How to read the Bible in a year: plans, pace and the hard parts

The short answer

To read the 66-book Protestant Bible in a year, read its 1,189 chapters at 3.26 a day, which means three chapters on most days and four on 94 of them. That is about 2,055 words, or 9 to 10 minutes a day at an ordinary silent pace, and the year can start on any day. The 73-book Catholic Bible takes 3.7 chapters a day. Read in order, the heaviest month is February, and Matthew does not arrive until day 286.

In this guide

1. How much reading is the Bible in a year?
2. How many minutes a day does it take?
3. Four ways to read the Bible in a year
4. When does a cover-to-cover year get hard?
5. Can you start a Bible-in-a-year plan any day?
6. What to do when you miss a day
7. Reading a Catholic, Orthodox or Ethiopian Bible in a year
8. Is reading the Bible in a year worth it?
9. Questions people ask
10. Sources

Knowing how to read the Bible in a year starts with arithmetic, and the arithmetic is the easy part. What the daily average hides is how uneven the year is: some days are three short psalms, others are twenty minutes of Jeremiah, and a reader who goes in order spends nine months in the Old Testament before reaching a Gospel. The dates and reading times below are worked out from each book’s chapter count and our own word count of a public-domain translation, so you can see the whole year before you begin it.

• 3.3chapters a day for the 66-book Bible
• 85verses a day, on average
• 2,055words a day in a modern translation
• 9–10 mina day, at an average or relaxed pace

How much reading is the Bible in a year?

The Protestant Bible (66 books, 1,189 chapters) divided over 365 days is 3.26 chapters a day. In practice that means three chapters on 271 days and four on the other 94, spread evenly through the year. By the King James Version’s 31,102 verses, a day averages about 85 verses, and in the World English Bible, a modern public-domain translation, about 2,055 words.

Catholic, Orthodox and Ethiopian Bibles hold more books, so their years ask a little more of each day:

A Catholic year is three chapters on 126 days and four on 239. An Orthodox year is four chapters on most days (291 of 365), and an Ethiopian year is four on 261 days and five on 104. If a year is not the timeline you have in mind, our guide to how many chapters a day to read the Bible gives the figure for every span from 30 days to three years.

How many minutes a day does it take?

About 9 minutes a day at the average silent reading pace, and about 10 at a relaxed one. A 2019 review of reading-rate research put the average adult’s silent reading of non-fiction in English at 238 words a minute; at that speed a day’s 2,055 words take 8.6 minutes. At a relaxed 200 words a minute, they take 10.3.

Setting aside 15 minutes leaves room for the long days and a few minutes to think about what you read. It also suits anyone who reads more slowly than either figure.

Why some days take much longer than others

Chapters are not the same length, so a plan that hands out the same number of chapters each day does not hand out the same amount of reading. We split the Protestant Bible into 365 equal-chapter days and counted the words in each:

• The lightest day is Psalms 125 to 127: 305 words, just over a minute.
• The heaviest day is Jeremiah 50 to 52 with the first chapter of Lamentations: 4,915 words, about 21 minutes.
• A typical day is about 2,000 words. Only 15 days of the year take more than 15 minutes at the average pace, and 54 take under five.

So when a day runs long, it is usually the chapters, not you.

Four ways to read the Bible in a year

Every one-year plan covers the same chapters; what changes is the order, and the order decides what a day feels like. These are the four main kinds:

Cover to cover is the plan most people picture: open at Genesis on day one and close Revelation on day 365. It needs nothing but the Bible and a date, which is its strength.

Old and New together splits each day by how much of each testament is left: the Old Testament’s 929 chapters are 2 or 3 a day, and the New Testament’s 260 come to one chapter on 260 of the 365 days. Spread evenly, the four Gospels are finished by early May (day 125). It does not even out the minutes, because the time still depends on which chapters land where, but it means a Gospel or a letter sits beside Leviticus rather than nine months after it.

Chronological plans rearrange the Bible into the order its events happen. That is a different thing from the order the books were written, which is a question of when each book was composed. Some plans follow that order instead, including one of our printable ones, which roughly dates the books and so puts Job and Genesis first and the Gospel of John, John’s letters and Revelation last. Our guide to the best order to read the Bible compares these routes in detail.

