Things like smart clocks, digital calendars and to-do lists help you stay organized and on top of your routine. Traditional planners also keep your schedule on track and typically don’t come at a high price either. Finding the best planner for your personal routine, however, involves more than simply picking up the first one you see.
Depending on your routine, the best planner or agenda for you will likely have more than just blank paper — it should come with features like calendars, tabs, sections for to-do lists, lists of important dates and holidays, and at the least, lined pages. Plus, a great planner should be able to keep up with your lifestyle, which means it has to have a durable cover to help keep it together for months.
To find the best planners and agendas for this year, I gathered recommendations from my colleagues and included options from brands I’ve used myself. Read more about our favorite analog planners below.
This hardcover planner is available as a mid-year planner and as an academic year option. It’s available in several styles and it includes calendars and weekly planning sections for each month. It also has a section for dates, reminders, contact information and more. Each calendar also has a section on the side for important notes.
In addition to the weekly planning sections and calendars and daily to-do lists, the back of the planner also has dotted and lined pages for additional note taking. It also has a ribbon to place between pages to help keep your place. The planner, which has 192 pages, is available as a hardcover or as a softer spiral-bound option.
This planner is a favorite of NBC Selected senior editor Shalwah Evans, who says she loves it because it allows her to physically check boxes off of her to-do list. “I particularly like this planner because it gives me enough room for my extensive lists (unlike some previous puny planners I’ve owned) and it does 30-minute time slots for my appointments,” she says. “One of my favorite features is the space to add my meals and water intake, and yes, I fill this in daily — my nutritionist would be so proud.”
Since it’s a full-size planner (read: large), it is better for keeping in one place, like your office desk, rather than trekking back and forth daily, according to Evans. Also, while it isn’t dated, it’s a daily planner, so it’s best if used for day-of obligations as opposed to for planning weeks or months in advance.
Available in 20 colors, this planner from Amazon comes with a ribbon bookmark, an elastic band and 160 lined pages. It is also available in blank, dotted and 252-page options and you can also get it in multipacks.
While it doesn’t have calendars and pre-made to-do lists, it’s far from plain, but great for people who want a simple planner that also doesn’t cost a ton of money. It has a pocket on the inside and it comes with multiple lined adhesive labels, which you can use to write your name, contact information and other important details in case you lose it. It’s also compact enough to fit in a small tote or purse, which is useful if you want to travel to and from work or school with it.
“I’m not picky about journals. I really just need a notebook that isn’t too big or small and has a decent amount of pages,” says Nikki Brown, NBC Selected senior editor. “I love the basic-ness and dependability of Paperage notebooks. I always keep one in my bag and find the cover to be durable despite everything it rubs up against in my work bag.”
Unlike the other Papier planners above, this one is undated, so while it has calendars and pages for days of the week, they aren’t filled in. You can add the month or day of the week yourself and you can customize the calendar with your own important events in addition to holidays. It has 365 pages — so you could plan out the entire year — and there are pages with grids in the back, for mathematical work. Plus, you can have your name and the year added to the front of the planner if you really want to add some custom details.
NBC Selected editorial operations associate Jem Alabi has this planner and says it helps keep her organized. “Other than the fact that it’s undated (which saves me the shame of forgetting a day or two when I’m traveling or really busy), the page layout is priority-based which reflects the way my brain works,” she says. “As someone who has to-do lists for my work, home, and social life, I can keep all my tasks in this one planner.”
Best daily planner
This softcover option from Papier is perfect if you prefer something with a more flexible feel and spiral binding that you can use to hold your writing tool. It has a calendar for every month in 2027, each of which has holidays and themed months listed as well as a sidebar for writing notes and reminders. It also has a section for monthly goals, lined sections to use for to-do lists, weekly grids and blank areas for sketching and more. The top of each lined section also has bullets for writing important tasks for each month. The planner can be purchased in a hard cover option too.
Best large-size planner
I first bought this planner because I prefer the large size over the small planners, so it’s great for people who enjoy something that is closer to the size of regular copy paper. It has tabs for each month, starting from the middle of 2026 and all the way to the end of 2027. It has monthly calendars as well as mini calendars on the edges of the pages (sometimes called reference calendars), weekly sections with lined areas for each day, pages for writing contact information, a map of the United States and a list of major holidays.
I like using it at my desk for when I’m home and planning personal errands. Also, being left handed, the size of the planner makes it easier to write in it compared to smaller options. I also love the side tabs for each month because they let me find any month in a few seconds.
Best faux leather planner
NBC Selected editor Mili Godio put a lot of thought into buying the right planner and spent a lot of time shopping before landing on this one from Sterling Ink.
“The Common Planner kept popping up over and over, and when I finally pulled the plug on the $60 planner, I understood why it’s so popular,” she says. “It’s extremely basic, which is exactly what I wanted; it has a month-to-month calendar, weekly pages, quarterly pages and yearly/monthly trackers — no quotes, designs, holidays or moon phases that I find take up unnecessary space.” Her favorite feature of the planner is that it has blank pages in the back that she uses a lot to jot down to-dos and deadlines.”
How I picked the best planners
Here is everything I factored into the list of planners above. Most of the options I included are based on products our staff has used before.
- Dates and calendars: The most important part of any planner is how it organizes all of the dates throughout the year, including months, days of the week and holidays. Some planners have a mix of calendars with sections on the sides for notes and sections with every few pages representing the days of the week. Some planners have slightly more plain designs, with blank calendars and lined sections for notes without dates. I made sure to include different styles of planners, mostly with at least one organizational feature (calendars, dates, etc.). I only included one option that has just lined pages (Paperage Lined Journal Notebook), for those who prefer a very basic planner.
- Material and style: I also considered the material and style of different planners available, mainly whether or not they had hard or soft covers. Hardcover planners are generally more durable than softcover planners, so they can handle being moved around a lot, put into backpacks and more, but they aren’t always as lightweight as some spiral-bound softcover planners. Softcover planners typically aren’t as bulky to carry as hardcover options, but they tend to get damaged quickly comparatively. With this in mind, I included both styles as well as options with internal pockets and more.
- Customization: In making the list of planners above, I made sure to include options that, in addition to having the basic features of a planner, also offer fun features or customizations, like sticker labels, built-in bookmarks for easily finding your page, reminders to stay hydrated, maps, sections for contact information and more.
Why trust NBC Selected?
I’m a commerce editor at NBC Selected, where I write about lifestyle, organization, home storage and more. I’ve written about closet organizing products, dorm room essentials for college students, label-making devices and more. For this story I received recommendations from different NBC Selected staffers (and used my own favorites) who are pretty busy and regularly use planners to keep their schedules organized.
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