Free cycle tool

Printable Period Tracker

This builds a one-page period tracker to print or save as a PDF, at true A4 or US Letter size, with a flow and symptom key and an optional temperature row. The entry that matters is the first day of bleeding: three cycles give you a rough average, six give you a range you can plan around.

Paper needs no account, no battery and no permission. Choose a month grid or a whole year on one page, set the key, and print exactly what you see below.

Free, and no account.

Build the sheet
Layout

A calendar month, one box per day, big enough to mark.

Version

The full sheet: flow, symptoms, and a temperature row if you want one.

Dates
Week starts
Flow key

Four levels, light to heavy. On paper they run from an open box to a filled one, so the key still reads printed in black and white. Rename any of them.

Extra rows
Symptoms on the sheet

Leave one blank to print an empty row and name it by hand. Six is the most that fits.

Printing this one? Aura, from the same team, makes a mood sheet the same way — a month of boxes or a whole year, printed and filled in by hand. Different thing to record, same paper.

Paper records what happened. It does not predict. Nothing on this sheet is worked out for you, and that is the point — the value is in the entries you make, read back over three or four months. The one entry that matters most is the first day of bleeding. Every cycle number anybody ever quotes at you is counted from it.

Cycles vary, and the first years vary most. A few days either way is ordinary. ACOG says it can take six years or more after periods start for a cycle to settle into a regular pattern, so a teenage sheet full of gaps is a record of something normal rather than a problem. Write down what actually happens and let the pattern arrive on its own.

This is not medical advice and it is not contraception. A printed calendar cannot see ovulation and cannot be made to. Worth talking to a doctor if your periods are irregular or your usual pattern changes, if you miss three in a row, or if periods have not started by the age of 15 — those are the NHS's own thresholds, and they are a conversation, not an alarm.

How this is worked out

  1. The sheet is drawn at true paper size — 210 × 297 mm for A4, 8.5 × 11 in for US Letter — with its own margin built in, so what is on screen is the file that comes out of the printer.
  2. The flow key runs light to heavy as an open box through to a filled one, so the sheet still reads printed in black and white.
  3. The "first years" version keeps the same grid and simplifies the labels: no fertility language, no basal temperature row, and a key built around what the first years of periods actually look like — which, per ACOG, can take six years or more to settle into a pattern.
Questions

The short answers

Press "Print or save as PDF" and choose "Save as PDF" as the destination in the print dialog. Set margins to None and turn on background graphics if the colour key comes out blank. There is no email step and no download wall.
There is a version made for it. Switch the sheet to "First years" and the labels change: plain flow and symptom words, space to note how you felt, and nothing about fertility on the page. ACOG says it can take six years or more after periods start for a cycle to settle into a regular pattern, so the sheet is built to record what happens rather than to predict what comes next.
The first day of bleeding is the one entry that matters most — every cycle number is built from it. After that, flow, any pain, and a word about mood or sleep will tell you more over three months than any single day tells you now. If you are charting temperature, add it at the same time every morning before getting up.
Yes. The paper switch redraws the sheet at the right size and sets the print page size to match, so neither one comes out scaled or split across two pages.
Because paper cannot be synced, breached or subpoenaed, and it does not need you to trust anybody. Some people also simply think better on paper. If you would rather have the same record on a phone, Athena keeps it on the device with no account — but a printed sheet is the version nobody else can reach.
Yes — tick the basal temperature option and a row appears under the grid. For a proper chart with a temperature scale, use the printable BBT chart instead; it is built for the daily reading and the coverline.

Where this comes from

  1. NHS (2025). Periods. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/periods/
  2. NHS (2025). Starting your periods. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/periods/starting-periods/
  3. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (2024). Your First Period (Especially for Teens). https://www.acog.org/womens-health/faqs/your-first-period
  4. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (2015). Menstruation in Girls and Adolescents: Using the Menstrual Cycle as a Vital Sign. https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-opinion/articles/2015/12/menstruation-in-girls-and-adolescents-using-the-menstrual-cycle-as-a-vital-sign
  5. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NIH) (2017). Menstruation: Condition Information. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/menstruation/conditioninfo

Every link above was checked when this page was last updated. Athena is not affiliated with any of these organisations, and none of them has reviewed this page. Nothing here is medical advice.

Go deeper

The reading behind this page

Understanding your cycle · 7 min read

The Menstrual Phase, Explained: What Is Actually Happening While You Bleed

Day one is the first day of full flow, and every number on this site is built on that one date. What the bleeding days are, what commonly comes with them, and where the ordinary ends.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 7 min read

Heavy Periods, Honestly: What Counts as Heavy and What to Do About It

Nobody can see anybody else's period, so heavy usually gets judged against friends who are also guessing. The NHS answers it with seven concrete tests, and this page prints all seven.

Read it First periods and practical life · 8 min read

Tracking Your First Year of Periods: What to Write Down and What to Ignore

A messy first year is the expected result rather than a fault. Here is the one thing worth writing down, the things that are not, and the two thresholds that are worth an appointment.

Read it First periods and practical life · 9 min read

Your First Period: A Complete Guide to the Day and the Year After

It is far less blood than you are expecting, every kind of product is safe from the first day, and the year that follows is meant to be untidy. Here is the day, the hour after it, and the two lines worth knowing.

Read it Privacy and your data · 9 min read

The Most Private Period Tracker: What Actually Protects You

Most privacy claims are promises. A few are architecture. This is how to tell which one you are being offered — and the seven questions that separate them.

Read it
Next door

Printable Period Symptom Tracker

A month across the top, your symptoms down the side, one box a day. Rename every row, print one page, and bring the pattern to the appointment.

Open it

First Period Kit Checklist

What to put in a school bag and what to keep at home, on one printable page. Editable, unfussy, and written to be reassuring rather than dramatic.

Open it

Printable BBT Chart

Graph paper for a cycle: a temperature grid in °C or °F, a row for the coverline, and space for the notes that make a chart readable later.

Open it
The app this site is for

Athena keeps all of this on your phone.

A calculator answers the one question you brought it. Athena is the same arithmetic living on your device — the moon ring, an honest calendar with ranges instead of false precision, and a database that never leaves the phone because there is no account and no server behind it.

On the App Store and Google Play, for iPhone and Android.

What Athena is