Electrician's Bible

Review by eFreeware

Electrician's Bible is a paid Android reference and calculation tool from the developer Quky, built around the 2023 edition of the National Electrical Code. It has been on the Play Store since early 2013 and carries a 4.8 average from 2,030 ratings, with more than 10,000 installs. The pitch is straightforward: the calculations and code tables an electrician reaches for during a shift, gathered into one app instead of spread across a codebook, a calculator and a notebook.

What makes me take it seriously is the breadth. Voltage drop, conductor sizing, box fill, conduit bending, motor and transformer figures, load calculations and grounding information all sit under one roof, alongside reference material like burial depths, NEMA configurations and wire color codes. The recent update restored a full panel color chart and added a circuit lookup view, which suggests the developer is still tending to the app rather than leaving it as it was.

The trade-off is equally clear: this is a paid download, and it assumes you already know what you are doing. It is not a teaching course or a licensing exam prep guide. It is a working reference for people who already speak the language of the trade and want the answers faster.

Who gets the most from this app

The app is aimed at a broad audience: electricians, electrical contractors, technicians, students and other electrical professionals. That covers a wide range of working situations, from someone pulling wire in a multifamily building to an apprentice trying to make sense of a code table at the kitchen table.

In practice, I would expect the app to land best with people who already work in the field and need figures quickly. A journeyman sizing a feeder, a contractor checking a service load before quoting a job, or a technician working through a motor circuit would all find the relevant tools grouped together rather than scattered across separate references.

Students and apprentices are a real part of the audience too, since the app includes formulas, a formula wheel, the power triangle and series and parallel calculations. Those are the building blocks of electrical coursework, and having them in the same place as the code references makes the app useful for study as well as for the job site.

Anyone who wants a guided introduction to electrical work, with lessons and explanations of why a calculation works the way it does, will find this suits that goal. The app is organized around reference and calculation, not instruction, and it is priced as a professional tool rather than a casual download.

Calculations at the core

The calculation side is the heart of the app. Voltage drop and minimum conductor size are the two most common requests in day-to-day electrical work, and both are here. The conductor and raceway side also covers ampacity and wire sizing, box fill, pull box sizing, conduit and raceway calculations, and cable tray work.

In a trade where measurements rarely come out in neat whole numbers, having those conveniences alongside the bigger calculations saves reaching for a separate app or a paper conversion chart.

The value of grouping these together is that a single job often needs several of them in sequence. A feeder run might involve voltage drop, conductor sizing and raceway fill before you are done, and having them in one app means less switching between references while you work.

The developer also includes search and favorites, which matters more than it sounds in an app with this many tools. Being able to pin the calculations you use most, rather than scrolling through categories every time, is the difference between a reference you keep open and one you stop opening.

Conduit bending and raceway work

Conduit bending gets its own set of tools, and it is one of the areas where a calculation app earns its keep. Offset bends, three-bend saddles, rolling offsets and segment bending are all covered, along with double 45-degree and 90-degree bends. Conduit support information is included as well.

Bending is where arithmetic in the field gets awkward, particularly with rolling offsets where the geometry is not obvious at a glance. Having the calculations on hand, rather than working them out on the side of a piece of conduit, is the kind of thing that pays for itself over a few jobs.

Raceway and conductor information sits alongside the bending tools, so the app covers both the bend you are about to make and the raceway it is going into. For anyone whose work is mostly pipe work, this section plus the conductor tools is likely to be the most-used part of the app.

Motors, transformers and load calculations

The motor and transformer section is the most specialized part of the app. It includes a multi-motor calculator, motor overcurrent protection, NEMA starter calculations and locked-rotor calculations, plus a multi-compressor calculator. On the transformer side there is sizing, overcurrent protection, short-circuit calculations and delta-wye calculations.

Those are not everyday figures for every electrician, but for anyone working with motor circuits or transformer installations they are exactly the calculations that are easy to get wrong under time pressure. Having them structured in one place, rather than reconstructed from memory or a codebook index, is a meaningful advantage.

