A free alternative to True Ilm
True Ilm is a good app — a freemium Islamic audiobook & ebook app with a large classical-scholar catalogue. If you’re weighing it against Joyful Muslims, here’s the honest difference.
True Ilm has a genuinely large classical-scholar catalogue (750+ titles claimed), a full ebook reader with notes and highlights, offline downloads, and a strong store rating — an impressive amount of classical material in one app.
Free, faithful, and classical.
- Joyful Muslims publishes its own modern-English translation from the original Arabic, with Arabic names and honorifics voiced with care; True Ilm delivers a large catalogue but not an original in-house translation.
- Joyful Muslims is free to start with the whole library open; True Ilm’s full library sits behind a paid Pro subscription.
- Joyful Muslims pairs each book with a word-synced Arabic + English transcript (the Living Manuscript) to read along with, not just a fixed text.
Pick True Ilm if catalogue size is your top priority.
| Joyful Muslims | True Ilm | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free · Joyful+ $6.99/mo or $59.99/yr | Freemium — Pro ~$9.99/mo or ~$99.99/yr |
| Free access | Every book open to all; 5 hours of listening free every month, no card | Free download + a “Daily Free Books” feature; the full 750+ library needs Pro |
| Translation | Original, in-house from the Arabic | Publisher / classical editions |
| Focus | The classical Sunni canon — tafsīr, hadith, fiqh, sīrah, taṣawwuf — translated in-house from the original Arabic | Classical Islamic canon — audiobooks + ebooks of scholars’ works (Ibn Bāz, Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Nawawī, Ibn Kathīr) |
| Platforms | iPhone, Android, Apple Watch, widgets | iPhone, Android |
Try it free.
The whole classical library — 68+ audiobooks, translated in-house — open from day one.