Hallow vs Pistis

Hallow and Pistis both show up when Christians search for help building a daily practice, but they're not really solving the same problem. Hallow is a content library — thousands of guided prayers, meditations, and Bible sessions. Pistis is a commitment device — a locked phone until a short daily practice is done. This page is for figuring out which one (or whether both) fits what you're trying to build.

What Hallow Actually Is

Hallow is an audio-guided prayer and meditation app with a large library — Lectio Divina, the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Ignatian Examen sessions, sleep content, and music, most narrated by guided voices. About 85% of the library sits behind a subscription; the rest, including daily audio prayers and a 9-day intro challenge, is free. There's no app-lock mechanic anywhere in Hallow — nothing about the app restricts your phone or requires you to finish anything before you can put it down.

Pistis has no content library at all. There's one practice a day: a verse, a reflection you write yourself, the Examen, and prayer in your own words — and your other apps stay locked until you've done it.

Formation Depth: Guided vs. Active

Hallow's Ignatian Examen is a guided audio session — you listen, and a narrator walks you through it. It's well produced, and if you're new to the Examen, listening to it done well is a real way to learn the shape of the practice.

Pistis's Examen is something you do, not something you listen to: a text prompt, and you write your own reflection on where you saw God (or resisted him) in your day. There's no audio, no narrator, no script. The same is true of the prayer step — Hallow's prayers are largely guided and read to you; Pistis gives you a prompt and waits for your own words.

Neither approach is wrong. A guided session lowers the barrier for someone who doesn't know where to start. An unguided one asks you to do the work yourself, every day, which is precisely the point for someone who already knows how to pray and wants a practice that holds them to actually doing it.

Privacy & Account

Hallow requires an account for most features and collects data linked to your identity — purchases, contact info, user content, usage data, and diagnostics, according to its own App Store privacy disclosures. It also requests App Tracking Transparency permission to track activity across other apps. To Hallow's credit, it encrypts sensitive content like journal entries so that even Hallow's own staff can't read it, and states it doesn't sell personal data to brokers — but the architecture is still cloud-based and account-based.

Pistis has no account, no cloud sync, and collects nothing — there's no server for your data to reach in the first place.

The Structural Difference: App Lock

This is the real reason the two apps aren't quite competitors. If what you want is better content to pray with, Hallow's library is larger and more produced than anything Pistis offers — Pistis doesn't try to compete on content at all. If what you want is something that actually stops you from opening Instagram before you've prayed, Hallow doesn't do that; it has no lock mechanic, so nothing stops you from closing it and scrolling instead. Pistis exists specifically for that second problem.

Pricing & Trial

Hallow: roughly $12.99/month or $69.99/year (per Hallow's own help center; pricing is region-dependent, so check your current listing), plus a one-time $149.99 lifetime option. Free trials run 7–14 days depending on the offer. About 15% of the library, including daily prayers and a 9-day intro challenge, is free without a subscription at all.

Pistis: a weekly plan ($8.99/week) or an annual plan ($44.99/year, discounted to $34.99/year for founding members through December 31, 2026), with a 7-day free trial on every plan (card required upfront). There's no free tier — the daily practice is the whole product.

Which One?

Choose Hallow if:

• You want a large, well-produced library of guided prayer and meditation content
• You'd rather listen than write
• A free tier matters to you
• You're on Android

Choose Pistis if:

• You want something that actually locks your phone until you've prayed, not just reminds you
• You want to write your own reflection and speak your own prayer, not follow a script
• Privacy is non-negotiable — no account, no cloud, nothing collected
• You're on iPhone and want a short, serious daily discipline rather than a content library

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Hallow have an app-lock or screen-time feature? No. Hallow is a content library of guided prayers and meditations — nothing in it restricts access to other apps on your phone.

Is Hallow free? Partially. Roughly 15% of Hallow's content, including daily audio prayers and a 9-day intro challenge, is free. The rest requires a subscription.

Can I use Hallow and Pistis together? Yes — they're not mutually exclusive. Some people use Hallow's library for content and Pistis as the commitment device that gets them to actually open something faith-related each morning instead of social media.

Which app is more private? Pistis. Hallow requires an account and collects usage and identity-linked data (per its own disclosures), while Pistis has no account, no cloud sync, and collects nothing.

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Looking for a comparison with a more direct app-lock competitor instead? See PrayerLock vs Pistis.