via a Google Analytics that Play's no-sharing claim does not acknowledge.
No GDPR, no data location, from a Swedish company. The controller is Prayminder AB in Skarhamn, which puts it squarely under the GDPR, and the policy borrows the regulation's vocabulary - "our legitimate interest in providing support and maintaining our services". It then never names the GDPR, names no country for the servers running cloud reminders and analytics, sets no retention period, and gives no access, erasure or portability procedure. Play's "Data can't be deleted" is the closest thing to a statement on erasure, and it is the wrong answer.
A prayer count that moves depending on the page. The home page and the App Store description both say more than 30 million prayers have been lifted through Prayminder; the story page on the same site says more than 24 million. Both are the vendor's figures and neither is dated.
Prayminder vs. PrayerMate vs. Echo Prayer vs. Hallow
PrayerMate is the closest analogue, because it solves the same problem with the same card-based rotation - it selects a person or topic from each of your main categories and shows them as index cards you swipe through. It is free, with an optional PrayerMate Patron subscription that funds development rather than unlocking a paywall, and its App Store listing advertises what Prayminder lacks: import and export via Dropbox, private sharing within a trusted small group, subscribable prayer diaries from mission organisations, and a PIN code. It holds 4.8 from 422 App Store ratings against Prayminder's 4.9 on 4,844 - Prayminder is the better-maintained app, PrayerMate the more capable one.
Echo Prayer is the sharing-first option, built around sending requests to individuals or groups with the user controlling how and with whom, plus prayer feeds published by churches. Its paid Echo Plus+ membership gates creating groups and feeds rather than the basic list, and it holds 4.8 from 21,600 ratings. The trade is straight: Echo puts your requests on a server so other people can pray them, Prayminder keeps them off a server so nobody can.
Hallow and Pray.com are barely competitors, and it is worth saying plainly that Prayminder is narrower than Hallow by design - the narrowness is the product. Hallow is a guided-audio Catholic library with named voices, challenges and a Hallow Family for shared intentions, and its App Store description publishes two auto-renewing options for US customers: $9.99 per month or $69.99 per year. Paid monthly for a year that is $9.99 x 12 = $119.88 against the $69.99 annual rate, so the annual plan saves about 42 percent. Pray.com is the same shape and prints no subscription price in its App Store description at all. Neither is trying to be a place to keep forty named people and be reminded of them at 3pm on a Tuesday.
The bottom line
Prayminder is the best free prayer-list app in either store on the strength of one decision: it treats the list as private property rather than account data, keeps it on the phone, publishes no cap on it, and charges nothing. The 4.9 from 4,844 App Store ratings is credible precisely because no paywall filters the reviewers. The reservations are the direct cost of that decision - no cross-device sync, no shared lists, an Android build a release behind, and a policy that warns your data will be lost without a backup while never telling you how to make one. Add three disclosures that disagree about whether Location is collected, and you have a product to trust with your prayers but not yet to rely on as their only home.
Alternatives to Prayminder
PrayerMateThe closest analogue and the more capable one - free with an optional Patron subscription, plus Dropbox import and export, private small-group sharing, and subscribable mission prayer diaries.
Echo PrayerThe sharing-first prayer list. Send requests to individuals or groups and follow church prayer feeds, with group creation gated behind Echo Plus+. Server-held by necessity, which is what Prayminder refuses.
HallowA guided-audio Catholic prayer library at $9.99 per month or $69.99 per year, with a real free tier. Vastly broader than Prayminder and not a list manager at all.
Pray.comBible stories, sleep content and guided meditation with mobile giving attached. Prints no subscription price in its App Store description. A media app, not a prayer-list tool.
AbideGuided Christian meditation and sleep stories on a subscription, with a free daily meditation. Useful next to Prayminder rather than instead of it - Abide supplies words, Prayminder supplies the list.Frequently asked questions
Is Prayminder really free, and is there a limit on how many prayers I can add?
It is free with no paid tier and no in-app purchases on either store, and no cap is published. The home page reads "No ads. No monthly plans. No premium. Freely given"; the App Store description says the app is "completely free and always will be". No maximum number of prayers, lists or reminders appears anywhere - an absence of a published limit rather than a promise of an infinite one.
