Sermon prep tools compared: Pulpit AI, Sermonly, ChatGPT and PastorPrep
These four come up most often when small-church pastors ask us what they should be using. They are not really competitors with each other; they are built for different jobs. We make the last one, so read the whole thing with that in mind, and check the prices yourself before you decide, because they change.
What each one is actually for
Pulpit AI is for what happens after the sermon. You upload a recording or a manuscript of a sermon you have already preached, and it turns it into clips, devotionals, discussion questions and social posts. If your church has a media volunteer and a Facebook page that needs feeding, this is the tool for that job. It is not built to help you write the sermon in the first place.
Sermonly is for research and drafting. It helps you gather background on a passage, build an outline, and draft, with Bible references handled inside the tool. It is closer to a study assistant than a writing partner, and it does not know how you preach.
ChatGPT is a general tool that a lot of pastors already use, often a little guiltily. It can do a piece of almost everything above if you prompt it carefully. It does not know your voice unless you teach it every time, it will confidently misquote Scripture, and it will not remember last week.
PastorPrep is for the weekly Sunday workflow of a pastor who wants to stay the author: you write as much as you want (a main idea, an outline, or the whole manuscript) and it keeps what you wrote word for word, drafts the rest in your voice if you ask, learned from two or three sermons you have already preached, and labels every part with who wrote it; every Bible reference checked against your translation before you see it; and a bulletin drafted from the finished sermon, with your order of service and last week's announcements already in it. It does not make clips, and it does not do your study for you.
Side by side
| Pulpit AI | Sermonly | ChatGPT | PastorPrep | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sermon research and outlines | no | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Drafts in your voice | from recordings | no | only if you re-teach it each time | learned from past sermons |
| Drafts from your own main idea and outlineyour headings kept, no points added | no | no | if you ask; not enforced | ✓ |
| Labels what you wrote and what AI wrote | no | no | no | ✓ |
| Second reader for a sermon you wrote | chat with an upload | suggestions in its editor | ✓ | ✓ |
| Bible references checked against your translation | ✓ | ✓ | no | ✓ |
| Bulletin drafted from the sermon | no | no | no | ✓ |
| Follows your order of service | no | no | no | ✓ |
| Hymns from your hymnal | no | no | no | ✓ |
| Repurposes finished sermonsclips, devotionals, social | ✓ | no | with effort | study guide and handouts; no clips yet |
| Price per monthas listed October 2026 | $39 to $129 | $19.99 | $20 | $19 |
Prices are what each company listed when we last checked and will drift. If one of these is wrong, email hello@pastorprep.com and we will fix it the same week.
How to choose
- You have finished sermons and a hungry social feed: Pulpit AI. Nothing else on this list does that job well.
- You want help studying and outlining, and you will write the sermon yourself from there: Sermonly, or honestly, a good commentary and the outline format in our guide.
- You want one general tool for everything and you are prepared to check every verse it quotes: ChatGPT. Many pastors do this and it works, at the cost of an hour of prompting and checking a week.
- You want help with some of the sermon and not the rest, you want it to keep what you wrote and label what it wrote, you want the verses checked, and the bulletin is also on your Saturday: PastorPrep. That is the specific pastor we built for.
What "in your voice" means, and does not
Because it is the phrase most likely to be oversold, here is what PastorPrep actually does. You upload two or three sermons you have already preached. It learns the shape of your sentences, the words you reach for, the way you move from text to application. When you give it your outline, the draft it hands back is in that shape, with your headings as you typed them and no points added. It is a first draft. You edit it, and you will edit it, because it is your sermon and it needs your Saturday judgment. What it does not do is preach for you, invent illustrations from your life, or know what your congregation went through this week. That is still you.
Try the voice part before you decide anything.
Send us the passage you are preaching this Sunday, and two past sermons if you have them handy. Within 24 hours you will have an outline back, drafted by PastorPrep, in your voice. Vivian reads every request herself. Free, no account, no card, whether or not you ever pay us.
If you want the whole workflow
PastorPrep is $19 a month, one price. There is a 14-day free trial that starts when you write something, and no card to start. Start free, or read how it works.