NEW Logos Review
It’s that time of year again: Logos Update review time!
Once again, the formality: I am a Faithlife / Logos Affiliate. My review – while entirely my own and unbiased – is written by someone who makes a small portion of profit if someone makes purchases through the links I share. The links below to Logos resources are affiliate links, and as such, if you, the reader, make purchases using them, I will earn a small commission. So just a heads up.
But now that that’s out of the way, just a reminder that you can still read my Logos 9 and Logos 10 reviews here on Torah Apologetics. Most of what I wrote in them is still applicable, just understand that pretty much anything conflicting between those reviews and this one, this one will take precedence. So, let’s start with the two major burning questions for the “NEW” Logos: Subscription and AI.
Once again, the formality: I am a Faithlife / Logos Affiliate. My review – while entirely my own and unbiased – is written by someone who makes a small portion of profit if someone makes purchases through the links I share. The links below to Logos resources are affiliate links, and as such, if you, the reader, make purchases using them, I will earn a small commission. So just a heads up.
But now that that’s out of the way, just a reminder that you can still read my Logos 9 and Logos 10 reviews here on Torah Apologetics. Most of what I wrote in them is still applicable, just understand that pretty much anything conflicting between those reviews and this one, this one will take precedence. So, let’s start with the two major burning questions for the “NEW” Logos: Subscription and AI.
Many of you probably already know by now, but Logos is switching from a perpetual license model to a subscription service. For the many folks that are all “subscriptioned out” (to coin a word), I totally get it. From Spotify to Netflix to your gym membership, it seems like everything is being priced on a monthly or annual payment basis.
Subscription Ups
As frustrating as the subscription may be to some, let’s start by focusing on the benefits of it. First, it will help enable an entirely new demographic of users to obtain the latest and greatest Logos features. Historically, feature upgrades (which were released every 2 years) were offered on a tiered system: Starter, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Portfolio. Those features cost increasingly more for each tier, sometimes upwards of $500 or more for a one-time purchase. For “power users” of sorts (like I consider myself), this is do-able every couple years because of the power of the tool. But for the average person, that’s a bit much. (Granted, Starter and Bronze feature upgrades were much more affordable).
Now with the subscription model, users can simply pay a small price each month (as little as $10) to get access to the standard Logos features. Even a 2-year subscription paid in advance would be less than the typical cost to upgrade to Gold every two years with a new version. So while some people certainly won’t like the prospect of paying month-to-month or even year-to-year, it will help a lot of folks get access who never have before.
The second major “up” to a subscription is that it allows Logos to push features in a truly SaaS fashion. If you’re not a professional techie like me, SaaS is “Software as a Service.” The benefit to it, is that as new features are built, tested, and rolled out, you get immediate access. For example, if Logos were to create, I dunno, an Academic Paper builder much like Sermon Builder (yeah, I’m still a little salty about that not being a thing yet), once it was tested and ready, it would be immediately available to all active subscribers. Meaning, you don’t have to wait for 2 years to go by for the next release to get new features.
Subscription Downs
As much as I personally believe the subscription model is an overall positive thing, there is an obvious downside to it: if you stop paying, you lose access to the premium features. One super important note that has to be pointed out though: you will NEVER lose access to any resources you have a paid license for, or any prior purchased features from any prior version of Logos. If you bought Logos 9 Gold, and you pay for subscription for a few months and then stop, you will never drop back to features less than you had on L9 Gold, and you will never lose resources you bought (books, Mobile Ed courses, etc.).
With that aside, yes, it can feel a bit frustrating to have to pay for it for…well…forever, to keep access to all the new features. But those new features are the reason a subscription model is necessary, which brings us to the next section.
AI Ups
Yes, everything seems to be AI these days. Everywhere you look on social media you see AI’s fingerprints: from the quirky Chat-GPT poems on Twitter (or is it X?) to the obviously-fake 14-fingered soldier’s photograph to generate “likes to pay respects,” it seems like AI has exploded onto the scene. No doubt it has become the next big thing, so why wouldn’t we expect it to crop up in the World’s Top Bible Software?
