SubhanAllahi wa bihamdihi

How it differs from SubhanAllah

SubhanAllah is the shorter phrase: glory be to Allah.

This one adds wa bihamdihi, and with praise of Him, putting glorification and praise in one sentence.

They carry different counts and belong to different settings, so they are not interchangeable presets.

• SubhanAllah, 33 after each fard prayer: Sahih Muslim 597a.
• SubhanAllahi wa bihamdihi, 100 in a day: Sahih al-Bukhari 6405.

The virtue of the hundred count

In Sahih al-Bukhari 6405, Abu Hurayrah reports the Prophet ﷺ saying that whoever says SubhanAllahi wa bihamdihi a hundred times in a day will be forgiven his sins, even if they were like the foam of the sea.

That is the count, and it belongs to that wording. It is one of the few phrases given an explicit daily hundred.

The related longer phrase

There is a longer wording that adds al-Azim, the Magnificent, and this is where the referencing usually goes wrong.

Sahih al-Bukhari 6682 gives 2 phrases, not one combined phrase: SubhanAllahi wa bihamdihi and SubhanAllahil-Azim. It describes them as easy on the tongue and heavy in the balance, and it gives no count. That pairing is why they are known as the two heavy words, and it is how this site's counter carries them.

The single combined wording SubhanAllahil-Azimi wa bihamdihi is a different text. It is in Jami' at-Tirmidhi 3464, with the date-palm in Paradise, and that narration is graded da'if in the Darussalam edition.

So the two are not interchangeable. Quoting the combined wording and then citing Bukhari 6682 for it puts a sahih reference on a text that collection does not carry.

Where the wording gets mixed up

3 similar phrases, 3 different narrations, and counts that do not transfer between them.

The common errors are attaching the hundred from Bukhari 6405 to the longer wording, or quoting the date-palm reward from Tirmidhi 3464 next to the short phrase without saying that narration is da'if.

Get that wrong in an app and you have the wrong text in a preset, paired with a count that belongs to a different narration and a grading that was never shown.

More of these are collected on 15 tasbih claims that are wrong.

How to fit a hundred into a day

A hundred is not a long sitting. One circuit of a 99-bead strand plus a bead covers it.

A counter holds the running total across interruptions, which is the one thing it does better than a strand.

Splitting it into two sittings is your convenience rather than something the hadith asks for.

Where to go next

For every phrase with its source and count, see what to say on a tasbih.

For the phrase that carries no count, see la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah.