API Usage

YouVersion Platform provides SDKs for several popular coding languages, as well as the REST API which gives you direct access to the same services which power the SDKs. Use it when you need a fully custom integration, to automate content workflows, or to support platforms where an SDK is not yet available.

Before You Start

• Create your developer account and register your application at platform.YouVersion.com to obtain an App Key.

• The API requires that your app key be in the X-YVP-App-Key header for every request. Once you've generated an API key, export it as an environment variable in your terminal:

Code
 
export YVP_APP_KEY='YOUR_APP_KEY_HERE'

Make Your First Request

Fetch the text of John 3:16 from the NIV using cURL:

Code
 
curl -H "x-yvp-app-key: $YVP_APP_KEY" "https://api.youversion.com/v1/bibles/111/passages/JHN.3.16"

Or perform that same request with Python:

Code
 
import os
import requests

def get_verse():
    app_key = os.environ.get("YVP_APP_KEY")
    headers = {"X-YVP-App-Key": app_key}
    url = "https://api.youversion.com/v1/bibles/111/passages/JHN.3.16"
    response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
    response.raise_for_status()
    return response.json()

print(get_verse())

Core Bible API Concepts

To get the Bible text for a given verse, passage or chapter, use the passages API as seen above.

Once you've accepted the appropriate license agreements, get a Bible collection to list the Bible versions available to you.

Other APIs give you metadata about individual Bible books, chapters, and verses. Browse every route in the interactive API reference.

Pagination

Some endpoints support pagination using the page_size and page_token parameters. You can generally request up to 100 items per page. When more results are available, the response includes a next_page_token; send that back as page_token in your next request to fetch the following page.

Need Help?

If you need help integrating with our API or have questions about the documentation, please reach out to our support team.