Customize Your Free CFA Study Planner [2025]

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“Loved the tool, it was instrumental in my L3 exam prep as it was for L1 and L2. You’re genuinely a life saver! I thankfully managed to go 3/3 in the CFA Program in the space of two years and the study planner was a big help in doing this.“

Tom Flahavan, CFA L3 candidate

“My first stop (after exam registration) was reading articles on your website and downloading the planner.”

Lydia Reeves: used planner for all CFA levels (and now CAIA!)

“Love the website content and the CFA study planner has become an absolute necessity for me! It helped me clear Level 1 in my first attempt by always keeping me on top of my study schedule.“

Reshma Menon, CFA L2 candidate

So you’ve decided to register for the CFA exams. 

The natural next step is to consider if you would need additional prep materials. This depends largely on your study style and how you learn best – check out Offers section for exclusive 300 Hours readers discounts.

Once that’s done, the big question is “How do I plan my studies to pass the exams?”, or “Can I complete studying for the CFA exam in X months?”. The ‘problem’ with this question is that each individual should have their own optimal plan that suits their circumstances – there is no one-size-fits-all. 

As we get these questions all the time, we’ve distilled our learnings and experience into a killer CFA study planner tool. Our personalized CFA study planner will help you:

  • Predict your CFA exam score
  • Benchmark your mock scores against historical candidate data
  • Track all your study efforts
  • Map the curriculum you’ve covered, identify weak spots and auto-prioritize

Let’s dive in!

Contents
  1. What makes the best CFA study planner?
  2. Generate your own free CFA study planner
  3. ​PLAN: Master your study hours and never fall behind
  4. PROGRESS: Know what you’ve covered, and focus on what’s important
  5. PERFORM: Benchmark your mocks. Predict your CFA exam performance
  6. Fill in this form, get your personalized CFA study planner now!

What makes the best CFA study planner?

ideal study planner orig

I have discussed this framework more informally in this article about balancing CFA exam studies and work, but I hope this guide will give you a concrete method to come up with a tailor-made plan.  

We built our study planner with two guiding principles:

  • Low input needed: We want you to focus on studying, not playing around with study data. Our study planner is ready to use right out of the box. Input as much or as little as you want, it makes the most of the study data you give it.
  • Focus on passing: The study planner’s main function is to help you pass. Every aspect of its interface is to help you focus on the areas that matter, or incentivize you to perform better or work harder. This means our focus areas will prioritize topics that can gain you the most points, and we built in a lot of features to give you an idea of how your exam performance would be.

Minimal work needed, and maximizes your pass chances. Nothing else matters.

Generate your own free CFA study planner

More than 80,000 readers have successfully used our planner. You can generate your own in less than a minute. 

We will create a personalized CFA study planner for you with 3 core features:

  • PLAN: Shows you whether you’re on-track with your CFA exam studies and all important dates
  • PROGRESS: Show you where are the topics you should be focusing your time on, factoring in the amount of reading and actual exam weightings to really show you the most efficient topics to be addressing
  • PERFORM: Benchmarks your mock exam scores to show you if your scores need improving to ensure a pass​
Get Your Free CFA Study Planner

​PLAN: Master your study hours and never fall behind

plan title orig

With our online planner, you can check your study progress at any time, and see if you’re on track to complete all your studies before your CFA exam day. 

The planner also monitors the remaining days left to your exam with your study plan and progress, alerting you if you are falling behind.

CFA Study Planner: Plan

​It also charts your study hours, showing your progress against past periods.​

CFA Study Planner: Study Hours

PROGRESS: Know what you’ve covered, and focus on what’s important

CFA Study Planner - Track Progress

Know exactly how much you’ve covered

Our CFA study planner prioritizes exam performance – exam weighting is built into every assessment. Throughout your studies you will have a progress % showing how much of the exam you’ve covered, and how far ahead – or behind – you are.

