300Hours has been an independent CFA candidate hub since 2012 — articles, the pass-time research the name comes from, a forum with more than 3,400 threads, and mock-score benchmarking against other candidates. Its study planner is free, and it is a spreadsheet: in their own words, “It works as a Google Sheets file that automatically updates based on your inputs.” You request it with a short form, the link arrives by email, you set your exam date inside the sheet, and it splits your study hours across the ten or so CFA topic areas by exam weighting. 300Hours says more than 120,000 candidates have used it. exclam.ai answers the next question down. Upload your materials and your exam date, and exclam.ai builds a day-by-day study plan — what to read, what to review, and when to take mock exams.
A day-by-day study plan built backwards from your exam date
The plan names the reading for tomorrow, not the topic area
Runs on your own course materials rather than a generic reading count
The plan rebalances across your remaining days when you miss one
Nothing to maintain by hand — no cell to edit, no hours to log
These are two different questions and it is worth being precise about which is which. The 300Hours planner is a free Google Sheets file. You fill in a short form with your name, email and CFA level, and their page says the link arrives by email within five minutes. Inside the sheet you set the exam date on the Form Input tab, in cell D2, and the sheet allocates your available study hours across the ten or so CFA topic areas by exam weighting. It keeps a Study Report Card counting readings read and reviewed — X of 87 readings — and it benchmarks the mock scores you enter against other candidates. What it publishes about itself is an hour budget and a progress count. exclam.ai works from the other end. Upload your materials and your exam date, and exclam.ai builds a day-by-day study plan — what to read, what to review, and when to take mock exams. Miss a day and the days you have left absorb the work.
Assembled from what 300Hours publishes about the planner itself — the request form, the FAQ, and the dashboard. It is free, it takes minutes to set up, and for a top-down view of where your hours are going it does the job. The open question is the order and the dates.
You fill in a short form with your name, email and CFA level. Their page says the link to the Google Sheet arrives by email within five minutes.
The exam date lives inside the spreadsheet. Their instruction is to go to the Form Input tab and update cell D2 with your new exam date. Change exam window, change the cell.
The sheet allocates your available study hours across the ten or so CFA topic areas by exam weighting. That gives you a target for Fixed Income or Ethics as a block of hours. It is a budget, not a reading for tonight.
Their FAQ states the daily upkeep plainly: mark which readings you have completed, log your study hours, and enter mock exam scores. The sheet updates from what you type into it.
The dashboard counts readings read and reviewed — X of 87 readings — so you can see how much of the curriculum you have been through and how much you have gone back over.
Mock scores you enter are compared against other candidates. That benchmarking data, the pass-time research the site is named after, and a forum with more than 3,400 threads are things no spreadsheet you build yourself can reproduce.
Every step above is honest work, and the sheet is free. What it hands back is an hour budget per topic area and a count of readings read. What it does not hand back is tomorrow: which reading, which review, which mock, on which date. That is the seam exclam.ai sits in. Keep 300Hours for community, research, and mock-score benchmarking. Use exclam.ai when you want a daily schedule built from your own materials.
| Feature | exclam.ai | 300Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Adaptive study planner (coverage → review → mocks, exam‑date pacing) | Yes — phased plan that rebalances daily | Free Google Sheets planner — hours per topic area by exam weighting |
| Exam‑date aware pacing & catch‑up | Exam date set inside the sheet, Form Input tab, cell D2 | |
| Auto weak‑spot remediation tasks | Mock-score benchmarking against other candidates | |
| Per‑topic mastery (knowledge / understanding / application) | Hours and readings by topic area; Study Report Card counts | |
| Upload your own PDFs into the planner | Unlimited | — |
| Semantic search across your uploads | — | |
| AI flashcards from your content | — | |
| AI quizzes from your content | — | |
| FSRS spaced repetition | — | |
| Anki import (.apkg) with HTML, media, and tags | — | |
| Pre‑made content library | — (you bring the PDFs) | Articles, forum with 3,400+ threads, pass-time research |
| Pre‑made question bank | Generated from your PDFs | — |
| Video lectures | — | — |
| Live classes / cohorts | — | — |
| Pass guarantee / refund | — | — |
Headline numbers only — pricing changes, so verify on each provider's site before you buy. The qualitative comparison below should remain true even as exact figures shift.