As for the ups, there are three (for now) that I find worth mentioning here. First is Smart Search, which I’ll be honest, is by far my favorite. Searching in Logos has been a challenge for me, even dating back to the Logos 5 days when I first started using it. Even as a professional software engineer for most of my secular career, learning how to perform the proper searches has been tough. With Logos 10, that got a lot better as the searches became more “plain text” and required memorizing fewer specific keywords and terms. With the new AI-backed search, it’s even better. Now you only need to search for something like, say, Bethsaida, to get good results returned from your library. But when combined with Smart Synopsis, it goes beyond (Plus Ultra, some might even say). Not only do you get good results returned with a simple search like “Bethsaida,” now you also get Smart Synopsis, which provides a plain-text, readable overview of your search result. But it doesn’t stop there. Smart Synopsis also answers questions like Chat-GPT. If I asked it “Where was Bethsaida located in the first century?” it not only tells me a quick snippet of the city, it also tells me where it was located (the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, if you were wondering). Now, why would you care about this when you can just ask Chat-GPT the same thing?
Subscription Ups
As frustrating as the subscription may be to some, let’s start by focusing on the benefits of it. First, it will help enable an entirely new demographic of users to obtain the latest and greatest Logos features. Historically, feature upgrades (which were released every 2 years) were offered on a tiered system: Starter, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Portfolio. Those features cost increasingly more for each tier, sometimes upwards of $500 or more for a one-time purchase. For “power users” of sorts (like I consider myself), this is do-able every couple years because of the power of the tool. But for the average person, that’s a bit much. (Granted, Starter and Bronze feature upgrades were much more affordable).
Now with the subscription model, users can simply pay a small price each month (as little as $10) to get access to the standard Logos features. Even a 2-year subscription paid in advance would be less than the typical cost to upgrade to Gold every two years with a new version. So while some people certainly won’t like the prospect of paying month-to-month or even year-to-year, it will help a lot of folks get access who never have before.
The second major “up” to a subscription is that it allows Logos to push features in a truly SaaS fashion. If you’re not a professional techie like me, SaaS is “Software as a Service.” The benefit to it, is that as new features are built, tested, and rolled out, you get immediate access. For example, if Logos were to create, I dunno, an Academic Paper builder much like Sermon Builder (yeah, I’m still a little salty about that not being a thing yet), once it was tested and ready, it would be immediately available to all active subscribers. Meaning, you don’t have to wait for 2 years to go by for the next release to get new features.
Subscription Downs
As much as I personally believe the subscription model is an overall positive thing, there is an obvious downside to it: if you stop paying, you lose access to the premium features. One super important note that has to be pointed out though: you will NEVER lose access to any resources you have a paid license for, or any prior purchased features from any prior version of Logos. If you bought Logos 9 Gold, and you pay for subscription for a few months and then stop, you will never drop back to features less than you had on L9 Gold, and you will never lose resources you bought (books, Mobile Ed courses, etc.).
With that aside, yes, it can feel a bit frustrating to have to pay for it for…well…forever, to keep access to all the new features. But those new features are the reason a subscription model is necessary, which brings us to the next section.
AI Ups
Yes, everything seems to be AI these days. Everywhere you look on social media you see AI’s fingerprints: from the quirky Chat-GPT poems on Twitter (or is it X?) to the obviously-fake 14-fingered soldier’s photograph to generate “likes to pay respects,” it seems like AI has exploded onto the scene. No doubt it has become the next big thing, so why wouldn’t we expect it to crop up in the World’s Top Bible Software?
