Type it your way
Devanagari, IAST, IAST without diacritics, a common English spelling, SLP1, Harvard-Kyoto, WX or Velthuis. The app detects the scheme; you never choose one.
- कृष्ण
- kṛṣṇa
- krsna
- krishna
- kfzRa
- kRSNa
Sanskrit dictionary for iPhone, iPad & Mac
शब्दकोशःThe Sanskrit dictionary that understands how you actually type.
Look up any Sanskrit word the way you already have it: in Devanagari, in IAST, as plain krishna, or in any transliteration scheme. Get clear English meanings from 12 classical dictionaries, the root word behind an inflected form, and full declension tables. Native on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Free to download with 3 searches a day. Unlimited from $1.99 a month, or $19.99 once, forever.
- 250,000+ headwords
- 12 dictionaries · 9 indexes
- iPhone, iPad & Mac
- No tracking, ever
At a glance
Sanskrit Lexicon in one table
| What it is | A Sanskrit-to-English dictionary app. App Store name: Sanskrit Lexicon: Dictionary. |
|---|---|
| Platforms | Native apps for iPhone, iPad and Mac. Requires iOS 26, iPadOS 26 or macOS 26 or later. One purchase covers all three. |
| Coverage | 250,000+ headwords from 12 classical Sanskrit–English dictionaries and 9 specialized indexes, digitised by the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon. |
| Search input | Devanagari, IAST, IAST without diacritics, common English spelling, SLP1, Harvard-Kyoto, WX, Velthuis. Scheme detected automatically. |
| Grammar | Root word for declined and conjugated forms with case, number and gender; full declension tables in IAST or Devanagari. |
| Meanings | Grouped by context, not by dictionary. Simplified or Scholar view. Search by Context builds your own categories with a percentage match. |
| Your words | Favorites, recents and personal notes, synced through iCloud. Word of the Day widget with a favorite star. |
| System | Siri and Shortcuts, Spotlight, home screen widget, Light and Dark Mode, Dynamic Type, VoiceOver, Voice Control. |
| Price | Free with 3 searches a day. Unlimited: $1.99/month, $9.99/year (7-day free trial) or $19.99 once. Family Sharing on every plan. US prices. |
| Privacy | No accounts, no analytics, no ads. App Store label: Data Not Collected. Privacy policy. |
| Developer | Natasha Murashev (@NatashaTheRobot), an independent developer and Sanskrit student. Also makes the SanskritTypist keyboard. |
| Age rating | 4+. Interface in English; Sanskrit shown in Devanagari and IAST throughout. |
Why it exists
Looking up one Sanskrit word should not take an hour.
Sanskrit Lexicon was built by a Sanskrit student who kept watching classmates get stuck on the same three things every time they opened a dictionary.
Special keyboards
Most Sanskrit dictionaries expect Devanagari, IAST with every diacritic in place, or a scheme like SLP1 or Harvard-Kyoto. If you have krsna or krishna, you are stuck before you start.
Sanskrit Lexicon accepts all of them. No special keyboard, no transliteration tool. Type it and go.
Inflected forms
Texts do not contain headwords. They contain शिवाय, rāmeṇa, gacchati. A traditional dictionary only knows the root, so you have to work out the grammar first.
Sanskrit Lexicon recognises the form, tells you the case, number and gender, and takes you to the root.
A hundred definitions
Aggregators return everything from a dozen dictionaries in one long list. The deity, the plant, the grammatical term and the river all run together.
Sanskrit Lexicon groups meanings by context, with a plain Simplified reading beside the original Scholar text.
No special keyboard. No transliteration tools. Just type and go. Spend more time reading and less time troubleshooting. From the launch post on Ginger Sunrise, June 2025
Everything it does
A complete Sanskrit dictionary, built for reading.
Every feature below is in the app today, on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
The root behind the form
Search शिवाय and the result reads śiva · neuter, dative, singular. Verbs come back with their conjugation. Tap through to the root's meanings and tables.
