Your full janam kundli, free
Lagna, all nine grahas, divisional charts, Vimshottari dasha, yogas and doshas, from real planetary positions.
Free Janam Kundli: Your Birth Chart, Calculated
A janam kundli is a map of where the nine grahas stood at the moment you were born, drawn against the twelve signs and twelve houses. The calculator above casts yours from real sidereal positions rather than a lookup table. This page explains what you are looking at once it appears.
About this tool
What a birth chart actually records
Three things fix a chart: the date, the time and the place. The date sets the signs the planets occupied, which barely move in a day. The place and the time together set the ascendant, or lagna, which is the degree of the zodiac rising on the eastern horizon at your birth. That degree moves through the entire zodiac once every twenty four hours, so it changes sign roughly every two hours.
This is why birth time matters far more than people expect. Two people born in the same city on the same day, four hours apart, share almost every planetary position and have completely different charts, because the twelve houses have rotated by two signs between them. Everything read from the houses, which is most of practical astrology, differs.
If you do not know your time of birth, the calculator still works. It will place every planet by sign and give you your nakshatra and dasha, and it will tell you plainly that the houses and the lagna are unavailable rather than inventing a noon birth and presenting the result as fact.
Sidereal positions and the Lahiri ayanamsa
Vedic astrology uses the sidereal zodiac, measured against the fixed stars. Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac, measured from the spring equinox. The two agreed around the fifth century and have drifted apart ever since, at about one degree every seventy two years. The gap is now roughly twenty four degrees, which is most of a sign.
That gap is the ayanamsa, and choosing one is the single biggest reason two sites disagree about your moon sign. Kismo uses Lahiri, the value adopted by the Indian government's calendar reform committee and the one nearly all Indian practice follows. If a Western site has told you that you are a Leo and an Indian one says Cancer, neither is wrong; they are measuring from different zero points.
Positions here are computed from the same planetary theory used for ephemerides rather than interpolated from a printed table, and are checked against the worked examples in the standard reference to the arcsecond. Where classical tables and modern computation disagree, this chart follows the computation.
The twelve houses, in one line each
Houses are counted from the lagna and answer the question of which area of life a planet is acting on. A chart uses whole-sign houses, so the sign holding the lagna is the first house entire, the next sign the second, and so on around.
- First (Lagna, Tanu)
- The body, temperament, and how you come across before you say anything.
- Second (Dhana)
- Accumulated money, speech, food, and the family you grew up inside.
- Third (Sahaja)
- Siblings, courage, short journeys, and the effort you put in by hand.
- Fourth (Sukha)
- Mother, home, land, vehicles, and inner comfort. The house of the heart.
- Fifth (Putra)
- Children, intelligence, romance, speculation, and merit carried from before.
- Sixth (Ari)
- Illness, debt, enemies, litigation, and daily work under someone else.
- Seventh (Yuvati)
- Marriage, the partner, and every contract entered into with an equal.
- Eighth (Randhra)
- Longevity, inheritance, sudden change, and things that are hidden.
- Ninth (Dharma)
- Father, teacher, fortune, long journeys, and belief. The strongest trine.
- Tenth (Karma)
- Career, public standing, and the work you are known for.
- Eleventh (Labha)
- Gains, income, elder siblings, and the networks that deliver them.
- Twelfth (Vyaya)
- Loss, expenditure, foreign places, seclusion, and sleep.
Your nakshatra and its pada
The sidereal zodiac is divided a second way, into 27 nakshatras of 13 degrees 20 minutes each. Your nakshatra is the one the Moon occupied at birth, and in most of India it is treated as more personal than the moon sign. It sets the first syllable used in naming, it carries the gana and nadi that guna milan reads, and it starts your dasha sequence.
Each nakshatra divides again into four padas of 3 degrees 20 minutes. The pada places the Moon in the navamsa, the ninth divisional chart, which is read alongside the main chart for marriage and for the underlying strength of a planet. A planet that looks strong in the birth chart and weak in the navamsa is not as strong as it looks.
Vimshottari dasha: why timing comes from the Moon
A birth chart shows what is possible. The dasha system shows when. Vimshottari is the timing system nearly all Indian astrologers use, and it is keyed entirely to the Moon: the exact degree the Moon held in its nakshatra at birth decides which planet's period you were born into and how much of it was left.
The full cycle runs 120 years across the nine grahas, from Ketu's 7 years to Venus's 20. Each mahadasha subdivides into nine antardashas in the same proportion, and those subdivide again. This is why an astrologer asks for your birth time before answering a question about timing: without it the dasha balance at birth is a guess, and a guess of a few hours can move a period boundary by months.
The calculator shows your running mahadasha and antardasha with their dates. What it cannot do is tell you what a period will bring, because that depends on where those planets sit in your particular chart and what they own there.
Birth chart questions
Is this janam kundli really free?
Yes. The chart, the houses, the nakshatra, the divisional charts and the dasha table are all free and need no account. Nothing here is a preview of a paid report.
Can I get my kundli without a birth time?
Yes, with a stated limit. Planetary signs, your nakshatra and your dasha will be right. The lagna and the twelve houses cannot be calculated, and the tool says so rather than defaulting to noon and presenting the houses as though they were known.
Which ayanamsa does this use?
Lahiri, the standard adopted by the Indian government and used by almost all Indian astrologers. It is the reason a Vedic chart usually puts your Sun one sign earlier than a Western chart does.
Why is my moon sign different from my sun sign?
They are different measurements. Your sun sign is where the Sun sat, and it changes roughly monthly. Your moon sign is where the Moon sat, and it changes every two and a quarter days. Indian astrology reads the Moon as the primary sign, which is why the rashi you were told as a child is usually your moon sign.
What is the difference between the North and South Indian chart styles?
Only the drawing. In the North Indian style the houses stay in fixed positions and the signs move; in the South Indian style the signs stay fixed and the houses move. The planetary positions are identical, and the tool draws both.
What is a dasha and why does it need my birth time?
A dasha is the planetary period you are running, from the Vimshottari system. It starts from the exact degree of the Moon in its nakshatra at birth, so a shift of a couple of hours moves every future period boundary. It is the part of a chart most sensitive to birth time.
Does a kundli predict the future?
It describes tendencies and timing, not events. Two people can share a dasha and a similar chart and live very different decades. Anyone who reads a chart as a fixed script is overselling what the chart contains.