Transparency
How ZohaNur earns, what it costs to run, who receives what, and the promises that hold either way.
A project that carries religious content and asks for trust owes people an exact account of its money. This page tries to meet that obligation. If anything here is unclear, ask — donate@zohanur.app.
How ZohaNur earns#
ZohaNur is an independent developer's business, and its income is straightforward:
- Premium features, purchased through Google Play billing. Google retains its platform share (15% at the current small-developer rate) and the remainder is the project's revenue, accounted and taxed through a GST-registered business.
- Voluntary support from people who choose to support the developer directly.
That is the whole model. There is no advertising revenue, no sale of data, no sponsored content, and no third income stream that is not written on this page.
Please do not give your zakat to this project#
Zakat has eight categories of recipient named in the Quran (Surah at-Tawbah 9:60). A software project is not clearly among them, and stretching those categories to fit our own work would be a serious thing to get wrong.
ZohaNur does not accept zakat. Give your zakat to those the Quran names — the poor, the destitute, those in debt, and the rest — through people who will place it correctly. The zakat calculator in the app exists to help you work out what you owe, not to direct it here.
What ZohaNur accepts is sadaqah: voluntary charity, given freely, with no claim on it.
What it actually costs#
ZohaNur has deliberately low running costs, because it was designed to work offline. There is no user database, no sync server, and no backend that scales with users — which is why a hundred thousand installs costs almost the same to run as a hundred.
The recurring costs are roughly these:
| What | Why it exists |
|---|---|
| Domain and hosting | This site, and the addresses every app link points to. |
| Play Store and signing | Publishing and updating four apps. |
| Audio and content delivery | Serving recitation and offline data packs. |
| Testing devices | Android fragmentation is real; alarms and audio break differently on different manufacturers. |
| Content review | Paying qualified people to check translations, gradings and fiqh points. |
The largest line, and the one most worth funding, is the last. Software bugs are embarrassing; a mistranslated ayah or a weak narration presented as authentic is something else. Scholarly review costs money and it is the thing this project most needs to be able to afford.
The part people usually leave out#
ZohaNur is built by one person, in the hours left over after a full-time job and a family. That is the real constraint on the project — not servers.
So this is said plainly rather than buried: revenue from premium and any direct support goes to the developer and his family. That is not a leak in the model; it is the model. A person may earn from beneficial work, and this project's costs — including the cost of the developer's time — are carried by that income.
What would be improper is implying every rupee goes to servers. It does not, and you should know that before you buy premium or give anything.
What your support does not buy#
- It does not buy features. Requests are welcome from everyone equally. Contributions do not move anything up the queue.
- It does not buy influence over religious content. No donor decides which translation is included, how a hadith is graded, or what a fiqh page says.
- Direct support does not unlock anything. Premium is a product with a price, bought through Google Play like any other. Support given on this page buys no features, no priority, and no influence — it is simply support.
What we promise#
- The apps stay free of charge, free of advertising, and free of tracking.
- Costs and how support was used will be summarised publicly once a year.
- Zakat will not be accepted, and sadaqah will not be solicited inside the apps with pressure, guilt, or interruptions to worship. There is a link. That is all.
- If the project is ever handed to someone else or wound down, that will be announced here in advance, not discovered by users.
If you cannot give#
Most people reading this should not give anything, and that is entirely fine.
If you want to help and money is not the way, these are worth more than small donations: report a mistake in the religious content; tell someone who would benefit from the app; translate a section into your language; leave an honest review so the apps reach people searching for them; and make du'a for the work and for those who use it.
When a person dies, his deeds come to an end except for three: a continuing charity, knowledge that is benefited from, and a righteous child who prays for him.
— reported in Sahih Muslim
That narration is the whole intention behind ZohaNur. Everything else on this page is administration.