Meanings grouped by context
Instead of one list per dictionary, definitions are organised into contexts: The Deity Śiva, Plants and Plant Products, Auspicious, Happy, Favorable. Each definition names its source dictionary.
Simplified or Scholar
Most definitions carry a plain-English Simplified reading beside the Scholar text as printed, with its original abbreviations, italics, colours and live links to the source edition. Where no Simplified reading exists yet, the Scholar text stands on its own.
Search by Context
Describe where you met the word, a story about a forest, digestive fire in Ayurveda, and the definitions that fit are collected into your own category at the top, each with a percentage match. How it works
Full declension tables
Every case, number and gender for nouns and adjectives that have them, in IAST or Devanagari at a tap. On the Mac the tables open in their own resizable window. See the tables
Favorites, recents and notes
Star the words you are learning, find the ten you opened most recently, and write your own note on any word. Notes appear right on the word's page and in Spotlight.
iCloud sync
Favorites, notes and custom categories follow you from iPhone to iPad to Mac through your own iCloud account. Nothing passes through the developer.
Word of the Day and widget
A curated word every day, on the search screen, in Siri, and in a small or medium home screen widget. The medium size carries a star: tap it to favorite the word without opening the app. Flips at local midnight, the same word on every device.
Siri and Shortcuts
“Look up a word in Sanskrit Lexicon.” Siri reads the definition back, offers a picker when several words match, and lets you choose the context. Every action is also a Shortcut. All the phrases
Spotlight
Your saved words appear in system search by Devanagari, IAST, SLP1, Harvard-Kyoto, WX or a diacritic-free spelling, the text of your note, or the name of a category you made. Open one straight from Spotlight.
Share a definition
Send any definition, with the word in both scripts and the dictionary it came from, to Messages, WhatsApp, Mail, Notes or anywhere else. Text is selectable everywhere for copying.
Day and night
A painted teal sky with soft clouds by day; a deep teal night with stars after dark. The app follows your system appearance until you tap the sun-and-moon button, which pins day or night. The same palette you see on this page.
Accessible by design
Dynamic Type up to the largest accessibility sizes with layouts that reflow, VoiceOver announcements for searches and saves, Voice Control labels, Reduce Motion, Increase Contrast and 44-point targets throughout.
Private by design
No accounts, no analytics, no ads, no tracking. The App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected. Your saved words live on your device and in your own iCloud.
A real Mac app
Not a port: a native Mac app with a sidebar of results, ⌘F find with match highlights and a counter, declension tables in their own window, and your iCloud words waiting. More about the Mac
Grammar
Search a declined form. Get the root, the case, and the whole table.
Sanskrit texts never hand you a headword. Search the form you actually see, शिवाय or rāmeṇa, and Sanskrit Lexicon resolves it: the root word in Devanagari and IAST, its gender, the case and number of the form you typed. Conjugated verbs come back with their conjugation.
From any word, View Declension Tables lays out the full paradigm: nominative to locative, singular, dual and plural, for every gender the word takes. Switch between IAST and Devanagari with one tap. Cases are named in both traditions, Nominative and प्रथमा.
On iPhone a floating gender picker jumps between masculine, feminine and neuter. On the Mac the tables open in their own resizable window so they can sit beside the text you are reading.
The same table in Devanagari names the cases the traditional way, प्रथमा to सप्तमी.
Search by Context
One word, many meanings. Tell it which one you need.
अग्नि (agni) is the god of fire in the epics and the digestive fire in an Ayurveda text. योग (yoga) is a discipline, a union, a conjunction of stars. Sanskrit Lexicon already groups definitions into contexts, but your text may need a context nobody pre-built.
Type a short description in Search by Context: digestive fire in Ayurveda, a ritual, grammar, a mantra. The app searches the word's definitions by meaning and collects the ones that fit into a new category pinned to the top, each with a percentage match. Remove any definition that does not belong, or delete the whole category. The dictionary's own categories stay untouched underneath.
