Guides

How to Read the Bible in a Year: A Plan You Can Keep

November 5, 2026

Many people start a one-year Bible reading plan in January and stop somewhere in Leviticus. That is common enough to be a joke, but it is not a sign that the goal is too hard. Reading the whole Bible in a year takes about fifteen to twenty minutes a day. What usually goes wrong is the plan, not the reader.

This guide covers the arithmetic, the main kinds of plan and who each suits, and the habits that get people to the end, including what to do when you fall behind. You can start any day of the year; a year from today works as well as January 1.

The arithmetic

The Protestant Bible has 66 books and 1,189 chapters: 929 in the Old Testament and 260 in the New. Spread over 365 days, that is a little over three chapters a day. Chapters vary a great deal in length, from Psalm 117’s two verses to Psalm 119’s 176, so good plans balance the daily reading by length rather than only by chapter count.

Two rules of thumb follow from the numbers:

• Four chapters a day finishes in about ten months, which leaves room for missed days.
• Reading five days a week needs about four and a half chapters a day, and gives you two free days to catch up or rest.

Four kinds of plan

Straight through

Start at Genesis 1 and read to Revelation 22, about three or four chapters a day. It is the simplest plan and needs no list: you only need to know where you stopped. Its weakness is that the long stretches of law, genealogy and prophecy come in large blocks, which is where many readers stall.

Chronological

Books and passages are arranged in the order the events happened, as best scholars can tell. The psalms of David appear beside the stories of his life, and the prophets beside the kings they spoke to. This helps the history make sense. Plans differ on some placements, and the daily readings jump between books, so you will want the plan in front of you.

Old and New Testament each day

Each day has a reading from the Old Testament and one from the New, often with a psalm or a few proverbs. The variety helps on the hard days, because there is always something familiar beside something difficult. Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s plan, written in 1842, is a well-known version: four chapters a day, taking you through the Old Testament once and the New Testament and Psalms twice.

Blended by genre

Some plans give each day of the week a kind of book: law on Sunday, history on Monday, poetry on Tuesday, and so on. They suit people who like knowing what kind of reading the day holds.

No plan is best for everyone. If you have tried before and stopped in Leviticus, try a plan with a New Testament reading each day. If you found the story hard to follow, try a chronological one.

Habits that get people to the end

• Pick a fixed time and place. First thing in the morning, at lunch, or before bed. Attach it to something you already do every day, such as the first cup of coffee.
• Decide what counts. Reading the day’s chapters counts. You do not need to study every verse, write notes every day or understand everything. A reading plan is for breadth; you can go deep on a passage another time.
• Keep one question or note a day. One line is enough: something that stood out, or something you did not understand. Over a year this becomes a useful record of where you were puzzled and where you were helped.
• Use a readable translation. If the King James wording slows you down, read a modern translation for the plan and keep the KJV for memorized verses. Our guide to the KJV, BSB and WEB compares three free ones.
• Listen on the hard days. An audio Bible on a walk or a drive still counts. Genealogies and long lists of laws are often easier to hear than to read.
• Read with someone. A friend, a spouse or a small group on the same plan gives you someone to talk to about what you read, and someone who notices when you stop.

The hard books

Most plans stall in the same places: the end of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, the genealogies of 1 Chronicles, and the long middle of the prophets. A few things help:

• Read a short introduction first. A paragraph on what a book is for and how it is organized turns a list of rules into a part of the story.
• Read faster. You can read a genealogy for its shape, noticing the names you know, without dwelling on every line.
• Look for the reason. Leviticus is about how a holy God can live among his people. With that question in mind, the details have a purpose.

When you fall behind

You will miss days. Everyone does. What matters is what happens next.

• Do not try to make it all up at once. Reading twelve chapters to catch up after a bad week turns the plan into a chore.
• Skip to today’s reading and pick up the missed days later, on a weekend or a quiet evening.
• Or let the year stretch. If you read the whole Bible in fourteen months, you have read the whole Bible.

The goal is not to finish on December 31. It is to know the whole of Scripture and to keep reading it.

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” (Psalm 119:105, KJV)

Reading the year in Carrell

Carrell is a Bible app built for reading at length. It does not have a reading plan of its own, so use any plan you like beside it. Here is what helps:

• It opens where you stopped, so a straight-through plan needs no list.
• Typing a reference such as “lev 19” or “ps 119” takes you there, which keeps a chronological plan quick to follow.
• Seven public-domain translations are built in, including the KJV, BSB and WEB, and the reader needs no connection once you are signed in.
• Notes sit beside the verse, so your one line a day stays with the passage it is about. When something puzzles you, Ask answers from the Bible and your own notes, citing every source.
• On the Mac and Linux, reading history shows what you read each day, with a weekly summary. On iPhone, scroll mode shows one verse at a time.

Carrell is free for reading, the bundled Bibles, search, highlights and notes, on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Linux, and it is in beta. Download Carrell or see everything it does.