How to Choose a Bible Reading Plan
By Dom · · 11 min read
It is Sunday night and you have six reading plans open in six tabs. One is chronological. One is ninety days. One pairs a psalm with every reading. The ninety-day plan looks the most serious, so you choose it, and for a week it goes well.
By week three it wants forty minutes from a Tuesday that has eight. Nothing was wrong with you, and nothing was wrong with the plan. They were simply sized for different mornings. This guide starts where most guides stop: with the minutes you actually have, turned into days, for your tradition’s Bible.
Key takeaways
- Start with your minutes. At about 9 minutes a day the Protestant canon takes 366 days; the Catholic takes 418 and the Orthodox 444.
- Five minutes a day reads the Protestant canon in about 659 days, a little under two years. Twenty minutes does it in about 165.
- A 180-day plan costs about 18 minutes a day for the Protestant canon, and a 90-day plan about 37. Price the pace before you start.
- Four questions settle the plan shape: your goal, the order, the minutes, and whether you read alone or with others.
- If the minutes stop fitting, change the pace before you change the plan. Switching is choosing again, not quitting.
Start with your minutes, not the plan
Most guides to this question end the same way: pick a plan that fits your schedule and your pace. That is good advice with the useful part missing. None of them says what pace a given plan asks for, so you pick by how a plan sounds and find out three weeks in whether it fits.
A plan is worth choosing well. In the American Bible Society’s State of the Bible 2026 survey (2,649 US adults, fielded by NORC at the University of Chicago, January 8–27, 2026), nearly three-quarters (74%) of people who use a Bible reading guide, schedule, plan or program said they have read most or all of the Bible. That is an association, not proof that plans cause finishing. People who finish may simply be the kind of people who use plans. But it is a good reason not to pick one carelessly.
Here is the turn this post asks you to make. Choosing a plan looks like a content question: chronological or front to back, one year or two. Underneath, it is also a time question, and that is the half most guides skip. Every plan that covers the whole Bible covers the same words. What changes is how many of them land on each day, and whether your mornings can hold that many.
So before you look at a single plan, find one number: the minutes you could give on an ordinary busy weekday. Not your best morning. The ordinary one, with the late night before it and the early meeting after it.
That number matters more than it seems. Lifeway Research’s State of Discipleship study (an online survey of 2,130 US Protestant churchgoers who attend at least monthly, March 19–26, 2025) found 31% read the Bible every day and another 30% a few times a week. Even among people committed enough to be in church most weeks, the common rhythm is regular, not daily. A plan that only works on a perfect week will meet a normal one sooner or later. Choose for the normal one.
What your daily minutes buy: the table
The arithmetic is short. Take the word count of your tradition’s Bible, divide by an ordinary reading pace of 220 words a minute, and you have the total reading time. The Protestant canon is 724,811 words, about 3,295 minutes. The Catholic canon is 828,590 words, about 3,766 minutes. The Orthodox canon is 879,155 words, about 3,996 minutes. Divide any of those by your daily minutes and you have the number of days to read it cover to cover.
| Minutes a day | Protestant (724,811 words) | Catholic (828,590 words) | Orthodox (879,155 words) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 659 days | 753 days | 799 days |
| 9 | 366 days | 418 days | 444 days |
| 15 | 220 days | 251 days | 266 days |
| 20 | 165 days | 188 days | 200 days |
Three things stand out once the numbers are in front of you.
- Nine minutes is where a year lands for the Protestant canon. The Catholic and Orthodox canons are longer, so a year asks for about 10.3 and 10.9 minutes a day. We show that working in full in how long it takes to read the Bible in a year.
- Five minutes is not too little. It reads the Protestant canon in a little under two years. If five is what your mornings honestly hold, a two-year plan is the plan that fits, and there is nothing second-rate about it.
- Twenty minutes buys about half a year. That is a real option if you already have a settled daily slot, and a heavy one if you are still finding it.
Find your row first. Then go looking for a plan built at that pace. If your number is not on the table, the Bible reading plan calculator does the same sum for any daily time.
Four questions that settle the plan shape
Once the minutes are settled, four questions choose the plan. Answer them in this order, because each one narrows the next.
- What is the goal? The whole Bible, or one part of it first? If you have never read much of it, starting with a part is a real choice, not a lesser one. Our guide to a Bible reading plan for beginners covers where to begin if Genesis 1 is not the right door for you.
- What order? Front to back, chronological, or a portion from each Testament every day. The order changes the experience, not the total: the same words take the same minutes in any arrangement. For a side-by-side of the four common shapes and who each suits, see the best Bible reading plan for 2027.
- How many minutes? The number from the table. This is the question most people skip, and the one that decides whether the plan is still open in March.