On Apple Intelligence devices the category gets a tidy title written on device. Your categories sync through iCloud and are searchable in Spotlight.
Siri, Shortcuts, Spotlight, widget
Ask for a word without opening the app.
Sanskrit Lexicon is built on App Intents, so the system knows what a Sanskrit word is. Siri also answers to Sanskrit Dictionary.
Say to Siri
Look up a word in Sanskrit Lexicon
Siri asks which word, searches, and reads the definition back. Several matches? You get a picker.Open yoga in Sanskrit Lexicon
Jumps straight to a word's page. Works with any word you have opened before.What's the Sanskrit Lexicon word of the day
Today's curated word with its lead definition. Never counts as a search.
When a word has several contexts, Siri offers a context picker, including the categories you made yourself. Misheard Sanskrit gets a friendly second try. Voice lookups work best on Apple Intelligence devices.
Shortcuts actions
- Look Up Sanskrit Word: searches and returns the definition, with an optional context.
- Sanskrit Word of the Day: today's word and definition.
- Open Sanskrit Word: opens a word's page in the app.
- Search Sanskrit Lexicon: the system search action, also used by Spotlight.
Chain them into your own automations: a morning word in a notification, a lookup from a text selection, a study list.
Spotlight and the widget
Every word you favorite, note or open is indexed for Spotlight under its Devanagari, IAST and transliterated spellings, plus your note text and category names. Search forest and find the word you filed under a story about a forest.
The Word of the Day widget comes in small and medium sizes. The medium one shows the lead definition and an interactive star: favorite the word without opening the app. It shows tomorrow's word the moment midnight passes.
One word, one screen
The whole word, not just a gloss.
Open राम and everything about it is on one screen: your own note at the top, the root रम् (ram) it comes from, the etymology as the dictionary gives it, a button to the full declension tables, and its meanings sorted into contexts.
Notes are yours. Write what your teacher said, what a verse needed, what to check next time. They sit above the definitions, sync to your other devices, and Spotlight finds the word by what you wrote.
Below that, the meanings: Terms Associated with Rāmacandra, Plants and Plant Products, Other Individuals Named Rāma. Tap a context and only those definitions open, each naming the dictionary it came from.
Day and night
A painted sky by day. Stars after dark.
The background is drawn by the app itself, not a photograph: soft cumulus over teal by day, and after dark a deep teal night with still stars. The app follows your system appearance until you tap the sun-and-moon button, which pins whichever you prefer.
Every screenshot on this page follows your choice: switch this site to dark and you will see the app at night throughout.
iPad and Mac
Room to read.
On iPad and Mac the results sit in a sidebar and the word opens beside them, over one continuous sky. The Mac app is native, not a port.
Mac details
- ⌘F opens Find on the word's page, with yellow highlights, a match counter and auto-expanding groups.
- Esc clears the search field; Return searches.
- Declension tables open in a separate, resizable window that remembers its place.
- Hidden title bar and a translucent sidebar; the sky runs behind both columns.
- Everything syncs with your iPhone and iPad through iCloud, including notes and custom categories.
The dictionaries
Which dictionaries are included?
Twelve classical Sanskrit–English dictionaries and nine specialized indexes, more than 250,000 headwords, from the digitised editions of the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon at the University of Cologne. Every definition in the app names the dictionary it came from, and Scholar view links back to the source.
