How to Read the Bible in a Year: A Month-by-Month Plan

How many chapters a day to read the Bible in a year?

The Bible has 1,189 chapters, so a year of reading works out to 3.26 chapters a day. The simplest way to hit that is three chapters on weekdays and four on Saturdays and Sundays: 23 chapters a week, or 1,196 in 52 weeks.

Chapters aren’t all the same size, though. Psalm 117 has 2 verses and Psalm 119 has 176, so counting chapters makes some days short and others long. That is why the plan below is split by reading time instead.

How many minutes a day does it take?

The World English Bible has 756,207 words. At 238 words a minute, the average adult reading pace, that is about 53 hours, or 8.7 minutes a day for a year. Our guide to how long it takes to read the Bible times every book.

Most people need a little more than the average, because they stop to reread a line or look something up. A 10-minute daily goal finishes in about 10½ months, and 15 minutes leaves room to read some chapters twice.

A month-by-month plan for reading the Bible in a year

Each month below is close to the same amount of reading, about 8 to 9 minutes a day, in the order the books appear in most Bibles. The breaks fall at natural places, like the end of a book or the turn in Isaiah at chapter 40.

Starting partway through the year? Call your first month Month 1 and keep the same order. Before you close your Bible each day, mark where tomorrow starts, so the next reading begins without a decision.

How to get through Leviticus, Numbers and Chronicles

Many year-long plans stall in February. These help with the slow stretches:

• Know what each book is for. Leviticus gives Israel’s instructions for worship and holiness at Mount Sinai. Numbers follows the forty years in the wilderness and takes its name from its census lists. Chronicles retells Israel’s history for the people who came home from exile, with the temple at its center.
• Read for the big picture. You can read lists of names and measurements at a steady pace. The aim is to know the story, not to memorize the census.
• Add a psalm. A psalm alongside a hard chapter gives you something to pray on days the reading feels dry.
• Keep the time, not the pace. If a chapter runs long, stop when your minutes are up and finish it tomorrow.

Should you read cover to cover, chronologically, or mixed?

Any order works if you keep going. Each has a trade-off:

• Cover to cover: the simplest to follow, as in the plan above. The catch is a long Old Testament stretch: you reach Matthew in October.
• Old and New Testament together: read from both every day. The variety helps many people keep going, and you meet the Gospels early.
• Chronological: follows events in the order they happened, so psalms sit beside the parts of David’s life they come from and the prophets beside the kings they spoke to. It makes a good second pass.

What if you fall behind?

Skip to today’s reading and keep going. Trying to catch up all at once turns a habit into a chore, and that is when most plans end. If you miss a whole week, let the plan run into a thirteenth month. Finishing in 13 months still means you read the whole Bible.

Research on habits backs this up: in a well-known study from University College London, missing one day didn’t undo people’s progress. Our guide to how long it takes to build a habit explains what the study found.

How to stay on track all year

1. Read at the same moment every day, such as after breakfast or before bed.
2. Set your goal in minutes, not chapters, so long chapters don’t knock you off course.
3. Keep your place, so tomorrow starts without looking for it.
4. Set a reminder for your usual time, and a second one in the evening for the days you forget.
5. Track the days you read. A month of them in a row is a good reason to keep going.

In Versomi, a 10-minute goal covers most of this: the app keeps your place, counts your days, and sends the evening reminder only if you haven’t read yet.

Common questions