Common Planner review

Common Planner is an online lesson planner for teachers, schools and districts. Until recently it was called Common Curriculum, and the company behind it is still Common Curriculum Inc. of Baltimore, Maryland. Teachers write daily, weekly or unit plans, tag standards and post work to Google Classroom. School leaders see everyone’s plans in one place and comment on them. The free Basic plan covers individual planning, and paid plans add unit planning, collaboration and school management. The company says over 300,000 teachers and administrators use it.

Who it’s for

Common Planner suits US K-12 teachers who want a free planner that is quicker than a Google Doc. It is a strong fit for teams that plan together. A grade-level team can share one plan book, and a special education or English learner teacher can add notes and modifications directly inside the general education teacher’s plans instead of keeping a separate copy.

It also suits principals and district coaches who want to see planning without chasing files. If you want to plan from a phone or tablet app, look at Planbook or iDoceo, and see our teacher planner rankings.

What it does well

The free plan does a lot. Basic includes daily, weekly and monthly planning, standards search, file uploads from your computer, Google Drive, Dropbox or Office 365, reuse of past lessons, printing of single lessons, and an AI lesson assistant. For a teacher who just wants their plans organised and tagged, that may be enough.

Standards tagging is fast. You search for a standard as you write, click it, and Common Planner tracks coverage. On the Pro and school plans it tracks standards automatically across units, and leaders get a dashboard showing what has been taught, skipped or covered too often across a team.

Google Classroom integration saves double entry. You write the lesson, then post the assignment to Google Classroom from the same screen. Pro adds a class website that updates itself, so students and families can see what is coming up.

Collaboration is real-time. Several people can edit the same plan book at once, which is how co-teachers and planning teams actually work. Each year you can copy your entire plan book forward with comments and reflections.

The school plan is built for coaching. Leaders see who has finished their plans, comment directly on a lesson, keep private coaching notes, and bulk email teachers who are behind. Schools can set a required template so every plan includes the same elements. Common Planner says AI can help leaders spot missing standards and pacing gaps, and that schools can import existing curriculum PDFs and turn them into plans.

Where it falls short

It runs in the browser only. There are no mobile apps listed, so checking tomorrow’s plan on a phone means using the website.

The free plan has limits that bite over a year. Posting to Google Classroom stops at 50 lessons, unit planning needs Pro, and you can only print single lessons. A teacher who posts daily will hit the cap within a term.

School pricing isn’t public, which makes it hard to compare with Planbook’s published per-licence prices without a sales call.

Pricing

Common Planner’s pricing page, checked in November 2026, lists three plans. Basic is free. Pro for Teachers costs $5.59 a month, paid as one yearly payment of $71.88, and adds double the AI usage, unlimited Google Classroom posts, unit planning, automatic standards tracking, a class website and collaboration with up to 5 people. Pro is for individuals only and needs a credit card. The school and district plan adds school-wide plan books, teams, shared templates, membership management and staff training, and is quoted per school or district, payable by purchase order, card, check or ACH. Schools can start a 30-day free trial.

Privacy and data

Common Planner says it is an educator-only service with no student accounts or logins. Students can view teacher-shared pages by link, which are read-only and have no fields for students to enter information. Its student data privacy notice, dated December 2025, says it may process device identifiers and usage data on those shared pages for security and internal operations only, and that it doesn’t use that data to identify, contact or profile a child. It says it does not sell student information or use it for targeted advertising, and that it complies with COPPA, FERPA, California’s SOPIPA and New York Education Law 2-d. A school’s own data protection agreement overrides the notice.

The notice doesn’t explain which AI providers power the assistant or what happens to lesson content sent to them. Since teachers may paste student names or accommodations into plans, ask before rolling it out school-wide. Our AI policy for schools covers what to check.

Verdict

Common Planner is the best free starting point for US teachers who plan with colleagues, and its school plan gives leaders a clear view of planning without extra admin. The free plan’s limits push regular users toward Pro, which is still modest. Teachers who want to plan in a mobile app should pick Planbook or iDoceo.

See the best Common Planner alternatives