Pages per day calculator

How much to read each day to finish a book in time for a book club, a class or a library due date.

Read each day

29 pages

400 pages left over 14 days is 28.6 a day, about 36 min of reading.

Checkpoints

The page to have reached by the end of each day listed. If you are past it, you are ahead.

By the end of	Date	Reach page
Day 7	200
Day 14	400

How it works

The pages you have left are divided evenly over the days you have: pages per day = (total pages − current page) ÷ days. The headline figure is rounded up, because reading 28 pages a day when you need 28.6 leaves you short on the last day. The exact figure is shown underneath.

Minutes per day come from the exact pages per day, converted to words with your words-per-page figure and divided by your reading speed: minutes = pages × words per page ÷ words per minute. The speed presets are the adult averages from Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of reading rate; the reading time calculator explains where they come from.

If you enter a finish date, the number of days is counted from today up to the day before that date. Each checkpoint is the page you would reach reading exactly the required amount each day, rounded up to a whole page.

A worked example

Your book club meets in three weeks. The novel is 432 pages, and you are on page 58.

Pages left: 432 − 58 = 374.
Over 21 days: 374 ÷ 21 = 17.8, so 18 pages a day.
At 300 words a page and 238 words per minute: 17.8 × 300 ÷ 238 = about 22 minutes a day.
Checkpoints: reach page 183 by the end of day 7, page 308 by the end of day 14, and the last page on day 21.

Twenty-two minutes a day is a commute or a lunch break. Written as "read the whole book in three weeks" it sounds like much more, which is the reason to break a deadline down into a daily number.

Pages per day for common book lengths

Rounded up to whole pages. For reference, a typical adult novel is 300 to 400 pages in paperback.

Book length	7 days	14 days	30 days	60 days	90 days
200 pages	29	15	7	4	3
300 pages	43	22	10	5	4
400 pages	58	29	14	7	5
500 pages	72	36	17	9	6
700 pages	100	50	24	12	8
1000 pages	143	72	34	17	12

Making the daily target stick

A daily page target is easier to keep when it is attached to something you already do: the first twenty minutes after dinner, a train journey, the time before sleep. Reading the same amount every day also means you remember the story better than cramming the last half on the final weekend.

Build in slack. If the calculator says 18 pages a day, aim for 20 on the days you can, so a busy day later does not put the deadline at risk. Checking your page against the weekly checkpoint once a week is enough to tell whether you need to adjust.

Where the estimate is weakest

Uneven books. Pages are not equal. A book with long stretches of dialogue reads faster than its dense opening chapters, and appendices, notes or an index at the back may not need reading at all. Set the total pages to where the text you need actually ends.
Words per page. 300 is typical for a paperback novel, but large hardbacks can hold 400 and large-print editions under 200. Count one full page if the minutes matter to you; the page target itself does not depend on this setting.
Your speed. The minutes are only as good as the reading speed. For a textbook or a book in a second language, expect to need considerably more time than the presets suggest.

Common questions

How many pages can I read in an hour?

At an average silent reading speed of about 238 to 260 words per minute and around 300 words on a paperback page, most adults read roughly 45 to 55 pages of a novel in an hour. Dense non-fiction, small type or a textbook can halve that. The easiest way to know your own figure is to time yourself for 15 minutes on the book you are actually reading.

Does the finish date count as a reading day?

No. The calculator counts from today up to the day before your finish date, on the assumption that you want the book done by the time that day arrives, say before a book club meeting or a class. If you will also read on the finish date itself, add one to the number of days.

What if I miss a day?

Enter your current page and the new number of days, and the calculator spreads what is left over the days that remain. Missing one day of a fourteen-day plan raises the daily target by about 8%, which is usually easy to absorb. Missing several near the end is what makes a plan fail, so the weekly checkpoints are there to warn you early.

Should I count pages or chapters?

Pages are the more even unit, since chapters in the same book can vary from two pages to forty. If you prefer to finish on a chapter break, use the daily page target as a guide and stop at the nearest chapter end, reading a little more or less each day while keeping an eye on the checkpoint page for each week.

How do I handle an e-book with no page numbers?

Use locations or percentages instead. Enter 100 as the total pages and your current percentage as the current page, and the daily figure becomes a daily percentage. Minutes per day will not be meaningful unless you also set words per page to one hundredth of the book's word count.