Helllooo, planner people! If you’re trying to figure out the best paper planner for you, you are in the right spot. Not only am I a planner girl (since, like, 1992), but I’m also a planner designer. In 2022, we quit designing and manufacturing our planners due to rising costs (although we still have a few things for sale, and I never stopped designing digital products). When I quit making and selling planners, I turned back into a planner consumer. It’s safe to say I’m a picky planner person who likes to put her own spin on everything I use, and today I’m sharing with you my very favorite paper planners.
I’ll jump right in with my top planner recommendations and what I love about each one. I’m also including things to watch out for, or that you might not like, so you can make an informed decision. I’ll be including planners for productivity as well as some to inspire your creative self – and many of these are dual-purpose and can be used for both, as you’ll see (my favorite planner-that-I-didn’t-make was probably a Happy Planner that I repurposed entirely with printable inserts that I made each month – more on that below).
Oh! And if you’re a planner lover, I’ve put some favorite accessories and planners all in one place on my Amazon storefront.
My Current Favorite Overall: Erin Condren Life Planner
The Erin Condren Life Planner is a popular choice for many people, and I keep coming back to it – this is probably the best paper planner for me when it comes to functional, day-to-day planning. It’s well-built, has several layouts to choose from, and comes in a wide variety of pretty and customizable designs. I love the quality of the coil, the paper, and the covers.
Erin Condren Life Planner Pros:
Quality: This planner’s quality is top-notch. You cannot go wrong if you want sturdy paper with no bleed-through, a big fat coil, and a heavy cover.
Easy to customize: The Erin Condren website is easy to navigate and has tons of online customization tools. You can change the colors for many of the covers and add your name, as well as extra pages (for example, for budgeting, goal setting, notes, etc.). You can even choose from one of several themes for the inside pages (colorful, neutral, etc.).
It also comes with changeable covers – so if you feel like leopard print at the beginning of the year but want something different when summer rolls around, you can inexpensively swap out your cover for a fresh look.
Layouts: You have lots of layout choices with this planner (horizontal, hourly, and vertical). Again, you can easily choose this when you are designing your planner.
Room to be creative: This planner leaves room to get playful with stickers, colorful pens, and some multi-use pages that you can put to work for you (I turned a couple of the pages into a “Books I’ve Read” layout, and every month has a multi-functional page that I turn into a vision board).
Erin Condren Life Planner Cons:
Cost: This is the most expensive planner I’m recommending. The price varies based on what features you add, customization, coil choice, etc., but they are usually at least $60 (just a note on that, though – as someone who made planners, they are *so* expensive to make). You can sometimes find a stock, non-customized one for cheaper (look on Amazon and Staples).
Add-ons aren’t that great: I added the “goals” bundle to my planner, and I wouldn’t do it again. The actual worksheets didn’t really flow or make sense for how I plan my goals, and the other inserts I looked at were similar. I would save the money and skip these next time.
My Favorite Inexpensive Planner for Creatives: Classic Happy Planner
Happy Planners are just that – they’re happy and joyful and fun. They also come in tons of designs, and their unique disc system allows you to swap out pages or add your own pages at any time (like I did when I DIYed my Happy Planner one year – see below). They’re also on the less expensive side and can often be snagged on clearance for low, low prices, making this one of the better paper planners you can get. Because you can add pages, they’re a great way to marry functional planning and also memory keeping or art journaling in one planner.
I like the Classic Happy Planner, which is 7″ x 9.25″. The BIG Happy Planner is 8.5″ x 11″ and is also great, but too big for my regular planning needs (it’s a great replacement for a scrapbook, though!).
Classic Happy Planner Pros:
Cost: A new Happy Planner will cost you around $30-40, but you can find them on clearance (either on the Happy Planner website or at your local Michael’s) for much, much cheaper. I usually get mine for about $20. They also sell undated ones, which is great if you’re using it as a Memory Planner or are the type who tends to let weekly planning lapse.
Easy to customize: Think of the Happy Planner as a “build your own” experience. I find a cover and layout that I like to start with, but if I get bored of the cover or want to change up the layout, I can do so at any time. You can even swap out the rings for a different color, or add bigger ones if your planner gets too fat!
Layouts: You have lots of layout choices with this planner (horizontal, hourly, and vertical). Again, you can easily choose this when you are designing your planner.
Room to be creative: This planner leaves tons of room for creativity because you can add pages to it. You’ll need a Happy Planner punch, or a similar disc punch, but that’s an investment I recommend (go with the big size, you can use it for the BIG Happy Planner, too). You can purchase new inserts online or find tons of them online for free (I have lots of Classic Happy Planner inserts you can download for free).
