How many chapters a day to read the Bible, for any timeline
3.26 chapters a day reads the Protestant Bible in a year, 3.65 the Catholic. Every timeline from 90 days to 3 years, five canons, and what 1 to 10 a day takes.
The short answer
To read the 66-book Protestant Bible in a year, read 3.26 chapters a day. That is its 1,189 chapters over 365 days, or three chapters every day and a fourth on 94 of them, about 10 minutes a day. The 73-book Catholic Bible needs 3.65 a day, the Orthodox 3.8 and the Ethiopian 4.3. In the Protestant Bible, six months takes 6.5 chapters a day and 90 days 13.2, and one chapter a day finishes it in 1,189 days, about 3 years 3 months.
In this guide
- How many chapters a day to read the Bible in a year
- Chapters a day for every timeline
- How long it takes at one chapter a day (or two, three, ten)
- How many minutes, verses or pages a day that is
- Working out your own numbers
- Reading the Old or New Testament on its own
- Why a chapter is not a fixed amount of reading
- Questions people ask
- Sources
How many chapters a day it takes to read the Bible comes down to one division: the chapters in your Bible by the days you have. Two things make the answer less tidy than it sounds. Bibles differ in length, from 1,189 chapters in the Protestant canon to 1,564 in the Ethiopian, and a chapter can be two verses or 176. So here are the daily figures for every common timeline in all five canons, counted from our own book table, along with what a day comes to in minutes, verses and words.
- 3.26chapters a day: the Protestant Bible in a year
- 3.65the Catholic Bible in a year
- 6.5chapters a day for six months
- 1,189 daysat one chapter a day
How many chapters a day to read the Bible in a year
To read the Protestant Bible in a year, read 3.26 chapters a day. Its 66 books hold 1,189 chapters, and 1,189 ÷ 365 is 3.2575. Nobody reads a quarter of a chapter, so the practical version is three chapters every day and a fourth on 94 of them. Four chapters on two days of every week and three on the rest gets through with a few days in hand.
The other canons have more chapters, so their daily figure is higher:
| Bible | Chapters | A day for a year | In whole chapters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Protestant (66 books) | 1,189 | 3.26 | 3 a day, and 4 on 94 days |
| Catholic (73 books) | 1,334 | 3.65 | 3 a day, and 4 on 239 days |
| With Apocrypha (76 books) | 1,360 | 3.73 | 3 a day, and 4 on 265 days |
| Orthodox (78 books) | 1,386 | 3.80 | 3 a day, and 4 on 291 days |
| Ethiopian (80 books) | 1,564 | 4.28 | 4 a day, and 5 on 104 days |
The Catholic Bible’s seven further books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and 1 and 2 Maccabees), with its longer Esther and Daniel, add 145 chapters, about 0.4 a day over a year. Four chapters on weekdays and three at weekends covers it. The Ethiopian Bible’s 1,564 chapters come out exactly at four a day with a fifth on two days of every week.
At a relaxed 3.3 minutes a chapter, a year of the Protestant Bible is about 11 minutes a day, and closer to 9 read silently at an average pace. Choosing a plan, and getting through Leviticus, are separate questions; our guide to reading the Bible in a year takes those on.
Chapters a day for every timeline
For any finishing time, divide your Bible’s chapters by the days: the Protestant Bible takes 6.5 chapters a day for six months, 4.3 for nine months and 2.2 for eighteen. The table gives the figure for seven common timelines in each of the five canons, to one decimal place.
| To finish in | Protestant (1,189) | Catholic (1,334) | With Apocrypha (1,360) | Orthodox (1,386) | Ethiopian (1,564) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 90 days | 13.2 | 14.8 | 15.1 | 15.4 | 17.4 |
| 6 months | 6.5 | 7.3 | 7.5 | 7.6 | 8.6 |
| 9 months | 4.3 | 4.9 | 5.0 | 5.1 | 5.7 |
| 1 year | 3.3 | 3.7 | 3.7 | 3.8 | 4.3 |
| 18 months | 2.2 | 2.4 | 2.5 | 2.5 | 2.9 |
| 2 years | 1.6 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.9 | 2.1 |
| 3 years | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 |
Each canon’s chapter total divided by the days.