Load calculations are similarly broad. The app covers residential and single-family work, range and dryer calculations, service and feeder calculations, and bank, store, school, multifamily dwelling, office building and restaurant loads, along with motor loads. That range reflects how varied the work is: a service calculation for a house looks nothing like one for a restaurant, and the app treats them as separate cases rather than one generic form.

For contractors estimating jobs across different building types, this is probably the strongest argument for keeping the app installed. The same tool handles a dwelling, a retail space and a school without needing a different reference for each.

Code references and field information

Beyond calculations, the app carries a body of reference material tied to NEC 2023. That covers code tables and references, raceway and conductor data, grounding and bonding, and burial depth. The app also includes NEMA device configurations, electrical symbols and schematics, and wire and phase color codes.

The recent update fits this part of the app: the full panel color chart is back, and you can switch between the full chart and a circuit lookup view, with circuit colors for all four panels. For anyone doing panel work, that is a practical addition, and the developer notes it came back by popular request.

A further set of professional tools covers arc-flash information and calculations, NFPA 70E reference material, torque specifications, electrical schematics, network cable wiring pinouts, and conversions for temperature, energy, length, AWG and torque. These are the details that tend to come up once and then be urgently needed, which is a good argument for having them in the same app as everything else.

The app is described as a single tool for the field, the shop, the classroom or the job site, and the range of material supports that. It is reference-heavy by design, which is what makes it useful and also what makes it dense.

What it costs and what you get

Electrician's Bible costs $4.99 as a one-time paid download. There are no ads, and there are no in-app purchases. The price at the store is the whole cost of the app.

That model is worth noting because it is increasingly unusual. A paid app with no advertising and no purchase prompts means the experience is not interrupted, and it also means the developer's incentives are aligned with the app being good enough to justify its price rather than with how many people see an ad.

For a professional tool, $4.99 is a modest outlay, and the app has the install base and rating history to suggest it has been useful to a lot of people over the years. The decision rests on whether the features match the work you actually do.

If your work only occasionally touches electrical calculations, the price is still small, but the value depends on how often you would open it. For someone using it weekly or daily, the cost is easy to justify against the time saved looking things up elsewhere.

How it compares with the alternatives

The obvious alternatives are a printed codebook, a general-purpose calculator, and a dedicated electrical reference app. A codebook is authoritative and familiar, but it is not searchable in the way an app is, and it does not do calculations for you. A general calculator handles the arithmetic but not the structure of an electrical problem.

A dedicated electrical app is the closest comparison, and the differences come down to coverage and price model. This one is a single paid download with no advertising. Some others may focus on one area, such as conduit bending or load calculations, rather than gathering a wide range of tools.

The other thing to weigh is currency. The app is built around NEC 2023, and the developer has continued to update it, including the recent panel color chart work. Code references age, and an app that keeps pace with the current edition has an advantage over one that does not.

What I would not expect this app to replace is training or judgment. It provides figures and references; it does not tell you which calculation applies to a given installation, and it does not walk you through the reasoning. That part remains with the person holding the phone.

A working reference for the trade

Electrician's Bible is a focused, paid reference and calculation app for electrical work, built around NEC 2023 and covering everything from voltage drop and conduit bending to motor, transformer and load calculations, plus grounding, burial depth, color codes and arc-flash information.

It suits electricians, contractors, technicians and students who already know the trade and want the numbers and tables close at hand. The $4.99 price, with no ads and no in-app purchases, is a straightforward proposition for anyone who would use it regularly. For occasional users, the value depends on how often the work comes up.

If you want a single place for the calculations and code references that come up on the job, this is a well-established option with a long track record and a broad feature set. If you are looking for instruction or a guided introduction to electrical work, the app is built for reference rather than teaching, and that is the main thing to weigh before buying.

What's new in version 1.3.1.12

Circuit Colors just got better! • Full Panel Color Chart is back by popular request • Switch between Full Chart and Circuit Lookup views • Quickly view circuit colors for all 4 panels • Improved usability and minor fixes Thanks for your feedback — we’re listening!