CFA study plan: Track Your progress Dashboard

Focus on your important topics

The planner also considers exam weights, difficulty and progress to highlight topics that you should prioritize.

CFA Study Planner: Readings Summary

Helps you stay disciplined

As you progress through your studies, reviewing topics and completing mock exams, marking your progress as ‘done’ in the planner actually contributes towards your sense of achievement and helps you maintain a more disciplined approach to your CFA exam studies.

CFA Study Plan: Readings List

PERFORM: Benchmark your mocks. Predict your CFA exam performance

CFA Study Plan: Perform and predict your exam score

We predict…you’ll pass your CFA exams.

Combining past candidate performance data and your study data, we can even attempt to predict your CFA exam performance.

Of course, this is just a prediction, and not a guarantee!

CFA Study Planner: Predict Your CFA Exam Score

Auto-benchmarked against past candidates

As you enter your mock exam scores, these are auto-benchmarked to show you if you are scoring well against historical candidates performance.

We have past candidates’ actual CFA results, so we can create a reliable benchmark to show you if you’re trending towards a pass, or you need to step it up.

This better informs you if your scores need improving, and helps reassure you if your scores are on a good trend.

CFA Study Planner: Mock Exam Tracker

Fill in this form, get your personalized CFA study planner now!

What do you think? I hope you found this simple framework useful for your study planning, and that you now have your online planner to use. Share this with a friend who is revising for the CFA exams too!

Meanwhile, you may find these related articles of interest:

Level 1 candidates:

Level 2 candidates:

Level 3 candidates:

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117 thoughts on “Customize Your Free CFA Study Planner [2025]”

  2. Hi, when I click the Get Your Free CFA Study Planner button nothing happens. I want the Study Planner to plan for my November 2024 sitting.

    Reply

  6. Hi, i wanna hear all of yall opinion on that.
    Should I create flashcards on terms? Just like what is probability sampling and short description of that?
    Or is it just a waste of time and it is better to focus on formulas?

    Reply

  9. hey, great planner. But my progress % has been stuck at 88% for weeks now. I’m regularly logging mocks, I’ve completed and reviewed the whole syllabus and the mastery score is also above 70%. Is that a glitch?

    Reply

  11. Hi Zee,
    Will this planner be suitable for the August 2024 exam timeline and the 2024 curriculum for Level 1?

    Reply

  12. Downloaded the L3 Planner for Feb’24 – it seems the readings are in a different order than in the book – anyone else having the same issue?

    Reply

  14. Hi, so I tried to put the number of hours I intend to study per day but my estimated total study hours does not update. How can I fixed this? Where should I input my figures so I don’t affect the formula?

    Reply

    • Hi Charles! Usually this is because the exam date is entered with an incorrect year (e.g. 2022 instead of 2023). Alternatively if you can send me the link to your planner via email (zeeAT300hoursDOTcom) I can have a look.

      Reply

  15. Hi,
    I just got the study planner and there’s something wrong with it. I have chosen a date as the start date for my studies and it keeps showing one day ahead as the starting date!

    I would appreciate it if you could help me fix this
    Thanks,
    Hadi

    Reply

    • This is probably down to a time zone thing. You can set your study planner to your time zone at File > Settings > Time Zone. Hope that helps!

      Reply

  16. Hi, i think the link to download the study planner for level 1 might be down?

    would you be able to email it me please?

    Thanks!

    Reply

  19. I have submitted and received the CFA level 3 study planner but the list of readings do not reflect the 2022 curriculum.

    Reply

    • Hi – do you mean 2023? If so, yes, we’re still updating the sheet to reflect the latest 2023 curriculum, and we’re waiting on CFA Institute to clarify a few points before we finalize our update.

      Reply

      • Hi Zee. I’ve tried downloading the updated 2023 Level 2 planner multiple times, and it’s still stuck on 44 readings. I think the new curriculum for 2023 is 49 readings, some new, some deleted from what the planner has.