Months are counted in days here: six months is 182 days, nine months 274 and eighteen months 547. For a plan in whole chapters, round up and finish a little early: 13.2 a day for 90 days becomes 14, which takes 85 days. Over the longer spans rounding up costs more (three a day instead of 2.2 turns eighteen months into thirteen), so mix two counts instead, as the one-year plan does.
Shorter goals get heavy quickly. Ninety days, about three months, is 13.2 chapters a day, about 44 minutes at 3.3 minutes a chapter; 30 days is 39.6 chapters, over two hours a day. If you are weighing the short end, the Bible in 90 days sets out what that daily load is like.
How long it takes at one chapter a day (or two, three, ten)
At one chapter a day the Protestant Bible takes 1,189 days, about 3 years and 3 months. Each step up shortens it sharply at first and then less: two a day takes 595 days, three takes 397 and five takes 238.
| Chapters a day | Protestant (1,189) | Catholic (1,334) | With Apocrypha (1,360) | Orthodox (1,386) | Ethiopian (1,564) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,189 days (3 years 3 months) | 1,334 days (3 years 8 months) | 1,360 days (3 years 9 months) | 1,386 days (3 years 10 months) | 1,564 days (4 years 3 months) |
| 2 | 595 days (1 year 8 months) | 667 days (1 year 10 months) | 680 days (1 year 10 months) | 693 days (1 year 11 months) | 782 days (2 years 2 months) |
| 3 | 397 days (1 year 1 month) | 445 days (1 year 3 months) | 454 days (1 year 3 months) | 462 days (1 year 3 months) | 522 days (1 year 5 months) |
| 4 | 298 days (10 months) | 334 days (11 months) | 340 days (11 months) | 347 days (11 months) | 391 days (1 year 1 month) |
| 5 | 238 days (8 months) | 267 days (9 months) | 272 days (9 months) | 278 days (9 months) | 313 days (10 months) |
| 10 | 119 days (4 months) | 134 days (4 months) | 136 days (4 months) | 139 days (5 months) | 157 days (5 months) |
Days are the canon’s chapters divided by the daily count, rounded up, and the time is to the nearest month. Three a day is the whole number closest to a year, and it runs about a month over, which is why the one-year figure needs that fourth chapter now and then. Ten a day finishes the Protestant Bible in under four months, at a little over half an hour of reading a day.
How many minutes, verses or pages a day that is
A year of the Protestant Bible is about 85 verses, 2,055 words and 9 to 10 minutes of silent reading a day. The same figures for other timelines:
| To finish in | Chapters | Verses | Words | Minutes at 238 wpm | Minutes at 200 wpm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 90 days | 13.2 | 346 | 8,336 | 35 | 42 |
| 6 months | 6.5 | 171 | 4,122 | 17 | 21 |
| 9 months | 4.3 | 114 | 2,738 | 12 | 14 |
| 1 year | 3.3 | 85 | 2,055 | 9 | 10 |
| 2 years | 1.6 | 43 | 1,028 | 4 | 5 |
The verses are the King James Version’s 31,102, and the words are the World English Bible’s 750,220, a modern public-domain translation, both by our own count. The reading speed of 238 words a minute is the average adult pace for silent reading of non-fiction, from a 2019 review and meta-analysis of reading rate; 200 is a relaxed pace, closer to how most of us read something we want to take in. The 3.3 minutes a chapter behind the other minute figures here is a little slower again: an average World English Bible chapter takes 3.2 minutes at 200 words a minute, and the extra leaves room for wordier translations such as the King James Version.
Pages a day
Pages are the one unit with no general answer, because the same text can be set in a compact edition or a large-print one. Count the pages in your own Bible from Genesis 1 to the end of Revelation, leaving out introductions, maps and indexes, and divide by the days. A Bible whose text runs to 1,200 pages is about 3.3 pages a day for a year; one that runs to 1,800 pages is about 5.
Working out your own numbers
For any start, any finish and any point along the way, the formula is the same: chapters left ÷ days left. It works on the first day of a plan and just as well halfway through one.
Say you began a one-year plan of the Protestant Bible on January 1, and on July 1 you have read 450 chapters. That leaves 739 chapters and 184 days, which is 4.0 chapters a day to finish on December 31. Or keep the pace you have and let the finish move instead: at three a day the 739 chapters take 247 days, which ends in early March. Either way nothing has to be made up in a lump. If a plan has slipped and you want the gentlest way back, our guide to being behind on a Bible reading plan covers getting back in without starting over.