- Alone or with others? A plan read with a group has a weekly check-in built in. A plan read alone has more freedom and less company. Either works. Know which one you are choosing.
Notice what is not on the list: which plan looks most impressive. The plan you admire and the plan you can keep are often different plans.
The faster paces, priced honestly
Many plans come in shorter versions, most often 180 days and 90 days. They are good plans. They also cost more each day than their titles suggest, and that is worth seeing before you start one.
| Plan length | Protestant | Catholic | Orthodox |
|---|---|---|---|
| 365 days | 9.0 min | 10.3 min | 10.9 min |
| 180 days | 18.3 min | 20.9 min | 22.2 min |
| 90 days | 36.6 min | 41.8 min | 44.4 min |
A 180-day plan roughly doubles the year: about 18 minutes a day for the Protestant canon, close to 21 or 22 for the Catholic and Orthodox. A 90-day plan asks for more than half an hour every day, and over 40 minutes for the longer canons. That is a different kind of commitment. It suits a season with room in it, or a reader who has been through before and wants the whole story in one sweep.
If you read the 90-day row and felt your stomach drop, that is useful information, not a verdict on you. It only means the 90-day plan is not yours this season. The plan that fits your real minutes will carry you further than the one that fits your best intentions.
Some of the time a plan costs never shows up in a table: finding today’s reading, working out which day you are on, doing catch-up sums after a full week. BlessUp keeps that schedule for you. The next portion is simply waiting where you stopped, and reading it is what opens the apps you chose to shield. There is nothing to plan before you start. Let the plan keep the schedule
Choose with your church, not alone
Before you choose by yourself, ask whether your church already has a plan going. There is a good chance someone there wants you reading. In a Lifeway Research survey of US Protestant pastors, almost all (99%) said they encourage people in their churches to read the Bible on their own, using an average of five methods, as Lifeway summarized in eight truths about American Bible readers.
Some of those methods are plans. Lifeway’s piece on staying in the Word when you are busy describes church-wide Bible reading campaigns and suggested reading plans with weekly touchpoints. That weekly touchpoint answers the fourth question for you. A plan read with others comes with people who notice when you are gone and are glad when you are back.
If you are between churches right now, the church finder on this site lists churches by city. A group reading the same pages can be a gentle way into a new congregation.
When to switch plans
Sooner or later, a plan will stop fitting. Life changes, a season fills up, or the order you chose turns out to confuse more than it helps. Switching at that point is not quitting. It is choosing again with better information. Here is a simple rule for doing it well.
If the minutes are the problem, change the pace before you change the plan. Go back to the table and find the row you actually live in now. A plan that wanted fifteen minutes from someone who has eight can usually become the same plan spread over more days. Keep your place and keep going. Our guide on how to actually finish a Bible reading plan explains why a slower pace beats a fresh start, which meets the same hard stretches in the same order.
If the shape is the problem, change the shape. If you keep losing the thread of the story, a chronological plan may help. If one long book has stalled you for weeks, a plan that pairs an Old Testament and a New Testament reading each day keeps something moving. Carry over what you have already read.
If you have simply fallen behind, you may not need to switch at all. There are calmer ways through that, set out in what to do when you are behind on your Bible reading plan.
Whichever you choose, the aim is the one the Bereans had in Acts 17:11, who “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (NIV). Their reading was steady and daily. The plan is only there to serve that. A separate Lifeway study, cited in the same State of Discipleship report, found 9 in 10 Americans have read at least some of the Bible but 22% have finished it, so finishing is uncommon. A plan that keeps you reading through an ordinary year is doing its job, whatever it is called.
Frequently asked questions
How do I choose the right Bible reading plan?
Start with the minutes you can give on an ordinary busy weekday, then find a plan built at that pace. After that, settle four things: your goal (the whole Bible or one part first), the order (front to back, chronological, or both Testaments each day), the minutes, and whether you will read alone or with others. If your church runs a plan, that is often the easiest choice.
How many minutes a day does a Bible in a year plan take?
About 9 minutes a day for the Protestant canon: 724,811 words across 365 days at a normal reading pace of 220 words a minute. The Catholic canon takes about 10.3 minutes a day and the Orthodox canon about 10.9, because both include more books.
Is a chronological Bible reading plan better?
Not automatically. A chronological plan puts events in the order they happened, which helps if the story keeps confusing you. It does not save time: the same words take the same minutes in any order. Choose it for the order, not the pace.
Is it okay to switch Bible reading plans partway through?
Yes. Switching is choosing again with better information, not quitting. If the daily minutes are the problem, change the pace first and keep your place. If the order is the problem, change the shape and carry over what you have already read.
Small daily readings, cover to cover. That is the whole plan.
No guilt. Ever. Grace is built in. Funded by readers, never by ads.
