Free printable Bible reading tracker: every chapter, every canon
Free Bible reading tracker PDFs with a box for every chapter: Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox and Ethiopian Bibles, in Letter and A4. No email, no sign-up.
The short answer
BibleRing's free printable Bible reading tracker gives every chapter its own numbered box, grouped by book under eight color-coded divisions, as a PDF in US Letter and A4 with no email or sign-up. The Protestant edition fits all 1,189 chapters on one page. The Catholic has 1,334 boxes, With Apocrypha 1,360, Orthodox 1,386 and Ethiopian 1,564. Tick a box for each chapter you read, in any order. About 3.3 boxes a day finishes the Protestant Bible in a year.
In this guide
A chart with a box for every chapter is a Bible reading tracker that asks very little of you. It doesn’t care what order you read in or which days you read on; it only shows what you have covered and what is still ahead. The printable Bible reading trackers here are free PDFs, drawn from the same book and chapter table the BibleRing app counts against, for five different Bibles. There is no email address to give and nothing to sign up for: click, and the file downloads.
- 1,189boxes on the Protestant tracker
- 1,334boxes on the Catholic tracker
- 5Bibles, each in Letter and A4
- 3.3boxes a day to finish in a year
Download the free printable Bible reading tracker (PDF)
Every tracker is a free PDF in US Letter and A4, with no account, email or sign-up in the way. Pick the edition that matches the contents page of your Bible: if it lists 66 books, it is the Protestant one; if Tobit, Judith and the Maccabees appear among the Old Testament books, it is the Catholic one or one of the wider editions.
Protestant Bible: 66 books, 1,189 chapters
The 66 books printed in most Protestant Bibles, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. All 1,189 boxes fit on one page in either size.
Bible reading tracker, Protestant (US Letter)PDF · 378 KB · 66 books, 1,189 chapters, one page Bible reading tracker, Protestant (A4)PDF · 378 KB · 66 books, 1,189 chapters, one pageCatholic Bible: 73 books, 1,334 chapters
Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach and Baruch each get their own row of boxes, and Esther and Daniel run to 16 and 14 chapters, as Catholic Bibles print them. Our guide to the Catholic and Protestant Bibles explains where the difference comes from.
Bible reading tracker, Catholic (US Letter)PDF · 410 KB · 73 books, 1,334 chapters, two pages Bible reading tracker, Catholic (A4)PDF · 409 KB · 73 books, 1,334 chapters, one pageBible with the Apocrypha: 76 books, 1,360 chapters
The Catholic books plus 1 and 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which is the list of the Anglican Apocrypha. Use it if your Bible prints a section headed Apocrypha.
Bible reading tracker, with the Apocrypha (US Letter)PDF · 421 KB · 76 books, 1,360 chapters, two pages Bible reading tracker, with the Apocrypha (A4)PDF · 420 KB · 76 books, 1,360 chapters, one pageOrthodox Bible: 78 books, 1,386 chapters
The Catholic books plus 1 and 2 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, 3 and 4 Maccabees and Psalm 151. Not every Orthodox Bible prints all of these (Greek editions often put 4 Maccabees in a separate section or leave it out), so this chart includes them all; leave blank any book your Bible doesn’t have. The Orthodox Bible guide sets out which editions include what.
Bible reading tracker, Orthodox (US Letter)PDF · 425 KB · 78 books, 1,386 chapters, two pages Bible reading tracker, Orthodox (A4)PDF · 424 KB · 78 books, 1,386 chapters, two pagesEthiopian Bible: 80 books, 1,564 chapters
BibleRing’s 80-book count of the Bible of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, with Enoch, Jubilees, 4 Baruch and the three books of Meqabyan, which stand in place of 1 and 2 Maccabees. Enoch alone adds 108 boxes. The church itself counts 81 books, and our guide to the Ethiopian Bible explains how the two counts differ.
