Vedic sign calculator
The same sky, two ways of measuring it. Your Western sign and your Vedic sign, side by side, with the exact difference between them.
The date is enough for the Sun and the slow planets. Add time and city and the Moon and Ascendant become exact too.
If an Indian astrologer or a kundli site once told you a different sign than the one you grew up with, nobody made a mistake. Western astrology measures the zodiac from the spring equinox point, which drifts against the stars by about 50 arcseconds a year. Indian astrology measures it from the stars themselves. The gap between the two is called the ayanamsa, and it is currently about 24 degrees, roughly four fifths of a whole sign.
That single number explains everything. A placement keeps its sign only when its degree within the sign is larger than the ayanamsa, so about four placements in five land in the previous sign when you switch systems. Neither answer is a rounding error and neither is wrong: they answer the same question in two different reference frames.
How to read the comparison
Both columns are exact
The tropical column is your familiar Western chart. The sidereal column uses the Lahiri ayanamsa, the standard fixed by India in 1955 and used in the national almanac. The arithmetic between them is exactly one subtraction.
Rahu and Ketu are here, the outer planets are not
The lunar nodes are essential in Indian astrology, so we show them. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were discovered after the tradition was formed and classical Jyotish does not use them, so we leave them out rather than mix the systems.
This is one layer, not a kundli
A real Vedic reading also needs nakshatras, dashas, divisional charts and yogas. We do not compute those and do not pretend to. What you get here is the sign layer, computed properly.
Two zodiacs, common questions
Why do I have two different signs?
Because the two traditions measure from different starting points. The tropical zodiac starts at the spring equinox; the sidereal zodiac starts from a fixed point among the stars. The equinox drifts by about one degree every 72 years, and over roughly two millennia the two have separated by about 24 degrees.
Which one is correct?
Both are internally consistent, and the question does not have an astronomical answer. Western astrology reads a season-based frame, Indian astrology a star-based one. What we can tell you exactly is what each system says.
What is the ayanamsa?
It is the current gap between the two zodiacs. We use the Lahiri value, fixed by the Indian Calendar Reform Committee in 1955 at 23°15' for spring 1956 and used in the Rashtriya Panchang ever since. It grows by about 50 arcseconds a year and is around 24°13' today.
Why did my friend keep the same sign and I did not?
Because it depends on your degree within the sign. If a planet sits later in a sign than the ayanamsa value, it keeps that sign; if it sits earlier, it moves to the previous one. Someone born a few days apart from you can easily fall on the other side of that line.
Is this a full Vedic reading or a kundli?
No, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. This computes the sidereal sign layer only. Nakshatras, Vimshottari dasha, divisional charts, yogas and doshas are a different body of work that we do not offer.
Pick a calculator
- Sun sign · Your zodiac sign computed for your birth year, with the real boundary dates.
- Rising sign · Your Ascendant from exact birth time and city, with the chart ruler.
- Moon sign · Your Moon sign, plus the exact moment of the crossing when the day is ambiguous.
- Midheaven (MC) · The top of your chart: vocation, reputation and public direction. Needs exact birth time and city.
- Saturn return · Exact dates of your first and second return, every retrograde pass included.
- Ask the AI astrologer a question about your chart