Best Homeschool Planners and Curriculum Tools
The best homeschool planner depends on whether you need curriculum or proof you taught it. Compare HomeschoolOS, Homeschool Planet, Time4Learning, Sonlight.
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If you need to prove you taught it, use a record keeper: HomeschoolOS is the best homeschool planner for attendance, grades and year-end reporting, at $23 once with no subscription and no account. If you want a shared cloud calendar that syncs across devices and emails assignments to your kids, Homeschool Planet is the better fit. If what you are actually shopping for is lessons to teach, you need a curriculum provider like Time4Learning or Sonlight, not a planner at all.
That last distinction is the one that wastes the most money in homeschooling. There are two separate jobs here, and almost every “best homeschool planner” list blurs them together:
- Curriculum is what you teach. Books, lessons, videos, assignments, scope and sequence. Time4Learning, Sonlight and BookShark do this.
- Record keeping is proving you taught it. Attendance, hours, grades, work samples, transcripts, the year-end report. HomeschoolOS and Homeschool Planet do this.
A curriculum provider is not a planner. A planner is not a curriculum. Buying a $1,000 boxed program does not give you an attendance log, and buying a planner does not give you a single lesson. Most families need one of each, and knowing which gap you are filling is most of the decision.
One note before the table: what records you are actually required to keep varies by state, and some states ask for very little while others want days, hours, samples or an annual evaluation. Check your own state’s rules, or ask your local homeschool group, before you decide how much logging you need. Nothing below is legal advice.
| Tool | Best for | Price | Subscription | Works offline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HomeschoolOS | Records, attendance, GPA, year report | $23 one time | No | Yes |
| Homeschool Planet | Cloud calendar synced across devices | ~$10/mo or ~$85/yr | Yes | No |
| Time4Learning | Curriculum that teaches and auto-grades | ~$30-$40/mo per student | Yes | No |
| Sonlight / BookShark | Literature-based boxed curriculum | ~$500-$1,000+ per level | No | Yes (books) |
| Notion or Trello | Building your own system from scratch | Free tier, paid plans | Optional | Partly |
1. HomeschoolOS - best for record keeping and daily rhythm
HomeschoolOS is one offline HTML file that runs your school year. It does not teach anything. It records everything.
Per child, you get a curriculum list that spans books, online courses, co-op classes and tutoring, each with hours per week and a status, so a mixed setup stays in one place instead of three. A weekly block schedule lays out subjects by day and time, which is what turns “we do school in the mornings” into an actual rhythm the kids can follow.
The record keeping side is the real reason to buy it. The attendance log tracks every school day, half day, field trip, sick day and holiday against a required-days number you set yourself, whether that is 170, 175, 180 or something else your state uses. The assignments log takes quarter, subject, score and weight, then produces a letter grade and a cumulative GPA per child, which is what a transcript is built from. A quarterly portfolio holds goals, work samples and photos, and an end-of-year report pulls it together. There is also a field trip and co-op planner, a library checkout tracker, and a supplies budget covering curriculum, art supplies, science kits and printer ink.
It is $23 one time. No subscription, no renewal, no account, no login. Everything you type is saved on your own device only, which for a file full of your children’s names and grades is not a small thing. It works on a laptop, and on iPhone and Android if you add it to your home screen, and it works fully offline after the first load.
Where it loses: there is no cloud sync, so a laptop and a phone keep separate copies and you need one device to be your record of truth. It sends no reminders and no emails. There is no community, no forum, no gradebook shared with a co-op teacher. If any of those are the point for you, buy a subscription planner instead.
2. Homeschool Planet - best for cloud sync and shared schedules
Homeschool Planet is the most established online homeschool planner, and it is genuinely good at the things a cloud service should be good at. Schedules sync across devices, kids can get their own login and daily assignment emails, and it will reschedule missed work forward instead of leaving holes. It handles multiple children well, tracks attendance and grades, and sells lesson plans that drop popular curricula straight into the calendar as ready-made assignments, which saves real hours if you use one of the programs they support.
It runs on a subscription, currently around $10 per month or roughly $85 per year for a family plan, with larger tiers for co-ops and micro-schools, and a free 30-day trial that does not ask for a card.
Where it loses: it is a subscription, so the year you stop paying is the year your records get harder to reach, which matters for something you may need to produce years later. It needs internet and an account, and your family’s records live on their servers. Some parents also find it heavier than they want, with more calendar machinery than a two-kid homeschool needs. If you want to own your records outright and never think about renewal, this is the wrong shape of product.
3. Time4Learning - best for curriculum that teaches and grades itself
Time4Learning is not a planner. It is an online curriculum: animated lessons, activities and quizzes that the student works through on screen, mostly independently, with automatic grading and a parent report. For a family that wants school to happen without a parent teaching every subject, or that needs a bridge while switching approaches, it does exactly that. It bills month to month with no contract, so you can start, stop or pause, and there is a discount for additional students.
Pricing is around $29.95 per month for preschool through 5th grade and around $39.95 per month for 6th through 12th, per student, with additional courses charged separately at the higher grades. It has raised prices more than once in recent years, which is worth knowing before you build your year around it.
Where it loses: the reports it produces are its own automated ones, not the attendance and portfolio records a state may want, and it only covers the subjects the child does inside Time4Learning. Co-op classes, field trips, library books and the science you did at the kitchen table do not exist to it. It is also screen-heavy by design, which some families are specifically trying to avoid. Skip it if you want hands-on teaching or paper books.
