Crossway Bible is built around a simple principle: you shouldn't need to hand over personal information just to read and study the Bible. This page explains, in plain terms, what data the site does and doesn't collect, and how the few outside services it relies on are used.
No Accounts, No Sign-Up
Crossway Bible does not require registration, sign-in, or any personal account to use any part of the site — the reader, search, reading plans, topics, people, places, cross-references, Strong's Concordance, Greek & Hebrew interlinear, commentaries, the Bible Dictionary, and the Bible Study Assistant are all available to every visitor without creating a profile. We do not collect names, email addresses, or passwords, because the site never asks for them.
Reading Progress and Preferences Stay in Your Browser
Some features — such as tracking which day of a reading plan you've completed, or your preferred audio playback speed for the chapter listen feature — are saved using your browser's own local storage (localStorage). This information is stored only on your device, is never transmitted to Crossway Bible's servers, and is never visible to us. Clearing your browser's site data, or visiting from a different browser or device, will reset it. Because this data never leaves your browser, it isn't something we can access, share, or delete on your behalf — you control it directly through your browser's own settings.
The Bible Study Assistant
The Bible Study Assistant is powered by Google's Gemini AI service. When you send a message to the Assistant, that message (along with the recent conversation history visible on the page) is sent to Google's Gemini API to generate a reply, together with real Scripture text and related site data relevant to your question. Conversation history is kept only in your browser's page memory for the current visit — it is not saved to our servers or attached to any identity, and it disappears when you close or reload the page. We do apply a simple, temporary rate limit (tracked by IP address for a short window) to keep the free service available to everyone; this rate-limit record is not linked to any other data and expires automatically. Please avoid sharing sensitive personal information in messages to the Assistant.
Newsletter Signup
If you enter your email address in the newsletter form in the site's footer, we store that email address (and the date you signed up) so we can send you a confirmation email right away, a Verse of the Day email each morning, and an email with our 5 latest Bible study articles each evening. This is the one piece of personal information the site does collect, and it is used only for that purpose — it is not sold, shared with advertisers, or used for anything else. Every email we send includes a one-click unsubscribe link (no login required) that removes your address immediately.
Third-Party Services We Rely On
Crossway Bible is built on a small number of outside services, each used only for the specific purpose described:
Scripture text: Bible passages are retrieved from bible-api.com and bolls.life, two free, public services providing public-domain Bible translations. Requests to these services are made by our server, not your browser, and typically include only the book, chapter, and translation being requested.
Images: Featured images across the site's articles are sourced from Pexels, a stock photography service, and stored on our own server once selected — your browser does not contact Pexels directly when you browse the site.
Fonts: The site's typography (Cormorant Garamond, Literata, and Inter) is loaded from Google Fonts. Loading a font from Google Fonts means your browser makes a request to Google's servers, which — like any web request — can include standard technical information such as your IP address, handled under Google's own privacy practices.
Interactive map: The map on the Bible Places page uses Leaflet.js with free OpenStreetMap map tiles, loaded only on that specific page.
No Advertising or Behavioral Tracking
Crossway Bible does not run advertising, does not use third-party advertising or behavioral-tracking cookies, and does not sell or share visitor data with data brokers or marketers. The site uses LiteSpeed Cache, a standard web-server caching technology, purely to make pages load faster — this does not involve tracking individual visitors.
Standard Web Server Logs
Like virtually every website, our hosting provider's web server automatically logs basic technical information for security and performance purposes (such as IP address, browser type, and the pages requested). These logs are a routine part of running any website and are not used to build advertising profiles or to identify individual visitors for marketing purposes.
Children's Privacy
Crossway Bible does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children, since the site does not collect personal information from any visitor in the ordinary course of use.
Changes to This Policy
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted here with a new "last updated" date above. Continued use of the site after a change constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.
Questions
If you have questions about this policy or how the site handles data, you're welcome to reach out through the site's About Us page for more on who maintains Crossway Bible.