Several readings a day is the pattern of a calendar still in print after more than 180 years. Robert Murray M’Cheyne drew it up for his congregation at the end of 1842: four portions a day, usually four chapters, so that the whole Bible is read once in a year and the New Testament and Psalms twice. For the named plans side by side, see which Bible reading plan is best.

If this is your first time through, a plan with some of both testaments each day tends to be the gentlest start, because the stretches of law and prophecy never arrive alone. But the plan you keep reading is the right one, and changing plans halfway costs nothing when what you count is chapters.

When does a cover-to-cover year get hard?

Read in order from January 1, the hard stretches arrive on dates you can mark in advance: Leviticus on January 28, the census lists of Numbers on February 6, nine chapters of genealogies on April 15, and eleven weeks of prophets from July 28. The table gives the whole year month by month, with the average reading time a day at 238 words a minute.

The dates assume a start on January 1 in a year that is not a leap year, such as 2027, with the chapters split the same way as our printable 2027 Bible reading plan. Starting any other day, count by day number instead.

Leviticus to Deuteronomy: January 28 to February 27

February is the heaviest month of the year, at about 11½ minutes a day. Leviticus opens with the laws of offerings and turns to food laws in chapter 11; its heaviest day, Leviticus 11 to 14 on February 1, runs close to 20 minutes because it carries the long chapters on skin disease. Numbers begins with a census on February 6 and takes another in chapter 26, on February 13, before Deuteronomy’s speeches close the month.

What helps is knowing the shape: about a month of law, then the story picks up again with Joshua on February 27. Reading the lists at a quicker pace than the stories is still reading them.

1 Chronicles 1 to 9: April 15 to 17

Three days of genealogies, opening with “Adam, Seth, Enosh,” before chapter 10 returns to the story with Saul’s last battle on Mount Gilboa. Chronicles then covers much of the ground of Samuel and Kings, which you finish the day before it starts, so the second telling arrives with the first still fresh.

The Psalms: May 28 to July 12

This is the lightest stretch of the year. June averages about four minutes a day, because three psalms are often shorter than one chapter of Kings. Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible at 176 verses, falls on July 3 with Psalms 120 and 121. If you are behind, this is where a year gives time back.

The Prophets: July 28 to October 13

Isaiah through Malachi is 250 chapters over about eleven weeks, much of it poetry addressed to people and events the books assume you know. September 2, Jeremiah 50 to 52 with the first chapter of Lamentations, is the longest day of the year at about 21 minutes, and Ezekiel’s long closing vision (chapters 40 to 48) runs from September 16 to 18. Many of the prophets spoke during the reigns that 1 and 2 Kings describe, so a short look back at the matching king, or a one-paragraph introduction to each prophet, can make these weeks easier to follow.

Matthew: October 13, day 286

By the time a cover-to-cover reader opens the New Testament, 929 of the 1,189 chapters, 78 percent, are behind them. The last eleven weeks are the New Testament’s 260 chapters, from Matthew to Revelation, which begins on December 25.

Can you start a Bible-in-a-year plan any day?

Yes. A year is any 365 days, and the day numbers work from any start: Leviticus on day 28, the Psalms on day 148, Matthew on day 286, Revelation on day 359. Nothing in the Bible’s order is tied to January.

If you would rather finish on December 31 than read for a full year, divide the chapters by the days left. Starting July 1, that is 184 days and 6.5 chapters a day. The reading plan calculator does this for any start date, any finishing date and any of the five canons, and prints the plan day by day.

What to do when you miss a day

Pick up where you stopped. Nothing about a missed day needs to be made up all at once, and a pile of make-up chapters can make the whole plan feel lost. A few ways to absorb the gap:

• Let the finish move. Read the next unread chapters on the next day you read. Each day missed moves the last day back by one, and every day stays three or four chapters.
• Spread the gap thin. A missed week is about 23 chapters. Spread over the 275 days left after March, that is one extra chapter every 12 days.
• Catch up where the year is light. A June day in the Psalms takes about a third as long as a February day in the law.
• Build the gaps in. A five-day plan reads about 4.6 chapters on weekdays and leaves the weekends open.

Jumping ahead to today’s date on a printed plan is the one choice that leaves chapters unread. If you do it, mark where the gap is so you can come back to it. Our guide for when you are behind on a Bible reading plan has more on catching up without starting over.

Keep a record of chapters, not dates

A plan with a box per day tells you whether you are on schedule; a record of chapters tells you how much of the Bible you have read, which is the number that stays true after a missed week.

