A free PewBeam alternative for Nigerian churches

PewBeam and Scrivent both listen to the sermon and put the verse on screen. They differ most on what a church gets for free, and on what happens after the service. Here is a fair side-by-side, so you can choose what suits your church.

The short answer

If you want slides built for you, a Mac app and Bible study tools, and your church can pay a monthly plan, PewBeam is a strong product. If you want automatic scripture with no time limit and no bill, members following along on Android phones, and the sermon shared on WhatsApp afterwards, Scrivent is built for that, and it is free.

What you get for free

• PewBeam Explorer (free): 60 minutes of transcription in total, once, not per week or month. Then a paid plan is needed to keep transcribing. One device, four Bible translations, and a watermark on the displays.
• Scrivent (free for every church right now): unlimited live transcription and scripture detection, all 34 Bible translations, every display theme, the projector, the livestream overlay and NDI, and no watermark. No card and no trial counting down.

PewBeam’s paid plans (Plus and Core) lift the limit and are priced in US dollars per month, with local pricing in Nigeria. Scrivent will introduce paid plans in time, and we will tell churches well before anything changes.

Side by side

• Scripture from the sermon: both detect spoken references and quoted or paraphrased verses.
• Where it runs: PewBeam is a desktop app for Windows and Mac. Scrivent runs in Chrome or Edge on any computer (Mac included) with nothing to install, plus a free Windows app for the projector, NDI and offline use.
• Members’ phones: PewBeam’s Pewnote app is for iPhone. Scrivent Companion opens in any phone browser from a QR code on the screen, so Android phones work too: live captions, the verses, and notes.
• Nigerian languages: Scrivent shows the verse in Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa under the English, on the screen and on phones.
• After the service: Scrivent keeps the transcript, drafts a recap page and finds short audio clips of the sermon to share on WhatsApp.
• Slides and study: PewBeam builds slides from your outline with AI, and has a Greek and Hebrew lexicon, devotionals and quizzes. Scrivent has sermon slides, prayer slides and song lyrics you paste in, but no AI slide builder or lexicon.
• Bible translations: PewBeam lists 20 on paid plans. Scrivent has 34, free: 18 English, plus Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Twi, Ewe, Swahili, French, Spanish, Portuguese and more.

Try Scrivent next Sunday

1. Create a free church account. It takes about a minute.
2. Connect the pastor’s microphone feed to the laptop (see how to connect it) and open the display on the projector.
3. Run the Setup check in the console, then run Sunday in Manual mode, so your team approves each verse until they trust it.

You don’t have to choose one forever. Run Scrivent beside what you use now for one service and compare. See also: church projection software for Nigerian churches · share the sermon on WhatsApp.

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