The Best Biblical Calendar Apps, Compared
Line up the store screenshots for eleven biblical calendar apps and they blur into one picture: today's date in Hebrew letters, a feast name under it, a verse along the bottom.
What decides whether any of them is worth your Friday is not in the picture. Underneath each app sits a rulebook — a procedure for turning today into a date — and four of them are in use across this category, capable of putting the same feast a month apart. So the biblical calendar app you want is not the best-reviewed one. It is the one running the rule your congregation runs.
Below: the four rules, the apps on each, and where each one stops. Day 4 is ours, said here rather than in a footnote, and given one entry like everybody else.
What no biblical calendar app tells you on its store page
A verse often cited in discussions of biblical calendars is this. "Let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years." — Genesis 1:14. It hands the job to the lights in the sky without saying which light rules, and four traditions grew in that silence.
| Rule | How the date gets set | Who keeps it |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed calculated | Late-antique arithmetic: a computed conjunction, a thirteenth month on a nineteen-year cycle | Mainstream Jewish practice, and most apps labelled "Hebrew calendar" |
| Sighted crescent | Somebody reports the first crescent after sundown, the year opening when barley in Israel is aviv | Karaite communities, many Messianic and Hebrew-roots congregations |
| Lunar Sabbaths | Months from the moon, the weekly Sabbath count restarting each new month | A minority movement, argued by a few ministries |
| 364-day solar | Fifty-two whole weeks, four seasons of 91 days, pinned to the March equinox | Enoch, Jubilees, the Dead Sea Scrolls — and Day 4 |
A lunar year runs about eleven days short of a solar one, which is why the moon rules need an inserted month and the solar one does not. And 364 divides by seven exactly — 52, remainder zero — so in the fourth row the weekday alignment never moves. The first two rows have argued since antiquity: sighted moon or calculated calendar.
Which of these the Second Temple ran on is a live scholarly argument, and Day 4 does not claim to settle it. Enoch, Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls preserved the 364-day reckoning with real care. That is a different claim from proving it was the Temple's, and marketing copy blurs the two on every side.
These entries come from listings read in August 2026. Prices appear by shape — free, one-time, subscription — rather than by figure, since amounts move with region and promotion and every store page prints its own.
The calculated calendar has the best tooling, by a distance
If your congregation follows the standard Hebrew calendar, you are spoiled: this rule computes centuries ahead, and developers have done so for decades.
Hebcal is the reference implementation. The website is free, and its `.ics` feeds subscribe into whatever calendar already runs your week, so a feast arrives as an ordinary entry rather than something to look up. Its date library is open source under GPL-2.0, which is why other tools quietly run on it. One catch: Hebcal Hebrew Calendar is an Apple Watch-only app, last released in 2023.
Jewish Calendar – CalJ is the full phone app: free, shipping since 2009, still picking up updates, with Hebrew-to-secular conversion, Shabbat times, zmanim, the Omer count and yahrzeit tracking.
Neither can do the one thing a sighted-moon community needs, which is not a defect but a definition: a computed calendar runs ahead of the sky on purpose, consulting nobody in a field.
The apps that wait on a moon somebody has to see
A sighted-moon calendar cannot be printed a decade ahead. Somebody has to go outside and say what they saw, so every app here must handle a date it does not yet know — and its answer tells you more than the listing does.
BibliCal refuses to guess. On day 29 or 30 it prompts you to confirm whether the crescent was sighted, and coming months stay marked as projections until you do. Around the twelfth month it asks the aviv question outright and lets you decide. Free, listed in early 2026 and updated that March, it marks the seven feasts, ships a widget, exports month starts and feast days to your phone calendar, and lets you set your own Firstfruits rule. Handing the disputed call back to the user is rare, and right.
TorahCalendar.com is a website rather than an app, free, and unusually deep: new-moon visibility for Jerusalem, sun and moon positions for any day in history, feast dates inside a seven-thousand-year creation framework. It computes all of it, though. A visibility figure for a Jerusalem evening centuries from now is a model's output, not a report from anyone standing there — the distinction this page turns on. A reference desk, not a sighted-crescent tool.
WLC Calendar, from the World's Last Chance ministry, is free, last updated in 2024, and keeps the third rule: a luni-solar year whose weekly Sabbath count restarts each month, with moon illumination and local sun and moon times. That monthly reset is a contested minority position, so know you are adopting it. Day 4 does not keep it, and nobody keeping it will hear from us that they are deceived.
Messianic Jewish Calendar and Issachars Calendar were both first listed in 2026, but they are not the same hybrid. Messianic Jewish Calendar is completely free: conventional feast dates, sunset computed on-device, and weekly Torah, Haftarah and Brit Chadasha readings. Issachars is a free download with local sunset and a daily devotional synopsis; its Watchman journal and pattern-tracking options are paid in-app purchases. In both, the material around the date is the point. The date underneath is ordinary.