Free tier covers upload, flashcards, quizzes, and plan generation with monthly Pro AI limits. Pro removes the AI quota cap. exclam.ai ships no CFA content — you bring the materials you have the right to use.
The planner is a free Google Sheets template. You request it with a short form asking your name, email and CFA level, and their page says the link arrives by email within five minutes. Read as of August 2026 — verify on 300hours.com.
300Hours is a genuinely useful part of CFA prep and this page is not an argument to stop using it. The two planners answer different questions, so here is how we would actually split them.
You registered two weeks ago, you want a rough sense of how many hours Fixed Income should get, and you do not want to pay for anything yet.
Use the 300Hours planner. It is free, it splits your hours across the topic areas by exam weighting, and their page says it is in your inbox within five minutes.
You have eight weeks left, a stack of readings you already own, and no idea which one to open tonight.
Use exclam.ai. Upload your materials and your exam date, and exclam.ai builds a day-by-day study plan — what to read, what to review, and when to take mock exams.
You want to know whether the mock score you just got is normal for someone at your stage of prep.
300Hours. Their planner benchmarks the mock scores you enter against other candidates, and their forum and pass-time research sit behind the same site. Nothing in exclam.ai reproduces that.
You keep slipping a few days and rebuilding your schedule by hand every Sunday evening.
Use exclam.ai for the schedule and keep 300Hours for community, research, and mock-score benchmarking. A missed day is absorbed across the days you have left, so there is nothing to rebuild.
Yes. It is a free Google Sheets template rather than an app. You fill in a short form with your name, email and CFA level, and their page says the link to the sheet arrives by email within five minutes. In their own words: “It works as a Google Sheets file that automatically updates based on your inputs.”
Grain. Their planner answers how many hours per topic: it allocates your study hours across the ten or so CFA topic areas by exam weighting and keeps a Study Report Card counting readings read and reviewed. exclam.ai answers what to read today. Upload your materials and your exam date, and exclam.ai builds a day-by-day study plan — what to read, what to review, and when to take mock exams.
No, and we would not suggest it. Keep 300Hours for community, research, and mock-score benchmarking. Use exclam.ai when you want a daily schedule built from your own materials. The forum, the articles, and the mock-score comparisons are theirs, and nothing in exclam.ai replaces them.
In the 300Hours planner the date lives in the spreadsheet: their instruction is to go to the Form Input tab and update cell D2 with your new exam date. In exclam.ai you change the exam date in the app, and the plan rebuilds across the days you have left.
Their FAQ says the planner adapts its tracking to prep providers, naming Schweser, UWorld and CFA Institute materials. What the dashboard itself shows is tracking by topic area and reading counts. exclam.ai takes a different route: it reads the files you upload, so the plan names the actual reading in the actual book you are studying from.
Their FAQ describes 2–5 minutes of daily input: mark which readings you have completed, log your study hours, and enter mock exam scores. In exclam.ai you mark a task done as you finish it, and tomorrow is already built.
Upload your material, set the date, and get a phased plan with flashcards, quizzes, FSRS review, and weak-topic remediation.
If you want to test the workflow before signing up, use the public flashcard, quiz, and study-guide routes.
Upload a PDF or paste notes to generate a preview deck in minutes.
Turn a PDF or study notes into a short practice quiz you can scan immediately.
Convert lecture notes and PDFs into a readable study guide preview.
Turn PDFs, notes, and an exam date into a full coverage, review, quiz, and flashcard plan.
See how exclam.ai answers grounded questions over PDFs with citations and follow-ups.
exclam.ai is an independent study tool and is not affiliated with, authorized by, or endorsed by 300Hours or CFA Institute. CFA®, Chartered Financial Analyst®, and CFA Institute are trademarks owned by CFA Institute; “300Hours” is used here nominatively, to identify the study planner being compared. exclam.ai does not reproduce or distribute CFA Institute curriculum, Learning Outcome Statements, end-of-chapter or practice questions, mock exams, or any prep provider’s content. Everything described here about 300Hours reflects their own published pages and FAQ as read on 5 August 2026 and can change — verify on their site rather than ours. Use exclam.ai only with materials you have the right to upload.