Tools · Chinese zodiac
Chinese Zodiac Calculator
the Chinese astrology calculator, from one birth date
Who should you never marry? Which way should your desk face? When does your best decade start, and has it already happened? A Chinese almanac answers all of that from one thing: your birthday. Type yours in and read what it says. Ten seconds, nothing stored.
It works for any birthday from 1900 to 2100, and it gets the January and February birthdays right, which is where the placemat charts go wrong.
Chinese zodiac calculator: read your almanac leaf
Your sign and its vintage, this year and next, your matches, where to face, your lunar birthday and Chinese age. A birth time adds the Zi Wei palace and the month and hour animals; a city places your birth against the solar terms, which the almanac keeps on Beijing time, and corrects the full chart for solar time.
Example leaf: Taylor Swift, born December 13, 1989
Earth Snake
Sign: Snake · Element: Earth · Yin. The 1989 zodiac year runs from February 6, 1989 to January 26, 1990, Chinese New Year to the eve of the next.
The Earth Snake is the steadiest, the long-game player of a sign that is already all long game.
Who you match
ally
ally
friend
clashOx, Rooster and Monkey
Never marry lightly: the Pig, straight across the wheel.
Where to face
Kua 4, East
Desk facing north, head of the bed toward south. The two behind them: east and southeast.
Zi Wei palace
Needs a time
Zi Wei Dou Shu starts from your lunar month and your birth hour. Add a time above.
Your other animals
Needs a time
The month and the hour carry animals too, the inner and the secret one. Add a time above.
Lunar birthday
11th month, 16th day
The date a Chinese grandmother keeps. Next falls on December 24, 2026.
Chinese age
38
One at birth, a year older every New Year: 39 on February 6, 2027.
Your elements
year
sign
sound
Earth, Fire, Wood
Earth by the year, Fire by the sign, Wood by the sound. Readings mix these up constantly.
Not on the leaf
The day. Your birth day has a stem and a branch of its own, and in a real reading the day stem, not the year animal, is the character that stands for you. Three more pillars, the day master, and eighty years of them drawn as a chart:
Take the leaf with you
The same nine readings as one card, drawn for stories and pins.
Computed from the calendar itself: Chinese New Year and the minute of Lichun for every year from 1900 to 2100, the relation tables behind every zodiac page on this site, and the Eight Mansions arithmetic behind the kua number. The leaf is drawn in your browser and nothing you enter leaves it.
What each line of the leaf means, and how to work every one of them out by hand, from the animal to the kua number to your Chinese age, is in the calculator guide. The twelve signs and every year they govern are on the Chinese zodiac page.
Why January and February birthdays go wrong
Two people born a day apart in early 2026 can have two different animals, and both can be right. The zodiac turns the year at Chinese New Year, February 17, 2026 in 2026. The astrologers casting a bazi chart or a kua number turn it at Lichun, the start of spring on the solar calendar, February 4, 2026 this year and carried on the leaf to the minute. In 195 of the 201 years from 1900 to 2100 the two dates differ, and every birthday caught between them has one animal by the popular rule and another by the astrologers'. Someone born on February 5, 2026 is a Snake by Chinese New Year and a Horse by Lichun. The leaf names both, the popular one first; the Lichun page explains why two rules exist, and the year-boundaries dataset has both dates for every year, free to download.
Questions people ask
How do I calculate my Chinese zodiac sign from my birth date?
Find the animal of your birth year on the twelve-year cycle, then check the date: the zodiac year begins at Chinese New Year, between January 21 and February 20, so anyone born in January or the first days of February belongs to the previous year's animal. The calculator above does both steps with the exact New Year date for every year from 1900 to 2100, and adds the element and the year name. To do the animal by hand, subtract 4 from the year and divide by 12: a remainder of 0 is the Rat, 1 the Ox, 2 the Tiger, and so on round the wheel to 11, the Pig (for 1990, 1986 divided by 12 leaves 6, the Horse). The rule of thumb for the element is the last digit of the year: 0 or 1 Metal, 2 or 3 Water, 4 or 5 Wood, 6 or 7 Fire, 8 or 9 Earth.
What is my Chinese zodiac sign and element?
Both come from your birth year. The sign is the year's earthly branch wearing its animal; the element is the year's heavenly stem, which is why a year is not just a Horse year but a Fire Horse year, and why the tradition reads the Fire Horse and the Metal Horse as two different animals. The calculator prints the pair together with the sign's own line for that vintage. The animal also has a fixed element of its own, from its branch, which never changes; the zodiac elements page explains the difference.
Does a Chinese zodiac calculator use the year, month, day and hour?
The zodiac itself uses only the year. The month, day and hour each have a branch and an animal too, and together the four make the four pillars of a bazi chart, eight characters in all. This page reads the year fully and, if you give a birth time, names the month and hour animals as well; the chart page takes the same birthday and casts all four pillars, then names the one character that stands for you, which is the stem of the day rather than the animal of the year.
Is a Chinese astrology calculator the same as a Chinese zodiac calculator?
For the answer most people are after, yes: every Chinese astrology calculator on the first page of a search returns your year animal and its element, which is what this page does first. Chinese astrology is wider than the year, though. The same birthday also carries a month, a day and an hour, each with its own stem and branch, and reading all four is the bazi chart; the same birth year also gives a kua number and its four directions. The leaf above gives the zodiac answer, the kua number and the month and hour animals from one date, and the chart button hands the birthday to the full four-pillar chart.
What is a Chinese horoscope calculator?
The same lookup under a third name. A Chinese horoscope calculator takes a birth date and returns the year animal, usually with its element and a forecast for the current year, which is what the leaf above gives: the sign, its vintage, and how it stands in 2026 and 2027. The day-by-day version, all twelve signs read against each day of the almanac, is the daily Chinese horoscope; the version that reads a whole birth chart rather than the year is bazi.
Why does the calculator sometimes give two answers?
Because the Chinese year has two defensible start dates. The popular rule, which the zodiac follows, starts the year at Chinese New Year, the second new moon after the winter solstice. The astrologers' rule, which bazi and feng shui follow, starts it at Lichun, the beginning of spring on the solar calendar, around February 4. For a birthday between the two dates the animal differs under each rule, and the leaf says so and names both; the year-boundaries page has both dates for every year from 1900 to 2100 as a free dataset.
Sources and method
Chinese New Year dates, the minute of Lichun and the twelve monthly solar terms come from the site's calendar engine (an astronomical calendar, Beijing time), the same engine behind every date on this site; the year names and sounds are the standard sixty-pair table; the relations between signs and years are the six clashes, six harmonies, trines, harms and punishments of the Ming manuals, as on every zodiac page here; the kua arithmetic follows the Eight Mansions school and is checked against the site's kua engine at every build. The animals' attachment to the branches is dated by the Qin bamboo slips; the sounds are from the Ming almanac.
- Hong Kong Observatory, "Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches": the sixty-pair table and the year names
- Hong Kong Observatory, the 24 solar terms: the Lichun boundary and the monthly terms
- Zhang He, "The Chinese 60-Day/Year and Mesoamerican 260-Day Calendars," Sino-Platonic Papers 305 (2020): the sixty on oracle bones by 1200 BC, the animals by the 2nd century BC
- Wan Minying, Sanming Tonghui, juan 1 (1578): the thirty nayin; juan 2: the branch relations
Bazi calculator
Year, month, day and hour, the day master, and a life timeline.
The Chinese zodiac
All twelve signs, the compatibility checker and the 2026 year.
Chinese astrology, mapped
Four systems from one birth date, where each came from, and how accurate any of it is.