Dictionaries
- Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899)
- Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1872)
- Apte, The Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary
- Wilson, A Dictionary in Sanscrit and English
- Yates, A Dictionary in Sanscrit and English
- Macdonell, A Practical Sanskrit Dictionary
- Cappeller, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary
- Śabda-Sāgara Sanskrit-English Dictionary
- Goldstücker, A Dictionary, Sanskrit and English
- Benfey, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary
- Lanman, Sanskrit Reader vocabulary
- Vaidya, The Standard Sanskrit-English Dictionary
Specialized indexes
- Sørensen, Index to the Names in the Mahābhārata
- Mahābhārata Cultural Index
- Macdonell & Keith, Vedic Index of Names and Subjects
- Dikshitar, Purāṇa Index
- Vettam Mani, Purāṇic Encyclopaedia
- Meulenbeld, Sanskrit Names of Plants
- Sircar, Indian Epigraphical Glossary
- and further Cologne indexes of names and terms
Proper names, plants, places and Vedic terms often appear only in an index, not in a general dictionary. Sanskrit Lexicon searches them all at once.
अनन्त (ananta) · without end
How much does Sanskrit Lexicon cost?
Free to download, with three dictionary searches a day. Unlimited removes the limit, on iPhone, iPad and Mac together, and every plan supports Family Sharing. Prices in US dollars; local prices vary.
Free
$0
3 searches a day, reset at midnight.
- Word of the Day, every day
- Favorites, recents and notes
- Declension tables and Search by Context
- Widget, Spotlight, iCloud sync
Unlimited Monthly
$1.99 / month
Cancel anytime.
- Unlimited searches, every day
- Siri and Shortcuts lookups included
- Share with your family
Best value
Unlimited Yearly
$9.99 / year
7 days free, then $9.99 a year. About $0.83 a month.
- Unlimited searches, every day
- A reminder two days before the trial ends
- Share with your family
Unlimited Lifetime
$19.99 once
Pay once, keep forever.
- Unlimited searches, every day
- No renewal, ever
- Share with your family
Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the period; manage or cancel in Settings › Subscriptions. Restore Purchases is in the app. Buying Unlimited supports an independent Sanskrit dictionary.
Recommended companion
Get SanskritTypist
Type Devanagari and IAST directly with SanskritTypist
Sanskrit Lexicon accepts any spelling, but the most precise results come from typing the word in its own script. SanskritTypist is a keyboard for iPhone and iPad by the same developer: type raama on the ordinary QWERTY layout and get राम or rāma in any app, including this dictionary's search field. Sanskrit Lexicon even offers it the first time you type a search.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Is there a Sanskrit dictionary app for iPhone, iPad and Mac?
Yes. Sanskrit Lexicon is a native Sanskrit–English dictionary app for iPhone, iPad and Mac (iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS 26 or later). One purchase covers all three, and your favorites, notes and custom categories sync between them through iCloud. It is free to download with three searches a day; Unlimited plans remove the limit.
Which Sanskrit dictionaries does Sanskrit Lexicon include?
Twelve classical Sanskrit–English dictionaries and nine specialized indexes, more than 250,000 headwords in all, from the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon: Monier-Williams (1899 and 1872), Apte, Wilson, Yates, Macdonell, Cappeller, Śabda-Sāgara, Goldstücker, Benfey, Lanman and Vaidya, plus indexes such as the Mahābhārata Index, Vedic Index, Purāṇa Index, Purāṇic Encyclopaedia, Meulenbeld's Sanskrit Names of Plants and the Indian Epigraphical Glossary. Every definition names the dictionary it came from.
Do I need a Devanagari or IAST keyboard to search?
No. Type the word however you have it: Devanagari, IAST with diacritics, IAST without diacritics (krsna), a common English spelling (krishna), or SLP1, Harvard-Kyoto, WX or Velthuis. The app detects the scheme. If you do want to type Devanagari or IAST directly, the SanskritTypist keyboard by the same developer works inside the search field and gives the most precise matches.
Can I look up a declined or conjugated form and find the root word?
Yes. Search an inflected form such as शिवाय (śivāya) or gacchati and the results show the root headword with a grammatical analysis: for a noun the gender, case and number; for a verb its conjugation. Tap through to the root's definitions and full declension tables.
Is Sanskrit Lexicon free?