Do my prayer lists sync across devices, and can I share a list with someone else?
Not as of July 2026, to either question. The June 2026 newsletter describes the ability to "carry your prayers across your devices and to pray together with others" as something the team is working toward, with details still undecided. There is no account, no cloud copy of prayer content and no shared list. If sharing is the requirement, PrayerMate offers private small-group sharing and Echo Prayer is built around it.
Where is my prayer data stored and who can read it?
The privacy policy states that prayer names and notes are "stored locally on your device in the app's private database", and that "We do not upload, access, or store your prayer content on our servers". The June 2026 newsletter adds that reminder selection now runs in the cloud but handles only "anonymous numbers that stand in for" your prayers. On that account nobody at Prayminder AB can read your list. The policy names no country or provider for the servers behind cloud reminders, push notifications or Google Analytics.
What happens to my prayers if I lose my phone or reinstall the app?
The policy answers this directly and uncomfortably: "if you uninstall the app without a backup, your locally stored data will be lost." Because prayer content is not held on Prayminder's servers there is no account to restore from, and the site never documents how to make that backup, names an export format, or states whether iCloud or Android device backup captures the private database.
Does Prayminder mention the GDPR, and where is the company based?
The company is Prayminder AB of Skarhamn, Sweden, org. number 559473-5531, which places it under the GDPR. The policy does not mention the GDPR by name. It uses the regulation's language - "our legitimate interest in providing support and maintaining our services" - but publishes no data location, no retention period, and no access, erasure or complaint procedure. Google Play's Data safety card states "Data can't be deleted".
Do the App Store and Google Play privacy disclosures agree?
No. Google Play's Data safety card says the app may collect Location, App activity and two further data types, shares no data with third parties, encrypts data in transit, and that data cannot be deleted. Apple's App Privacy panel lists no Location at all - only Analytics, App Functionality and Diagnostics, all as Data Not Linked to You. The policy sits in between at "general geographic region" via Google Analytics, which Play's no-sharing claim does not acknowledge.
How does Prayminder compare with Hallow?
They are different products aimed at the same hour of your day. Hallow is a guided-audio Catholic library sold at $9.99 per month or $69.99 per year for US customers, with a free tier that includes the Rosary. Prayminder is a free list of the people and burdens you are carrying, plus a reminder engine and a Bible reader. It is narrower than Hallow by design and will not supply words, audio or community.
Sources & further reading
- Prayminder on the App Store (id1309466339) ↗
- Prayminder on Google Play - Data safety card ↗
- Prayminder - official site ↗
- Prayminder - Privacy Policy ↗
- Prayminder - Our Story ↗
- Prayminder - Donate ↗
- Prayminder Read - June 2026 newsletter ↗
- Hallow: Prayer & Meditation on the App Store (subscription prices) ↗
More Prayer Apps
PauseA free, donor-funded prayer app built on one thing: a short guided pause, read by John Eldredge, in one, three, five or ten minutes. It does that one thing better than apps ten times its size - and it does almost nothing else.
SoulspaceA family operation in Bend, Oregon has shipped Scripture-based audio prayer since December 2019, narrated almost entirely by one voice. The free tier is one prayer a day with no ads - but the same subscription costs $20 more a year if you buy it on the website instead of inside the app.AbideAbide has quietly become the favorite of Christians who tried Calm or Headspace and wished the meditations would just open a Bible - voice-led, scripture-anchored, and built for the moments when your nervous system needs help before your theology does.Pray.comThe biggest non-denominational Protestant prayer app on the market, built around audio you can fall asleep to - and a celebrity bench most competitors cannot touch.
Lectio 365A free daily prayer app from the international 24-7 Prayer movement that has quietly become the rhythm-keeper for Christians who wanted contemplative prayer to actually stick - and discovered it could.PrayerMateThe quiet workhorse of evangelical intercession - a structured, list-driven prayer organizer that has earned a near-cult following among people who actually pray for everyone they said they would.