The Ultimate Guide to Parsing Apps | Biblical Mastery Academy

Greek Verb Parsing (GVP) by Andrew Steinmann is one of the more recent additions to the parsing apps available on iPhone and Android. The app uses a step-by-step question-and-answer approach to break a word down. It is one of two apps available only on mobile devices, and so competes largely with ParseGreek (below).

Benefits

• Simple step-by-step approach to each word
• Clean interface
• Immediate feedback and an opportunity to try again
• Requires you to spell out the lexical form
• Keyed to grammars

Disadvantages

• First question asks for the principal part based on a number, which is confusing
• Some controls are difficult to use (e.g. the Greek keyboard for lexical forms)
• Only two grammars represented
• Step-by-step approach is slower than other approaches

Best suited to beginning Greek students who want to simply answer questions.

ParseGreek was the first parsing app I became aware of, soon after its release in 2012. It was updated in February 2020 to version 2.0, which moved ParseGreek from iPad-first to iPhone-first and dramatically improved the usability of the app. ParseGreek lets you jump in, work through a few words quickly, and carry on with your day. It is the most mature parsing app available for mobile devices and, since mobile is the best place to have an app like this, is well positioned to be the most popular parsing app for biblical Greek.

Benefits

• Synchronised with all major grammars
• Easy to use
• Includes hints and charts
• Saves default options
• Good selection of options to toggle on or off
• Responsive developer

Disadvantages

• A few bugs (fixes are being released regularly)
• Does not contain forms not found in the NT, which can lead to correct parsing being recorded as incorrect

A good all-round parsing app — great for students thanks to the grammar integration, and also great for those who are beyond beginning Greek.

MasterGreek.com is a free tool designed to help students practice their parsing in a web browser. Because it is browser-based, it works on any platform. MasterGreek does not integrate with any grammars, but the arrangement of grammatical principles is close to what is found in Mounce's popular Basics of Biblical Greek. If you can't afford the few dollars to pay for a parsing app, mastergreek.com is ad-supported and will provide you with the basics until you are ready to upgrade to one of the others — assuming you care to. This may well be all you need.

Benefits

• Free
• Works on any device with a browser
• Provides alternate parsings
• Closely aligned to Mounce's popular grammar

Disadvantages

• No grammar integration
• Some controls a little hard to use
• No way to limit the number of words per round
• Ads are distracting

A great place to start. Personally I prefer to pay a small fee up front and have no ads.

Paradigms Master Pro no longer appears to be available. The developer website now returns a 404. The review below is preserved for reference.

Paradigms Master Pro was a nicely polished app available for PC and Mac, but not on mobile. You could buy Greek individually, or a Greek/Hebrew bundle. In my opinion parsing is better suited to mobile than to desktop, but there were some advantages these desktop versions offered over the mobile versions, as well as some things missing. Paradigms Master Pro was the most user-friendly parsing app available.

Benefits

• Works on Mac and PC
• Multiple choice or full parsing options
• Can limit rounds to a specified number of words
• Shows correct rate and provides a grade at the end of a round
• Correct answers are shown with other correct parsings
• Incorrect answers show the form you selected

Disadvantages

• No grammar synchronisation
• No longer available for purchase

When it was available, Paradigms Master Pro was a solid desktop option, though it was the most expensive of all the options reviewed here.

Trainer, created by Joshua Grauman, has probably the most pedagogically valuable features of any parsing app available today. In addition to providing the parsing capabilities of the apps above, it lets you walk step-by-step through each form to see what each element does to the word and how it should be parsed. The power of Trainer is tempered a little by some of the controls, which can be functionally opaque at times.

Benefits

• Works on Mac, PC, and Linux
• Full parsing — no hints in the app setup
• Flexible
• Easy access to charts
• Full parsing walk-through for every form

Disadvantages

• No grammar integration
• Lacks stats and the ability to determine the number of words per round
• Some controls are not clear

A good choice on the desktop, and the only choice if you want the morphological help.