There are three common ways to keep that record: a printed chart with a box for every chapter, a spreadsheet with a row per book, or an app. Paper is the easiest to start; a spreadsheet does the sums but needs updating by hand. Whichever you choose, mark the chapter rather than the date, and a gap in the dates stops mattering.

Reading a Catholic, Orthodox or Ethiopian Bible in a year

A Catholic year is 3.65 chapters a day, about 10 minutes at the average pace. The Catholic Bible (73 books, 1,334 chapters) adds Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach and Baruch, along with longer forms of Esther and Daniel; Catholics call these books deuterocanonical, and Protestants usually call them the Apocrypha. Read in Catholic order from January 1, Tobit begins on April 27, Sirach on July 29 and Matthew on October 22.

Ascension’s Bible in a Year podcast, hosted by Fr. Mike Schmitz, is one well-known way through for Catholic readers: 365 episodes of about 20 minutes, which together cover every verse of the Bible. It reached the top of the Apple Podcasts chart within 48 hours of its launch. If you would rather read from your own Bible, the printable 2027 plans include two Catholic ones, start to finish and Old and New together.

The Orthodox Bible, as we count it (78 books, 1,386 chapters), adds to the Catholic books 1 and 2 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, 3 and 4 Maccabees and Psalm 151. That is 3.8 chapters a day, about 10½ minutes, and Matthew arrives on October 24. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Bible, at 80 books and 1,564 chapters in our count (including Enoch and Jubilees), comes to 4.3 chapters a day, with Matthew on November 1.

Is reading the Bible in a year worth it?

For a first reading of the whole Bible, a year is a reasonable balance: long enough to keep each day small, short enough to hold the story from Genesis to Revelation in view. It is also something fewer people have done than you might expect. In a 2024 Lifeway Research survey of 1,200 American adults, about 1 in 5 said they had read the entire Bible at least once.

The trade is depth. Ten minutes a day covers the ground but leaves little time to stay with a passage. If you would rather go slower, two years is 1.6 chapters a day, about five minutes; if you want the sweep sooner, six months is 6.5 chapters, about 22 minutes. The table allows 3.3 minutes a chapter, a relaxed pace a little slower than the figures above.

However you divide it, a year of the Bible is three or four chapters at a time, and every one of them counts whether it is read on the planned day or a week later.

Questions people ask

Can I start a one-year Bible plan with the New Testament?

Yes. Reading the New Testament first changes the order, not the amount. At 3.26 chapters a day its 260 chapters take about 80 days, and the Old Testament's 929 chapters fill the remaining 285. A plan that reads both testaments side by side reaches the Gospels just as quickly and keeps the Old Testament moving from the first day.

Is it better to read the Bible chronologically or cover to cover in a year?

Neither suits everyone. Cover to cover is the simplest to follow from your own Bible and reads each book whole. A chronological plan rearranges the chapters into the order the events happen, which puts many of the prophets beside the kings they spoke to, but it means following a printed list. Both cover the same 1,189 chapters at the same 3.26 a day.

What if I miss a whole week of a one-year plan?

A week is about 23 chapters. You can carry on from where you stopped and finish a week later, or spread the 23 over the rest of the year, which after March comes to one extra chapter every 12 days. In a cover-to-cover plan the Psalms, read from late May to mid-July, take about a third of the time of February's readings, so they are a natural place to catch up.

Can you read the Bible in a year in 15 minutes a day?

Yes, with time to spare. At an average silent pace the Protestant Bible takes about 9 minutes a day over a year, and in a plan with an equal number of chapters each day only 15 days run past 15 minutes, the longest about 21. Allowing a relaxed 3.3 minutes a chapter, 15 minutes a day is about 4.5 chapters and finishes the whole Bible in roughly eight and a half months.

How many people have read the whole Bible?

In a Lifeway Research survey of 1,200 American adults, conducted in August 2024, about 1 in 5 said they had read the entire Bible at least once. Around 1 in 10 said they had never read any of it personally. The survey covers adults in the United States only.

Sources

1. 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.
2. World English Bible, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org
3. King James Version, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org
4. Lifeway Research (2025). Americans judge the Good Book more positively, but still often by its cover.
5. Banner of Truth: Read the Bible in a Year (Robert Murray M'Cheyne's calendar)
6. University of St. Thomas Newsroom: St. Thomas alumnus hosts No. 1 podcast in U.S.