As for the ups, there are three (for now) that I find worth mentioning here. First is Smart Search, which I’ll be honest, is by far my favorite. Searching in Logos has been a challenge for me, even dating back to the Logos 5 days when I first started using it. Even as a professional software engineer for most of my secular career, learning how to perform the proper searches has been tough. With Logos 10, that got a lot better as the searches became more “plain text” and required memorizing fewer specific keywords and terms. With the new AI-backed search, it’s even better. Now you only need to search for something like, say, Bethsaida, to get good results returned from your library. But when combined with Smart Synopsis, it goes beyond (Plus Ultra, some might even say). Not only do you get good results returned with a simple search like “Bethsaida,” now you also get Smart Synopsis, which provides a plain-text, readable overview of your search result. But it doesn’t stop there. Smart Synopsis also answers questions like Chat-GPT. If I asked it “Where was Bethsaida located in the first century?” it not only tells me a quick snippet of the city, it also tells me where it was located (the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, if you were wondering). Now, why would you care about this when you can just ask Chat-GPT the same thing?
Well for starters, Smart Synopsis is powered by your library, so the specific resources you purchase will be featured in the synopsis and results. Next, synopsis gives you a reference list to point you to WHERE it got the answer, and this is huge for those who always ask for sources to be cited (like me). I once asked Chat-GPT (last year) to compile a list of the twelve best New Testament Survey textbooks, and at least a quarter of the results it returned weren’t actual books by the authors that Chat-GPT claimed.
The third and final AI-powered new feature is the Summarization tool. This is useful for me when I don’t even know what I want to know, you know? By that I mean, I am sifting through my books on a given topic, but not sure if a given resource addresses what I am looking for. With the Summarize function, you can have the AI read through the chapter and summarize the core information being presented in an article, chapter, or even entire section of a book. In the example below, I opened the book “Embedded Genres in the New Testament” by Jeannine K. Brown, and asked Logos to summarize the section “Embedded Genres and Hermeneutics.” The original section of the book is ≈1800 words, while the summary is about 240. Obviously, if anything piques my interest in the summary I can read through the entire section, but if not, I can skip it and move on.
The third and final AI-powered new feature is the Summarization tool. This is useful for me when I don’t even know what I want to know, you know? By that I mean, I am sifting through my books on a given topic, but not sure if a given resource addresses what I am looking for. With the Summarize function, you can have the AI read through the chapter and summarize the core information being presented in an article, chapter, or even entire section of a book. In the example below, I opened the book “Embedded Genres in the New Testament” by Jeannine K. Brown, and asked Logos to summarize the section “Embedded Genres and Hermeneutics.” The original section of the book is ≈1800 words, while the summary is about 240. Obviously, if anything piques my interest in the summary I can read through the entire section, but if not, I can skip it and move on.
There are additional AI-powered tools in the new Logos (like Sermon Assistant and Bible Study Builder), but I wanted to focus on the tools that will be helpful for anyone, not just those who prepare teachings or lead small groups. Logos promises that more tools will be released in the future that are power by AI as well, and I look forward to it.
AI Downs
There are two major drawbacks to the AI-powered tools, however. First, AI has to be run outside of your device. AI models consume a ton of computing resources, and Logos runs these in an isolated Cloud environment to quickly return the results. This means, however, that without internet access, you won’t be able to get the enhanced functions of the tools I demonstrated above. Now for the average user, this is fine, because we are so rarely without Internet access these days it hardly matters. Still, if you spend a lot of time off-grid, you won’t get much benefit from them. The second drawback is that each usage of an AI feature burns through one of your monthly allowances of “credits.” So far, some users have worked to try to exhaust those credits and have gotten close, but only by intentionally doing so. Logos says there are thousands of uses you can expect every month. If the credits do run short for the remainder of the month, a visual prompt shows up on your screen to indicate when you have reached 80% usage. No word yet on if there will be a remediation for those who max out, such as being able to access or even purchase more, or if more will be made available to higher level subscribers.
The “Other”
Lastly, what about “other” changes?
For one, as mentioned, there is still no Academic Paper builder (sad reax only). There also is not, yet, an improvement to the read-aloud voice on PC. But those could simply be just my minor gripes because those I have explicitly asked for in the past.
One change, which so far I am kind of neutral on, is the new dynamic toolbar. Many users over the years have complained that the growing number of features has made the UI more messy. With L10, Logos helped ease this a bit by moving the tool bar to the left-hand size. With the new Logos, this also gets a little additional tweak, in that the resource tools have been re-arranged and consolidated a bit. Note there’s no loss of functionality, just a bit of a facelift.
