Pollen diary and allergy diary: PDF, online diary or app?

At the first visit, the practice asks things like which months your symptoms occur in and how they show up. That is often hard to answer from memory. A diary can help. The German Allergy Information Service (Allergieinformationsdienst) writes that a symptom diary can support the hay fever diagnosis. The practice makes the diagnosis, not the diary.

There are three common ways to keep one: a printable PDF, the online pollen diary and an app. This post sets them side by side. After that it shows what Sam records for each day and what Sam does not have.

What a hay fever diary records

The main symptoms, according to the Allergieinformationsdienst, are a runny, itchy or blocked nose, frequent sneezing, and watery, itchy eyes. The service's own diary records symptoms, medication and influencing factors.

The ARIA classification gives you numbers to build your diary around. Intermittent means symptoms on fewer than four days a week or for fewer than four weeks in a row. Persistent means symptoms on more than four days a week and for more than four weeks in a row. Severity is the second part. With mild symptoms, sleep is not disturbed, and daily life, work or school run normally. With moderate to severe symptoms, sleep or daily activities are clearly affected, or you find the symptoms bothersome.

So a useful diary notes whether you had symptoms on a given day, how strong they were, whether sleep was disturbed and whether the day suffered. Your doctor does the classifying. You supply the days.

Three ways to keep it: PDF, online diary or app

Printable PDF. The Allergieinformationsdienst offers its hay fever diary as a free download. One sheet covers seven days. You rate eyes, nose, lungs and skin from 0 (none) to 3 (severe). It also has rows for medication with name and dose, and for activities and remarks, such as pollen count. You need no account. You look up pollen values yourself, and you must have the sheet with you.

Online pollen diary. The German Pollen Information Foundation (Stiftung Deutscher Polleninformationsdienst, PID) points to the online pollen diary at pollendiary.com. It is free, and you register first. You document your symptoms daily and compare them with the pollen load of the most important allergenic plants. According to the Allergieinformationsdienst, a pollen forecast tailored to you is part of it. A study in the journal Aerobiologia counted more than 1,600 users and over 60,500 reports in Germany from 2009 to 2011. The start page does not say whether the diary has an export for your practice.

App. Several pollen apps combine a forecast with a diary (German App Store, October 2026). An app is with you anyway, and it can add pollen values automatically. For each app, check what an entry records and whether a report for the practice is included.

If you only want to record one week before the first appointment, the PDF is enough. If you want symptoms and pollen values side by side over a whole season, the online diary or an app fits better.

What Sam records for each day

In the hay fever program you tap once a day: Fine, Mild or Bad. One tap is enough. On Mild and Bad days you can add details, but you do not have to:

• Blocked nose, runny nose, sneezing and itchy nose, each from 0 to 3, plus itchy or watery eyes
• whether your sleep was disturbed and whether symptoms got in the way of your day
• whether you had wheeze, chest tightness, breathlessness or a whole-body reaction
• which medication you took, by type and not by amount
• what you did about it, for example kept windows closed

Only Mild and Bad count as symptom days. Fine days stay in your history but are not counted. The PDF asks for the name and dose of each medication. In Sam's daily entry you pick the type of medication, with no amount.

This is what sets Sam apart from paper. If you log today and have shared your approximate location, Sam attaches values to the entry where they are available for your place. These are the pollen index for grass, trees and weeds (0 to 5) and the air quality (0 to 100, higher means better air). The report names the place the values come from. Days you add later get no values. If you do not share your location, the diary still works, just without these values.

From ten symptom days with values, Sam shows an overview. It counts on how many of those days the index of a pollen group was 3 or higher. Each number is stated against the days with a value for that group. Days logged elsewhere do not count and are named separately. These are counts from your own days, not a test result and not a cause. The program screen also shows your sleep from last night, taken from Apple Health.

If you have no diagnosis yet, the Symptoms area fits. There you log sneezing, runny nose, blocked nose and itchy or watery eyes with a severity. The hay fever program assumes a doctor has already established hay fever. You confirm that at the start.

What Sam does not have

• No pollen forecast. You find one at the Stiftung Deutscher Polleninformationsdienst or in pollen apps. You can use both.
• No function for allergen immunotherapy. You can log symptom days and medication. Whether immunotherapy is an option for you is a question for your practice.
• No values for past days, and none without a shared location.
• No allergy test. The overview counts days and is not a test result. Your practice clarifies which pollen you react to, usually with a skin prick test.

What the doctor report contains

You open the doctor report when you need it. It is a separate PDF and belongs to the program. You choose the period: 1, 3, 6 or 12 months, or the whole record. It counts, among other things:

• symptom days, of which bad ones, and days recorded as symptom-free
• weeks with symptoms on more than four days, and the longest run
• the mean nasal score (0 to 12) with the number of days you filled it in
• nights with disturbed sleep and days with limited daily activities
• as-needed medication by type and days, and the protective steps you logged
• on how many symptom days the pollen index was 3 or higher, by grass, trees and weeds, once enough days with values exist
• symptom days logged elsewhere, shown separately

The weekly count follows the threshold from the ARIA classification. Sam counts the weeks. Which category fits you is for your practice to say. The entries are self-reported and not a diagnosis.

The monthly report is a different PDF. It contains your symptom days from the Symptoms area. For more on sleep and hay fever, read sleep and hay fever. To tell hay fever from a cold, see allergies or a cold.

Log hay fever days in Sam and take the report to your allergist

You bring your allergist the season as a record of your own days, instead of describing it from memory.

• Instead of a paper or online pollen diary: in the hay fever program you tap once a day, Fine, Mild or Bad, and add details only on the days you want to.
• Instead of a pollen app on its own: if you share your approximate location, the day's pollen and air quality values are stored with the entry you make today, and the program screen shows your sleep from Apple Health.
• Instead of memory at the appointment: the doctor report puts the period you choose into a PDF, with symptom days, medication by type and protective steps.

The program assumes a doctor has established hay fever, Sam does not forecast pollen, and the report counts your own entries.

Try Sam Health

Sam is a wellness companion, not a medical device. Sam does not make a diagnosis and does not replace medical advice. Whether you are allergic and to what is for your practice to clarify.

Sources

Updated: October 2026

• Allergieinformationsdienst (in German): Heuschnupfen: So wird die Diagnose gestellt (page dated February 2019)
• Allergieinformationsdienst (in German): Welche Heuschnupfen-Symptome gibt es?
• Allergieinformationsdienst, Helmholtz Zentrum München (in German): Heuschnupfen-Tagebuch (PDF)
• Stiftung Deutscher Polleninformationsdienst (in German): Pollentagebuch, with the Aerobiologia analysis (Karatzas et al., 2014)
• Online pollen diary: pollendiary.com (several languages)
• Rosenfield L. et al.: Allergic rhinitis. Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology, 2024 (review that describes the ARIA classification)