Classic Happy Planner Cons:
Paper: This really isn’t a con, just an acknowledgment that with the less expensive product, you’re going to get less expensive paper. It’s still fine. I use one all the time as a memory keeper and I have no complaints. But if you’re taking pages in and out of the planner all the time, they will get a little dog-eared around the discs. You can use markers, but it doesn’t hold up as well to bleed through as the Erin Condren planner.
My Favorite Hourly Work Planner: Passion Planner
I don’t currently use a Passion Planner, but I have in the past and I like them. If you’re looking for something sleek while still having robust content, take a look at this product. A lot of the pros/cons will depend on your needs. For example, the planners don’t come with monthly divider tabs, but they sell tabs that you can add at home. If you like the sleek, flat look, you might like that they don’t have divider tabs. If you want divider tabs, adding them yourself is, frankly, annoying. As someone who used to make planners, tabs are one of the more expensive and cumbersome components to deal with, so in theory not having tabs should make the planner cheaper, but these are on the pricey side (but like Happy Planner, don’t ever pay full price – they have some great sales!).
Passion Planner Pros:
Sleek: The Passion Planner is sleek and has a flexible binding. The book lays flat when it’s open, but it doesn’t have a coil. You can get it in a plain black cover, so if you don’t want to walk into a meeting with your sticker-covered rainbow planner, this is a nice option.
Paper: This planner has a nice, smooth, pleasant-to-write on paper that holds up well to markers and pens.
Layouts: This planner has a weekly layout with days broken up into hours (ranging from 6am to 10pm). This is a nice hourly layout, and has some extra room at the bottom for a to-do list, priorities, etc.
Passion Planner Cons:
Cost: This is another one of those con/not-a-con things. The planner retails for between $40-$50, which is expensive knowing what I know! But you can get deep discounts (right now, as I write this, the brand is having a sale and Passion Planners are more like $25, which is very reasonable). So this will really be up to you.
No coil: Again – is this a con or a pro? No coil means the planner takes up less space and has a workman-like look to it. However, if you want to add a bunch of stickers your pages have nowhere to go and the planner just gets fat (again, is that a con? I love me a fat planner!).
Room to be creative: This planner does have some pages for things like goal mapping and vision boards, but it’s not as conducive to getting crazy with the stickers or art journaling as the other two. As you can see by my pictures, though, I made it work!
My Favorite Meal Planner: Carrie Elle Meal Planner
Remember when I said I don’t make planners anymore? Well, I don’t – but one of my best-sellers has been licensed, and they make it for me! So, you can still buy a Carrie Elle Meal Planner. However, it’s like a Carrie Elle Meal Planner Lite. If you’re familiar with the old version, which was very robust and used super high-quality coils, paper, and covers, you’ll notice that this version, while more affordable, uses different parts. But it’s still great! You can get a quick video tour here. Read on…
Carrie Elle Meal Planner Pros:
Usability: The Meal Planner was designed to be 100% effective, useful, and make it more fun to do the most tedious task ever…meal plan. It’s got 52 pages of weekly meal planning pages. Write out your meal on the left side of the page, your grocery list on the right side, and then tear the perforated list off to take it to the store with you.
It also includes 10 pages specifically for planning for parties or events.
Cost: Because the Meal Planner is now produced by a company that can buy in bulk, and it’s only available in one cover design, it’s really affordable. It will cost your $25ish dollars and is available on Amazon.
Carrie Elle Meal Planner Cons:
Coil: Here we go with the, “is it a pro or a con?” again. Our old meal planner was made with a spiral coil. Those are really expensive and labor-intensive to install. The new version of the meal planner uses what’s called a wire-o coil. This is a significant cost cutter! But the coils, which are still closed by hand, are sometimes not closed properly. I’ve had one person reach out to me to tell me the coil wasn’t secure and some pages were falling out of the book. This is a side effect of all wire-o bindings, which again, are installed by an actual person with room for human error. I think you can safely take your chances, though, as I’ve only ever had one complaint.
My Favorite Memory Keeper: Happy Planner
Happy Planner wins again for the best Memory Planner or Memory Keeper around (but this time, you might like the bigger size!). I like them for this purpose because you can add things to them, giving it a real scrapbook feel. Take a look at some of the ways I use mine in these photos. While I prefer a vertical layout for planning, I like the horizontal layout for memory keeping. It gives more room for photos and journaling. I have no pros and cons for this – just pros.
My only warning is that I don’t think this is archival quality – while I would include this as one of the best paper planners, I would not use a Happy Planner to store important photos (although I use mine all the time for pictures I print off of my phone).
If you have a ton of photos or like room to spread out, I recommend using a BIG Happy Planner.