        How do I download the most up to date version? I fill out the online form the same way each time, and no luck.

        Thanks!

        Reply

        • Hi Steve, I’m answering for Zee here. The Level 2 planner is updated for 2023 curriculum. The difference in reading numbers is due to us not having expanded the sub readings (Learning Modules) under Multiple Regression and Real Estate Investments.

          Reply

    • That means “gone through for the second time”. Usually a review is necessary after the first sweep since there is a lot of material to get through.

      Reply

  22. Hi, I just want to know if anyone has received refund email for those whose exams have been deferred twice. As I was earlier informed by CFA institute that will receive email in early June, however I have not received yet. Can you please help.

    Reply

  23. Hi, I had my CFA Level 3 Planner and this morning it seemed to be removed from the creator. Are you able to give me my access back? My exam is in a 6 weeks and i was using this to track my progress. Thanks!

    Reply

  29. How can I add details of a month-long break from studies in the planner? So that I have a more accurate picture of exactly how much time I have left.

    Reply

    • Hi Supriya, our study planner doesn’t have that feature incorporated unfortunately. That said, you can put an earlier start date (1 month earlier), and it should indicate that you are ahead of schedule before your 1 month break, and on target after your 1 month break. Hope this helps!

      Reply

  30. Does the planner not accommodate Wiley materials? These were what I had originally purchased for the June 2020 exam and will continue to use for the Feb 2021 exam.

    Reply

    • Hi Bradley – yes, it should. There’s an ‘Other’ field that you can use for providers not on the list – it disappeared for some reason but I’ve added it back now. Thanks for the catch!

      Reply

    • Hi Christopher If you’re on the latest version of the planner, you should be able to change the exam date in Form Input > Cell D2. If this doesn’t work, then the best thing to do is to create a new planner with your new exam date and copy any information over. If you’d like more help, just email me at zee@300hours.com.

      Reply

  34. Hi Egan It could be because of your timezone – the default for this sheet is London (GMT0). You can change this via File > Spreadsheet settings. Hope that helps – if you continue to have issues just let me know.

    Reply

  35. My planner seems to be off by one day (it thinks today is the 29th when it is actually the 28th). How do I fix this?

    Reply

  36. Hi, I just sent an email to your study planner support mailbox. I received an email after filling out the form called ‘Your 300 Hours CFA Guides’. Towards the bottom of the email there is lots of hyperlinked images. If you click on the one that says ‘The CFA Study Planner’ it links you to the page we are on right now. I noticed 99% of the comments are about not receiving the planner. I think the hyperlinked image on your auto-email needs to be amended.. Would love to get a hold of your planner. Thank you.

    Reply

    • If you fill out your details in the form at the end of this article, a planner will be created and emailed to you. I’m not sure what went wrong for you but if you have any issues in getting your planner please just contact me at zee@300hours.com.

      Reply

  49. Hi there, I have filled up the form above and submitted, and I didn’t receive the CFA study planner. Could you please send it

    Reply

  50. I have submitted the form quite a few times, but have yet received the planner. Would you be able to help me with this situation?

    Reply

    • The planners were successfully generated and sent to your email address – perhaps they were accidentally going to spam? I’ve reforwarded it to you separately – hope it works now!

      Reply

  51. What is the best way to think about how much progress I should be making within the planned study hours i.e. if I study/read for 2 hours a day how many pages should I be completing for each 2 hour session? Page numbers seems like a more definitive and trackable metric than study hours and sections. Thanks!

    Reply

    • Hi Jason, that’s a good question! The planner measures progress by the % of curriculum covered. Topics are weighted differently and have varying amounts of material, so 50% of pages covered does not mean you’ve covered 50% of the exam. And clarity on % of exam covered is important! The recommended metric for daily/weekly progress should be readings. You should be aiming to complete 1 reading every half week or so (this may vary depending on your schedule). Hope that helps!

      Reply

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