Bible reading tracker, Ethiopian (US Letter)PDF · 464 KB · 80 books, 1,564 chapters, two pages Bible reading tracker, Ethiopian (A4)PDF · 465 KB · 80 books, 1,564 chapters, two pagesWhat’s on the chart
Every chapter is a small box with its number printed inside, so Genesis is a run of 50 boxes and Psalms a block of 150. The books are grouped under the eight divisions the BibleRing app uses (Law, History, Wisdom, Prophets, Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Revelation), each in its own color. Each book’s name has a box of its own, for the day you finish the whole book, and the foot of the sheet has a line for the date you started and one for the date you finished.
The wider editions put their extra books with the books they resemble: Tobit and Judith among the histories, Wisdom and Sirach with the wisdom books, Baruch beside Jeremiah and Lamentations. The chapter counts come from the same table the app counts against, so the paper and the app agree chapter for chapter.
The colors help the eye, but nothing depends on them. Every box carries its chapter number and every division its name in print, so the chart works just as well from a black-and-white printer.
How many chapters will you check off?
To read the whole Protestant Bible you check off 1,189 boxes: 929 in the Old Testament and 260 in the New. The New Testament is the same 27 books and 260 chapters on every chart; the Old Testament is where the canons differ.
| Canon | Books | Chapters | Old + New Testament |
|---|---|---|---|
| Protestant | 66 | 1,189 | 929 + 260 |
| Catholic | 73 | 1,334 | 1,074 + 260 |
| With Apocrypha | 76 | 1,360 | 1,100 + 260 |
| Orthodox | 78 | 1,386 | 1,126 + 260 |
| Ethiopian | 80 | 1,564 | 1,304 + 260 |
The Catholic chart has 145 more boxes than the Protestant one: 137 for its seven additional books and eight for the longer Greek forms of Esther and Daniel. The Ethiopian chart is the largest at 1,564.
A box is not always the same amount of reading
Chapters vary a great deal in length. By our count of the King James Version, the shortest chapter in the 66 books, Psalm 117, is 2 verses and 33 words, and the longest, Psalm 119, is 176 verses and 2,423 words, about 73 times as long. In the World English Bible the average psalm is about a third as long as an average chapter of Numbers, so a week in the Psalms fills boxes much faster than a week in Numbers.
Across the 66 books of the World English Bible, a modern translation, an average chapter is about 630 words: about 2.7 minutes of silent reading at the average adult pace of 238 words a minute, or a little over 3 at a relaxed 200. That is why a chart counts chapters rather than promising a time: over a whole book the long and short chapters even out, even when one evening’s reading doesn’t.
How many boxes a day?
To finish in a year, tick about 3.3 boxes a day on the Protestant chart and 3.7 on the Catholic one. Six months is about 6.5 a day for the Protestant Bible, and two years is 1.6. Here is the daily number for each edition:
| 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 |
| 1 year | 3.3 | 3.7 | 3.7 | 3.8 | 4.3 |
| 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.
At about 3.3 minutes a chapter, a year of the Protestant chart comes to around 11 minutes a day. Our guide to how many chapters a day to read works the number out for other timelines.
A chart doesn’t need a daily number at all, though. You can tick whatever you read and let the sheet show the rest. If you would rather have the days laid out for you, the Bible reading plan for 2027 gives every day from January 1 to December 31 its own box, in five versions, as a printable of its own.
How to use a Bible reading chart
Tick or color a box each time you finish a chapter, in whatever order you read. A few habits make the sheet more useful over a long stretch:
- Date the start. The Started line at the foot turns the chart into a record you can look back on, and gives the Finished line something to measure against.
- Track chapters, not days. Read Mark one week and Genesis the next; the chart doesn’t mind, and nothing on it is tied to a date.
- Tick the book’s own box when its last chapter is done. Counting the ticked boxes beside the book names is the quickest way to see how many books you have finished.
- Use a different mark for chapters you read before you started, such as a slash instead of a tick, so “read some time ago” stays apart from “read this time through”.
- Use a second color for a second time through, so one sheet can carry more than one pass.
- Keep it in your Bible. Folded inside the back cover, it is within reach the moment you finish a chapter.