4. Sonlight and BookShark - best for open-and-go literature-based curriculum
Sonlight and BookShark come from the same company and share a literature-based philosophy: real books instead of textbooks, with an instructor guide that lays out a scheduled year. Sonlight is Christian in worldview; BookShark is the secular version of the same approach. Both ship all-subject packages that arrive as a box of books with a day-by-day guide, and both are well loved by families who want to read aloud together rather than assign worksheets.
They are not cheap. All-subject packages generally run from around $500 to $1,000 or more per level per child, though Sonlight offers interest-free payment plans over several months and both discount the package against buying the books individually.
Where it loses: the instructor guide schedules the curriculum, but it is not a record system. It will not total your days, calculate a GPA, or hold your portfolio. It is also a real commitment in both money and reading time, and a heavy read-aloud load does not suit every parent or every child. If your child resists being read to, or you need something a student can do alone while you work, this is the wrong fit.
5. Notion or Trello - best for the DIY builder
Both have free tiers that are genuinely usable for one family, and both can be bent into a homeschool system. Trello is a board of cards, which suits a simple weekly “to do, doing, done” flow per child and takes about ten minutes to set up. Notion is far more flexible: databases, linked tables, rollups, and thousands of free homeschool templates other parents have already built. If you enjoy building systems, Notion can do almost anything HomeschoolOS does, plus whatever else you want.
Where it loses: you are the developer, and the maintenance is permanent. GPA weighting and required-days math are formulas you have to build and then trust. Trello’s free workspace caps you at ten boards, and Notion’s free plan is aimed at individuals, so growing setups get nudged toward paid plans at $10 or more per user per month. Most importantly, both live in the cloud on someone else’s servers, and a half-built system abandoned in October is worse than no system at all. Pick this only if the building is something you actually want to do.
How to choose
- Pick HomeschoolOS if your problem is records, not lessons: you need attendance against required days, grades, a GPA and a year-end report, you want to own it for $23 once, and you would rather your children’s data never leave your device.
- Pick Homeschool Planet if sync is the point: two parents on two devices, kids who need their own logins and assignment emails, or a curriculum whose ready-made lesson plans they already sell.
- Pick Time4Learning if you need the teaching done for you and your child works well on screen, especially as a stopgap or for subjects you do not want to teach.
- Pick Sonlight or BookShark if you want a planned, book-based year handed to you in a box and you have the budget and the reading time. Add a separate record keeper on top.
- Pick Notion or Trello if building the system is a hobby rather than a chore, and you accept that maintaining it is now your job.
What to log in your first month
Whatever tool you choose, the failure mode is the same: families plan beautifully in August and stop logging by October, then try to reconstruct a year in April from memory. Reconstruction is where accuracy dies.
Start with the smallest habit that survives. Log attendance daily, right at the end of the school day, before you do anything else. Add assignment scores weekly rather than daily, because weekly is a habit that holds and daily is one that breaks. Drop one work sample per subject per quarter into the portfolio as it happens, not at year end when the good ones are gone. If you are tracking hours as well as days, log them the same day, because hours are the number nobody can honestly rebuild later.
That is it for month one. Everything else is optional. Our guides on homeschool record keeping, attendance and required days and organizing the school year go deeper, and the free GPA calculator will check your math if you want to sanity check a transcript before you commit to a system.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best homeschool planner?
For record keeping and daily rhythm, HomeschoolOS is the best pick: it logs attendance against the required-days number you set, tracks assignments with weights and auto GPA, and builds a year-end report, all in one offline file for $23 once. If you want a cloud calendar that syncs across devices and emails your kids their daily assignments, Homeschool Planet is the stronger choice. If what you actually need is lessons to teach rather than a planner, look at a curriculum provider like Time4Learning or Sonlight instead.
What is the difference between a homeschool curriculum and a homeschool planner?
Curriculum is what you teach: the books, lessons, videos and assignments. A planner is how you schedule that work and prove it happened, through attendance logs, grades, work samples and reports. Curriculum providers rarely produce the records your state may ask for, and planners do not teach your child anything. Most homeschool families end up using one of each.
Do I need a homeschool planner if my curriculum already has a schedule?
The schedule in a curriculum guide tells you what to do next, but it does not record what your child actually did, when, or how well. Boxed programs like Sonlight and BookShark include instructor guides with a suggested daily plan, and most families still keep a separate log for attendance, grades and samples. That log is the part you need at evaluation time or when a transcript is due.
How much does a homeschool planner cost?
HomeschoolOS is $23 one time with no subscription and no renewal. Homeschool Planet runs as a subscription, currently around $10 per month or roughly $85 per year for a family, with a free 30-day trial. Notion and Trello have free tiers that work for a DIY setup, but you build the whole system yourself.
Does a homeschool planner need internet or an account?
HomeschoolOS does not. It is a single HTML file that runs in your browser and works fully offline after the first load, with no account and no login. Cloud planners like Homeschool Planet need internet and an account because syncing across devices is the point of them.
Where is my homeschool data stored and who can see it?
With HomeschoolOS, everything you type stays on your own device in your browser's local storage. Ecuato never receives your children's names, grades, attendance or work samples, because there is no server to send them to. Cloud planners store your records on their servers, which is what makes sync and email reminders possible, so it is a genuine tradeoff rather than a flaw.
Can I use a homeschool planner on my phone?
Yes. HomeschoolOS works on iPhone and Android, and you can add it to your home screen so it opens like an app. Because data is saved per device, treat one device as your record of truth and log there consistently, then export or back up your year rather than expecting phone and laptop to sync.
Ecuato builds interactive dashboard planners as single offline HTML apps. Browse all planners or see more best-of guides.