Zodiac Sign Calculator — Find Your Sign by Birth Date

A sun sign is decided by nothing more than the stretch of the year a birth date falls into. Pick the date below to see the sign, its element and the range it covers — and then read why that range is not quite as fixed as the charts imply.

The twelve signs and their dates

Sign	Dates	Element
Aries ♈	March 21 – April 19	Fire
Taurus ♉	April 20 – May 20	Earth
Gemini ♊	May 21 – June 20	Air
Cancer ♋	June 21 – July 22	Water
Leo ♌	July 23 – August 22	Fire
Virgo ♍	August 23 – September 22	Earth
Libra ♎	September 23 – October 22	Air
Scorpio ♏	October 23 – November 21	Water
Sagittarius ♐	November 22 – December 21	Fire
Capricorn ♑	December 22 – January 19	Earth
Aquarius ♒	January 20 – February 18	Air
Pisces ♓	February 19 – March 20	Water

The four elements group the signs three by three: fire (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius), earth (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn), air (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius) and water (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces).

Which convention this page uses, and where it differs

This table is the tropical zodiac in the form most widely printed in American publications: the year sliced into twelve arcs of about 30 days each, anchored to the March equinox rather than to the constellations.

It is worth naming the disagreement instead of hiding it. Encyclopaedia Britannica publishes four boundaries one day later than the table above:

Sign	This page	Britannica
Gemini	ends June 20	ends June 21
Cancer	starts June 21	starts June 22
Libra	ends October 22	ends October 23
Scorpio	starts October 23	starts October 24

Neither version is a typo. The Sun crosses each boundary at an instant that slides by several hours from one year to the next, for the same reason the calendar needs leap days: the seasonal year runs about 365.2422 days, not a whole number. The U.S. Naval Observatory absorbs that remainder with 97 leap days every 400 years; a zodiac table absorbs it by picking one calendar day and living with the drift. Born within a day of a boundary, you will find yourself labeled differently depending on which chart you consult.

Sidereal charts put the same date in a different sign

Searches for a Tamil or Vedic reading arrive at a different answer, and the gap is astronomical rather than editorial. Indian jyotiṣa uses a sidereal zodiac tied to the constellations, while the Western table above is tropical and tied to the equinox.

The two systems agreed roughly two thousand years ago. Since then, precession — the 26,000-year wobble of Earth’s axis described by Britannica — has shifted the constellations eastward relative to the seasons. A 26,000-year cycle works out to about one degree every 72 years, so two millennia of drift come to roughly 28 degrees: almost the full 30-degree width of a sign. That is why a sidereal chart usually places a birth date one sign earlier than the tropical chart, and why a tropical Leo is often a sidereal Cancer. Both are internally consistent; they simply anchor to different reference points.

Sun sign, moon sign and rising sign

The sun sign is the only one a date alone can produce, which is what this calculator does. A moon sign requires the time of birth, because the Moon moves through a sign in roughly two and a half days. A rising sign requires the time and the place, because it depends on which part of the sky was on the horizon at that spot. Any tool asking only for a date and offering all three is filling in the other two with defaults.

An honest note on astrology

NASA puts the distinction plainly: astronomy follows the scientific process, using evidence and data, while astrology rests on the belief that positions of stars and planets can predict the future or describe a person — and those claims are not based on scientific evidence. Britannica adds that no correlation has been found between birth dates and personality or intelligence.

That is not an argument for skipping the fun. Sun signs are a durable piece of popular culture, and the sky itself is worth knowing: there are 88 officially recognized constellations, and the zodiac is the band of them that the Sun, Moon and naked-eye planets appear to travel through.

Use it as an entertainment. For a number about the same birth date that does hold up, calculate your exact age or see how many days remain until the next birthday.