Planbook review

Planbook is an online lesson planner for teachers and schools. You set up your timetable once, then write lessons into a calendar that understands your schedule, so moving a lesson pushes the rest of the unit along. Rod Hall, an elementary school teacher, started it with his brother Jeff, a software developer, and launched it in August 2010. It is still run by the founding team from Illinois. Planbook says it has over one million teachers and one billion lessons in its system. It is for individual teachers who want a structured planner, and for schools that want to see and guide those plans.

Who it’s for

Planbook suits US teachers who plan lesson by lesson against state standards and whose plans change often. If your week includes assemblies, snow days and a rotating A/B schedule, Planbook is built for that. It also suits principals and instructional coaches who need to check that plans exist and follow the pacing guide, without collecting Word documents every Friday.

Teachers outside the US can use it, but the standards library is US-first. A teacher who wants a free planner should look at Common Planner or Planboard, and our teacher planner rankings list more.

What it does well

Scheduling is the strength. You can set up weekly, two-week or cycle schedules, create alternate day schedules for half days and planning days, and add or remove a class from a single day. When a fire drill eats a lesson, you bump it and every later lesson moves by one. You can extend a lesson over two days, lock a lesson to a date, and copy a full year of plans into the next school year.

Lessons are structured. You can define up to 10 sections per lesson or pick a preset layout, attach files, videos, assignments and assessments, and add templates that drop repeating activities into every lesson. Status tags such as Ready, Approved and Taught help a teacher track where each plan stands. The standards library covers every US state and many national, international and district frameworks, and Planbook says its content team reviews each standard before adding it. Standards reports show what you have covered.

Sharing is flexible. You can set up separate views for students, substitutes, parents and administrators, and choose which lesson sections each can see. A substitute view can show full detail plus your notes for the day, while the student view shows only lessons marked Ready.

For schools, administrators can review any teacher’s plans, check for missing ones and leave comments. Schools can share lesson banks across a team, set a school year and calendar for every teacher, and require a lesson layout. Planbook supports OneRoster and ClassLink rostering and single sign-on with Google, Microsoft, ClassLink, Clever and Apple. It also integrates with Google Classroom, Drive and Calendar, and exports to Word and Google Docs.

Where it falls short

There is no free plan. You get a 90-day free trial, then you pay. Free planners such as Common Planner and Planboard cover the basics at no cost.

The interface has a lot of options. Planbook has added features every year since 2010, including a gradebook, seating charts and stickers, and new users can get lost among the settings. Plan an hour to set up your first year properly.

There are no AI tools for drafting lessons or differentiating material. Some teachers will see that as a plus. Others will prefer a planner with an assistant built in.

Pricing

Planbook publishes its prices, checked in November 2026. An individual teacher pays $20 for one year, $18 a year for two years, or $16 a year for three years. School and district licences cost $18 each for 1 to 49 accounts, $16 for 50 to 249 and $14 for 250 or more. Every plan includes all features, and a 90-day free trial is available.

Privacy and data

Planbook’s privacy policy says it collects as little personal information as possible, with email as the only required field for teachers. It says it does not sell or rent user information, that students never receive marketing emails, and that it will never knowingly share student personal information with third parties. Accounts are meant for educators aged 18 and over. Teachers and schools can create student accounts, which need a student ID or email, a password and a name. Planbook says data for inactive students is removed after 10 years by default, and schools can change that. It links to the Student Privacy Pledge from its site.

The policy says its systems are designed in line with FERPA, but it names no security certification. It still says Planbook complies with the EU-US Privacy Shield, a framework the EU’s top court struck down in 2020. That suggests the policy hasn’t been reviewed in years. Ask for a current data processing agreement, using our student data privacy checklist.

Verdict

Planbook is a capable, low-cost planner for US teachers with messy schedules, and its admin tools make it a good fit for schools that review plans. The $20 price is fair for what you get. Teachers who want a free planner, built-in AI help or real-time co-editing should pick Common Planner instead.

See the best Planbook alternatives