Our 6 Favorite Paper Planners of 2025

This is not a comprehensive list of paper planners we’ve tested. We have removed models that are discontinued or no longer meet our criteria.

Refillable planners

The Simple Stories Carpe Diem A5 Planner is a former also-great pick. And if you avoid buying leather, or you want something less expensive than a Filofax planner, it’s a great choice. It comes in fewer colors than Filofax’s The Original Organizer, and most binders and inserts have a feminine design. In stores we’ve seen these only at Hobby Lobby, but they’re still easier to get than many of the imported planners we’ve tested and recommended. It’s also available in a personal size.

The Happy Planner is a highly decorated planner, similar to the Erin Condren LifePlanner. We didn’t like this planner’s disc binding; opening it all the way around to look at one page at a time wasn’t as smooth as with a coil-bound planner. However, one of our staffers long-term tested this planner for a year and told us the format really worked for her, and she didn’t mind the discs. You can technically refill these planners, swap covers, or add inserts, but they’re so often on sale at craft stores that most people just buy a new one each year.

The Levenger Circa Weekly smartPlanner felt more useful than the Franklin planner we tested, but it’s expensive (a leather cover is sold separately), and we’ve found disc-bound systems more difficult to use.

We reconsidered the classic FranklinPlanner Original Weekly Ring-bound Planner in 2018, after initially dismissing other versions we saw in office-supply stores. We tested the compact and classic sizes and found the Franklin inserts to be especially cramped for writing space, compared with what you’d get with the Filofax planner.

Spiral-bound planners

The Papier Planner, available in spiral or book binding, offers a wide range of cover styles that you can personalize with your name or initials. We tested the academic year version, but the majority of panelists preferred the Class Tracker’s higher-contrast pages and darker fonts. That said, two panelists (including one college-bound tester who dislikes planners in general) preferred the smooth feel of the Papier’s pages, as well as its helpful sections such as schedule, deadlines, and project notes. It’s worth a look if you want an academic planner that looks and feels a bit more elegant than basic monthly-and-weekly planners.

The Planner Pad is another former pick, and we recommend it if you’re looking to group your tasks and appointments by category. Its highly structured format isn’t as flexible as those of our picks, but the layout may match how you like to divide your week and your days.

Our testers weren’t wild about the Blue Sky Weekly and Monthly Planner’s layouts, which have a pattern on every page. But Blue Sky offers endless print options, so you may find one you like. Blue Sky previously offered an academic year planner with extra functionality for students, and we liked it, but it no longer exists.

We tested the Black-owned Ivory Paper Company’s 12 Month Daily Planner, which is similar to the Day Designer planner. It’s a nice book with a pleasing cover, but the paper felt like copy paper, and the page layouts were less sophisticated. It was hard to see how this planner cost more than a Day Designer planner, which isn’t cheap.

The At-A-Glance weekly appointment book is a classic business planner available at office-supply stores, but it was a bit too big, too businesslike, and too narrow for us to write in the hourly format.

We recommend Field Notes notebooks as the best pocket notebook for jotting stuff down, but our testers didn’t like the Field Notes 56-Week Planner. They said its looks were less appealing than those of other models, and they noted the lines on the paper were too dark for what they wanted in a planner.

Book-bound planners

The Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal 2 is an excellent notebook with guidelines for bullet journaling (also known as “BuJo”). But we eliminated this former pick from the running because it’s really more of a blank notebook than an actual planner, which should have at least some date structure.

Similarly, Rhodia’s Goalbook bullet journal contains only grid-dot paper, with no instructions or tips, and our testers found that design to be too freeform. Our testers thought the cover was too fragile (it was already dented at one corner from shipping) and that the grid dots on the pages were too dark.

The Moo Perpetual Planner is an undated planner with high-quality paper, as one would expect from the company that makes the best business cards. It has a versatile format, with blank space on the top third of each page and days shown in columns beneath that (the week spans two pages). We found the columns a bit narrow (they’d require tiny handwriting to be usable). And we found the colored cardstock dividers for each quarter to be somewhat puzzling to use (they’re all lined differently, with an isometric pattern on one section). However, we like that this planner invites creativity in terms of figuring out how you’ll use the space provided.

The Paperage Planner has the same high-quality, thick paper as the lined journal, which is our budget notebook pick. The planner has a standard monthly and weekly layout, and it’s a good option if you want to spend less than $15 on a hardcover planner with a sturdy cover. We think the MochiThings Medium Ardium Planner feels more polished and special, though it costs more than three times as much.

We tested the Lemome Weekly & Monthly Planner in summer 2020 after seeing it rise in popularity over the previous year. It has a 1950s prep-school charm to it, with a black cover, gold lettering, and a pen holder. After the MochiThings Ardium Planner, it’s the next-best book-bound planner we’ve tried. It’s not very expensive, but the layout is notably basic, and it comes in only one color.

A former pick, the Panda Planner Classic has the most structured layout, with prompts and partitioned sections, such as “Today’s Priorities,” “Morning Review,” and “Things I Will Do to Make This Week Great.” It may be too prescriptive for most people, and it covers only three months, but if you want to try a new productivity system, it’s ideal for goal planning.

The Passion Planner was unpopular in testing because of the inside page design, the cramped writing space, and a cover that showed greasy thumbprints. One staffer liked the visual design of the layouts, but we preferred the Purpose Planner for goal tracking.

The Full Focus Planner is another option similar to the Purpose Planner and the Panda Planner Classic, with prompts to help keep you accountable and productive. In our tests, it wasn’t as intuitive to learn to use, and that might be a barrier for people to stay with it.

The Productivity Planner is also laid out with prompts and involves a system for tracking your time and output. But of all the planners we’ve tested, this one is the most complicated to use — it has 34 pages of instructions at the start of the book. It also lacks simple calendar layouts to track appointments or to plan ahead for projects and goals.

The Jstory Large Weekly Planner is a former pick for bare-bones, simple scheduling. The Muji Recycled Paper Weekly Planner has a less distracting minimalist design, and it usually costs $15 less.

The Ohh Deer Daily Planner offers only enough room for four months’ worth of entries, so you’d have to get three per year, making it one of the most expensive planners we’ve tested. And though this planner is sold in several cover designs, each one features a slightly different interior layout that isn’t disclosed on its product page.

Planners we tested or looked at that lacked sufficient room for jotting down daily to-do lists and notes include the Papier Planner, the regular-size Moleskine planners, and the Leuchtturm1917 Week Planner.

This article was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.

Melanie Pinola, a Wirecutter senior staff writer, died in October 2024.