The app is free to download and includes 3 dictionary searches a day, which reset at midnight. Word of the Day, opening saved words, notes, favorites, declension tables, Search by Context, the widget, finding your saved words in Spotlight and iCloud sync never count against the limit. Only a new dictionary search does, wherever you start it — in the app, from Spotlight, or through Siri. Unlimited searches cost $1.99 a month, $9.99 a year with a 7-day free trial, or $19.99 once for life (US prices; local prices vary). All plans support Family Sharing.
Does Sanskrit Lexicon work offline?
New searches need an internet connection, because the 250,000-headword dictionary lives on a server rather than in the app. Words you have already opened are kept on the device, so favorites, recent words, notes and their definitions open without a connection. A search attempted while offline is not counted against your daily free searches.
Does Sanskrit Lexicon work with Siri and Shortcuts?
Yes. Say “Look up a word in Sanskrit Lexicon”, “Open yoga in Sanskrit Lexicon” or “What's the Sanskrit Lexicon word of the day”. Siri shows a word card, offers a picker when several words match, and lets you choose the context when a word has several. Voice lookups work best on Apple Intelligence devices; the same actions are available as Shortcuts on any supported device. Siri also answers to “Sanskrit Dictionary”.
Does it sync between my iPhone, iPad and Mac?
Yes. Favorites, recent words, notes and your custom context categories sync through your own iCloud account using CloudKit. The developer never sees this data. The daily free-search count is per device and does not sync.
What is Search by Context?
A Sanskrit word like अग्नि (agni) has meanings that depend on where you met it: the fire god in an epic, digestive fire in an Ayurveda text. Type a short description of your context, such as “digestive fire in Ayurveda”, and Sanskrit Lexicon uses semantic search to collect the definitions that fit into a new category pinned to the top, each with a percentage match. You can remove definitions that don't belong, delete the category, and on Apple Intelligence devices the category gets a tidy on-device title.
Is Sanskrit Lexicon a Sanskrit-to-English or English-to-Sanskrit dictionary?
Sanskrit to English. You search for a Sanskrit word, in any script or spelling, and read its English definitions from the source dictionaries. It is not an English-to-Sanskrit thesaurus, though Search by Context lets you describe in English which sense of a Sanskrit word you are after.
How is Sanskrit Lexicon different from the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon website?
The dictionary text is the same; Sanskrit Lexicon is built on the Cologne project's digitised editions and links back to them. The difference is the experience: search from a phone in any spelling without choosing a scheme, get inflected forms resolved to their root, see definitions grouped by context with a plain Simplified reading, and keep favorites, notes and declension tables in one native app. For scholars who want every edition's scanned page, the Cologne website remains the reference.
Does Sanskrit Lexicon collect my data?
No. There are no accounts, no analytics and no advertising SDKs; the App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected. Search terms are sent to the dictionary server only to look up definitions and are not tied to you. Saved words and notes live on your device and, if you enable it, in your private iCloud database. Read the privacy policy.
Does the app support large text, VoiceOver and Dark Mode?
Yes. Text follows Dynamic Type up to the largest accessibility sizes, with layouts that reflow rather than truncate. VoiceOver announces search progress and results, controls carry Voice Control labels, Reduce Motion stills the sky, and Increase Contrast thickens outlines. The app follows your system appearance, and a sun-and-moon button in the toolbar pins day or night when you want to choose.
Recently added
What's new in Sanskrit Lexicon
- Free to start. Three searches a day free, with Unlimited Monthly, Yearly (7-day trial) and Lifetime plans.
- Dark Mode. A starry night sky and a full night palette, with an in-app toggle.
- Search by Context. Your own categories, ranked by match.
- Favorite from the widget. A star on the Word of the Day widget.
- Siri, Shortcuts and Spotlight. Look up, open and hear the word of the day.
- Simplified definitions beside the Scholar text.
- Larger text fixes across the search bar, pickers, tables and the paywall.
- Clear Search Results button, faster launch, and a Mac search fix.
Spend more time reading Sanskrit.
Free to download. Your first word is a search away.