For exact dates, a particular canon or an order other than Genesis to Revelation, the reading plan calculator does the whole calculation and lays out the plan day by day.
Reading the Old or New Testament on its own
The New Testament is 260 chapters in all five canons, so its figures are the same for everyone: about 0.7 chapters a day for a year, 1.4 for six months and 2.9 for 90 days. The Old Testament is where the canons differ, with 929 chapters in the Protestant Bible, 1,074 in the Catholic, 1,126 in the Orthodox and 1,304 in the Ethiopian.
| To finish in | New Testament (260) | Old Testament, Protestant (929) | Old Testament, Catholic (1,074) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90 days | 2.9 | 10.3 | 11.9 |
| 6 months | 1.4 | 5.1 | 5.9 |
| 9 months | 0.9 | 3.4 | 3.9 |
| 1 year | 0.7 | 2.5 | 2.9 |
Read side by side over a year, that is about two and a half Old Testament chapters and three quarters of a New Testament chapter each day. For the New Testament alone, how long it takes to read the New Testament goes further.
Why a chapter is not a fixed amount of reading
Chapters are a convenient unit for a plan, but they are not equal. By our count of the World English Bible, the shortest chapter, Psalm 117, has 24 words in two verses, and the longest, Psalm 119, has 2,332 words in 176 verses, nearly a hundred times as many. The median chapter, with half the chapters shorter and half longer, has about 600 words. The chapter divisions most Bibles print go back to a scheme drawn up by Stephen Langton in the early thirteenth century, and nothing in them makes one chapter as long as another.
So a plan that hands out equal numbers of chapters gives unequal days. Take the Protestant Bible in order over a year, three or four chapters a day: the lightest day, Psalms 129 to 131, is 290 words, about a minute’s reading, and the heaviest, 1 Kings 6 to 9, is 5,109 words, over 20 minutes. A plan balanced by words instead keeps every day between 941 and 3,166 words, but hands out anything from 1 chapter to 11.
Neither approach is wrong. Counting chapters gives a plan you can check at a glance, and it helps to expect that some days will run long and others will be over in a minute. If the daily amount matters more to you than the count, think in minutes and let the chapters fall where they do. When a long day comes, it is the chapter, not you.
Questions people ask
How many chapters a day to read the Catholic Bible in a year?
3.65 chapters a day. The Catholic Bible's 73 books hold 1,334 chapters, which over 365 days is three chapters every day and a fourth on 239 of them, or four on weekdays and three at weekends. At a relaxed 3.3 minutes a chapter that is about 12 minutes a day, a minute more than the Protestant Bible takes.
How many chapters a day to read the Bible in a month?
About 40. Thirty days for the Protestant Bible's 1,189 chapters is 39.6 chapters a day, a little over two hours of reading every day, and the Catholic Bible's 1,334 chapters need 44.5. At that pace a month is a project of its own; 90 days brings the load down to about 13 chapters a day, and a year to just over 3.
How many pages a day to read the Bible in a year?
Divide your own Bible's page count by 365, because pages depend entirely on the edition. Count from Genesis 1 to the last page of Revelation, leaving out introductions, maps and indexes. A Bible whose text runs to 1,200 pages is about 3.3 pages a day; one that runs to 1,800 pages is about 5.
How many verses a day to read the Bible in a year?
About 85. The King James Version has 31,102 verses in its 66 books, which over 365 days is 85.2 a day, or roughly 2,055 words in a modern translation. Verses vary in length too, from "Jesus wept" (John 11:35) to Esther 8:9, 86 words in the World English Bible, so chapters or minutes are the easier measure of a day.
How long does it take to read the Bible at two chapters a day?
595 days for the Protestant Bible's 1,189 chapters, about a year and eight months. The Catholic Bible's 1,334 chapters take 667 days, about a year and ten months. Two chapters is roughly six or seven minutes of reading, and at that rate the New Testament alone takes 130 days.
How many chapters should I read a day?
As many as you could manage on a busy day rather than on your best one. One chapter is about three minutes and finishes the Protestant Bible in a little over three years. Three a day is about ten minutes and takes thirteen months, and four a day finishes in under ten months. A smaller number kept goes further than a larger one dropped.
Sources
- Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047.
- World English Bible, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org
- King James Version, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org
- Chapters and verses of the Bible, Wikipedia