The 364-day apps, including ours
Four apps keep this rule, and the differences are not on the store page. Ask any 364-day app two questions: what pins day 1 each spring, and what it does with the leftover day or two at the end. Answers vary, and each one shifts every feast in the year. Listings rarely say, which is how two apps on one rule print different dates. The rule itself is unpacked in what the 364-day calendar is.
Ancient Enoch Calendar converts Gregorian dates against the Zadok calendar texts, but its two store versions have parted company. The iOS build is a one-time purchase, listed since 2015 and last updated in 2019. The Android build was updated in February 2026 and now lists as an install with ad support rather than a paid-up-front app.
Enoch Calendar on iOS, by Ferdinand Peters, is the fuller, newer build: the 364-day year in four 91-day quarters, feasts, tekufah markers, high Sabbaths with their Leviticus text, lunar eclipse tracking, Shemitah and Jubilee cycles. Listed in 2026 and updated since. Free for ninety days, then a one-time purchase rather than a subscription. A separate Android app with the same name, by dashe60 and Prophete Jude Charles, appeared in July 2026: an equinox-aligned year, twelve month tabs, mapped dates, event notes and an optional “True Enoch week” alignment, listed free with ads and in-app purchases.
Day 4 — A Witness of Time is ours, and answers both on the record. Day 1 is pinned by the March equinox, read from a fixed canonical table rather than computed, so it moves against the Gregorian date — March 19 in most leap years — and always falls on the week's day 4. The year runs 364 counted days in four seasons of 91, Sabbaths on year-days 4, 11, 18, out to 361. Then counting stops: one or two uncounted days, the Waiting Space, before the next equinox re-pins day 1, and the sacred week does not run through them. Years carry Anno Mundi numbers.
Its Calendar screen sets everyday dates beside sacred ones with feasts marked and a timeline back to the beginning, and its Feasts screen puts each appointed time in plain language. Today's sacred date, the day's devotional and the next Sabbath are free on iPhone, iPad, Android and web with no account, and the rest is a subscription with a trial. It computes no local sunset — never 8:47 for your address, a job belonging to Sabbath and sunset times apps — and does no sighted-moon reckoning.
Ten minutes will tell you what a listing will not
Install the one you are leaning toward and put it through this before building a routine on it.
Find the next Passover and set it beside a date you already trust — a congregational calendar, a printed card, whatever your people use. A match can suggest compatible rules for that feast, not prove they match throughout the year. A month's difference can reflect a disagreement over intercalation or other calendar rules. A few days' difference may reflect two apps pinning one rule differently, the subtler problem.
Then the three things screenshots hide. Will it export? A feed into your phone calendar is the difference between a feast you remember and a feast you attend, and printable options live in biblical feast days calendar. Does it do sunset by location, or only dates? Separate jobs, and most apps take one. When was it last updated? An app that has not shipped in five years deserves a closer check of its maintenance and date calculations. Then find the account wall, before you are invested in what is behind it.
Common questions
Which biblical calendar app should I use?
The one whose calendar rule matches the community you keep the feasts with. Nothing else comes close. If you worship alone, choose the rule you can defend from Scripture, then pick within that family for reliability, export and behaviour in a disputed year.
Which apps use a sighted moon, a calculated calendar, or a 364-day year?
Sighted moon: BibliCal genuinely waits, prompting you to confirm each crescent. Calculated: Hebcal and Jewish Calendar – CalJ, plus TorahCalendar.com, which models moon visibility rather than waiting on a sighting. Luni-solar with a monthly Sabbath reset: WLC Calendar. 364-day solar: Ferdinand Peters's Enoch Calendar, dashe60's separate Android Enoch Calendar, Ancient Enoch Calendar and Day 4. Messianic Jewish Calendar and Issachars Calendar layer different reading and devotional tools on conventional dates.
Is there a free biblical calendar app?
Several, genuinely. Hebcal's website and feeds are free and open source. CalJ, WLC Calendar, BibliCal and Messianic Jewish Calendar list fully free; Issachars is a free download with paid Watchman options. Ferdinand Peters's Enoch Calendar is free for ninety days then a one-time purchase, while dashe60's Android Enoch Calendar lists free with ads and in-app purchases. Ancient Enoch Calendar is paid up front on iOS and ad-supported on Android. Day 4 gives today's sacred date, the day's devotional and the next Sabbath free on every platform with no account, and puts the full year behind a subscription with a trial.
Which app handles feast dates my congregation actually keeps?
Ask which rule your congregation follows before looking at a single app, then shortlist that family only. If your fellowship waits on aviv barley, you need one that asks you rather than deciding for you, and BibliCal is built that way. If it follows the calculated calendar, those tools are the most mature. If it keeps the 364-day year, check where the app pins day 1.
What you are actually installing
None of these apps decided anything. Each is somebody else's decision compiled: a rule fixed in an academy, a rule that waits on a pair of eyes, a rule copied onto a scroll and left in a desert cave. Which is why the question is not which app is best, but whose decision you are agreeing to.
Settle the rule with the people you keep it with, and the shortlist writes itself. If the 364-day year is the one you want to live inside, Day 4 prints today's sacred date without an account or a payment, and an introduction to Day 4 walks through the rest.