Another minor update is that switching between light mode and dark mode no longer requires a restart.
Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Overall, as I said, I like the new direction. As an early adopter (someone who upgrades to the full feature set every two years anyway), it will end up saving me money, and if you’re like me, it’ll likely save you some, too.
If a $500 base package has been out of your reach in the past but $10/mo is doable, definitely use the link below and check it out. Even if you start for just a month. With that, I can also happily say that using my link here will get you a free trial, so you can see if the new features suit your fancy.
As for packages, the new 2025 Base Packages are, in my opinion, not that special. They are built according to persona instead of denomination at this time, meaning, you can purchase Starter, Bronze, Silver, etc. for a leader, or a researcher, or else just the “standard” library set. These have resources tailored across denominational lines for those personas (ie. researcher is more on the reference works, while leader is more on pastoral works). There has been talk of denominational libraries being launched in early 2025, and I do hope so; I’m interested to see what they will look like.
It's worth nothing though that the new 2025 libraries, at present at least, do require a subscription to enable purchase.
I do plan to come back and amend my review once and if the denominational libraries are updated, just to help flesh out a couple additional recommendations. Pricing tiers for the different levels are given in the image below, and the full FAQ can be accessed here.
AI Downs
There are two major drawbacks to the AI-powered tools, however. First, AI has to be run outside of your device. AI models consume a ton of computing resources, and Logos runs these in an isolated Cloud environment to quickly return the results. This means, however, that without internet access, you won’t be able to get the enhanced functions of the tools I demonstrated above. Now for the average user, this is fine, because we are so rarely without Internet access these days it hardly matters. Still, if you spend a lot of time off-grid, you won’t get much benefit from them. The second drawback is that each usage of an AI feature burns through one of your monthly allowances of “credits.” So far, some users have worked to try to exhaust those credits and have gotten close, but only by intentionally doing so. Logos says there are thousands of uses you can expect every month. If the credits do run short for the remainder of the month, a visual prompt shows up on your screen to indicate when you have reached 80% usage. No word yet on if there will be a remediation for those who max out, such as being able to access or even purchase more, or if more will be made available to higher level subscribers.
The “Other”
Lastly, what about “other” changes?
For one, as mentioned, there is still no Academic Paper builder (sad reax only). There also is not, yet, an improvement to the read-aloud voice on PC. But those could simply be just my minor gripes because those I have explicitly asked for in the past.
One change, which so far I am kind of neutral on, is the new dynamic toolbar. Many users over the years have complained that the growing number of features has made the UI more messy. With L10, Logos helped ease this a bit by moving the tool bar to the left-hand size. With the new Logos, this also gets a little additional tweak, in that the resource tools have been re-arranged and consolidated a bit. Note there’s no loss of functionality, just a bit of a facelift.
Another minor update is that switching between light mode and dark mode no longer requires a restart.
Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Overall, as I said, I like the new direction. As an early adopter (someone who upgrades to the full feature set every two years anyway), it will end up saving me money, and if you’re like me, it’ll likely save you some, too.
If a $500 base package has been out of your reach in the past but $10/mo is doable, definitely use the link below and check it out. Even if you start for just a month. With that, I can also happily say that using my link here will get you a free trial, so you can see if the new features suit your fancy.
As for packages, the new 2025 Base Packages are, in my opinion, not that special. They are built according to persona instead of denomination at this time, meaning, you can purchase Starter, Bronze, Silver, etc. for a leader, or a researcher, or else just the “standard” library set. These have resources tailored across denominational lines for those personas (ie. researcher is more on the reference works, while leader is more on pastoral works). There has been talk of denominational libraries being launched in early 2025, and I do hope so; I’m interested to see what they will look like.
It's worth nothing though that the new 2025 libraries, at present at least, do require a subscription to enable purchase.
I do plan to come back and amend my review once and if the denominational libraries are updated, just to help flesh out a couple additional recommendations. Pricing tiers for the different levels are given in the image below, and the full FAQ can be accessed here.