A blank box is simply a chapter still ahead. Weeks with nothing ticked leave no mark on the chart at all, which is one of the kind things about paper: it records what you read, and nothing else.
By chapter or by book: the checklist and the bookshelf
A chapter chart shows progress inside long books, which a list of books can’t. Psalms is 150 boxes and Isaiah 66, and a single tick for each would take weeks or months to earn. If you read a book at a time, or want something simpler to start with, there are two one-page alternatives:
- The books of the Bible checklist lists every book with its chapter count and one box, under the same eight divisions, with each testament’s chapter total beside its heading.
- The Bible bookshelf draws every book as a spine on three shelves, taller the more chapters it has, in outline, to color in when you finish it. The Bible bookshelf tracker guide has more on how it works.
Both come in every edition and both sizes:
| Bible | Books checklist | Bookshelf to color |
|---|---|---|
| Protestant (66 books) | Letter · A4 | Letter · A4 |
| Catholic (73 books) | Letter · A4 | Letter · A4 |
| With Apocrypha (76 books) | Letter · A4 | Letter · A4 |
| Orthodox (78 books) | Letter · A4 | Letter · A4 |
| Ethiopian (80 books) | Letter · A4 | Letter · A4 |
Printing tips
Print the file that matches your paper, at actual size: an A4 file on Letter paper, or the other way around, gets shrunk or cropped, and the boxes are small to begin with.
- Black and white is fine. Chapter numbers and division names are printed as text, so nothing is lost without color.
- Use a fine pen or a sharp pencil for single chapters. A highlighter drawn along a book’s row of boxes works well when you finish a short book in one sitting.
- Print on both sides if your printer can. Where an edition runs to two pages, the second holds only the end of the New Testament (sometimes just the Started and Finished line), so one sheet printed on both sides keeps the whole chart together.
- Use card stock if the chart will live in your Bible for a year. It holds up to being folded and unfolded better than copy paper.
When the last box is filled, write the date on the Finished line and keep the sheet somewhere you will come across it again.
Questions people ask
Does a Catholic Bible reading chart have more chapters?
Yes, 145 more. The Catholic Bible has 1,334 chapters against the Protestant Bible's 1,189. Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and 1 and 2 Maccabees add 137 chapters between them, and the longer Greek forms of Esther and Daniel add eight more, giving Esther 16 chapters and Daniel 14. The 27 books of the New Testament, 260 chapters, are the same in both.
Can a Bible reading chart by chapter fit on one page?
For the 66-book Protestant Bible, yes. All 1,189 chapter boxes fit on a single US Letter or A4 page in four columns. The Catholic and With Apocrypha charts fit one A4 page; on Letter paper they run onto a second, as the Orthodox and Ethiopian charts do in both sizes. That second page holds only the end of the New Testament, or just the Started and Finished line.
What is the difference between a Bible reading log, a checklist and a tracker?
The words overlap and are often used interchangeably. On the sheets here, the checklist has one box per book and the tracker, or chart, has one box per chapter, while a log is usually a dated list of what you read. A chapter chart shows how far you are inside long books like Psalms or Isaiah, while a log keeps the dates. Keeping both works too.
Is there a coloring version of the Bible reading tracker?
Yes. The Bible bookshelf draws every book as a spine on three shelves, in outline, taller the more chapters it has, and you color a spine in when you finish that book. It is one page, free, in every canon and in Letter and A4. There is no separate children's edition, but with one spine to color per book it is a gentler place to start than the chapter chart.
Can I use the chart with a Bible reading plan?
Yes. The tracker has no dates printed on it, so it works alongside any plan or none at all. Tick the chapters your plan gives you each day. If you would rather have the days laid out for you, the dated 2027 plans give every day of the year its own box, from January 1 to December 31.
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
- Articles of Religion, Article VI: Of the Sufficiency of the holy Scriptures, Book of Common Prayer, Church of England
- Old Testament Canon, OrthodoxWiki
- Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church: the canonical books of the Bible
