Zodiac Sign Calculator
Your zodiac sign, or Sun sign, is the sign the Sun was in on the day you were born. Enter your birth date, and your time and place if you were born near a sign change, to get the answer from the Sun's actual position rather than a date table.
The twelve signs and their usual dates
The Sun moves through all twelve signs once a year, spending about a month in each. These are the usual dates in the tropical zodiac used by Western astrology. They are approximate, because the exact changeover can fall a day earlier or later depending on the year.
| Sign | Approximate dates | Element |
|---|---|---|
| Aries | March 21 to April 19 | Fire |
| Taurus | April 20 to May 20 | Earth |
| Gemini | May 21 to June 20 | Air |
| Cancer | June 21 to July 22 | Water |
| Leo | July 23 to August 22 | Fire |
| Virgo | August 23 to September 22 | Earth |
| Libra | September 23 to October 22 | Air |
| Scorpio | October 23 to November 21 | Water |
| Sagittarius | November 22 to December 21 | Fire |
| Capricorn | December 22 to January 19 | Earth |
| Aquarius | January 20 to February 18 | Air |
| Pisces | February 19 to March 20 | Water |
Why sign dates move from year to year
The tropical year, from one March equinox to the next, lasts about 365.24 days. The calendar year has 365 days, with a leap day every fourth year. So the moment the Sun enters each sign drifts about six hours later each year, then jumps back by about a day after each leap day. On top of that, the moment is a single instant worldwide: when the Sun enters Leo at 2 a.m. in London, it is still the previous evening in Los Angeles.
The result is that someone born on 22 July in one year can be a Cancer, while someone born on 22 July in another year, or in another time zone, can be a Leo. Date tables cannot tell them apart. The calculator computes the Sun's longitude for your actual birth moment, so it can.
Born on the cusp: what that means
"Born on the cusp" means you were born within a day or two of the Sun changing signs. Astronomically, there is no in-between: at any instant the Sun is in exactly one sign, and it crosses from 29 degrees 59 minutes of one sign into 0 degrees of the next in a moment. What a cusp birth does mean is that your Sun is in the very first or very last degree of its sign, and some astrologers read a little of the neighboring sign's flavor into it.
The calculator gives your Sun's exact degree and, if you are within about a day of a sign change, the exact time the Sun changed sign in your time zone. If your birth time is unknown and you were born on the changeover day itself, it shows both signs, because the answer then depends on the hour.
Worked example
Take someone born at 6 p.m. in New York in late April, on the day the Sun moved from Aries into Taurus (in most years this falls on 19 or 20 April). If New York was on daylight saving time that year (before 1987 it usually started at the end of April), the clock was four hours behind Universal Time and the birth moment is 22:00 UT. The calculator compares that with the moment of the Sun's ingress into Taurus that year: if the birth came after it, the Sun sign is Taurus; if before, Aries. Without the time, the honest answer is "Aries or Taurus", and that is what we show.
Sun sign versus the rest of the chart
Your Sun sign is the one most horoscopes use, but it is only one placement. Your Moon sign and rising sign often differ from it, and the sun, moon and rising calculator shows all three. Vedic astrology uses a sidereal zodiac about 24 degrees earlier, so many people's Vedic Sun sign is the previous sign; the kundli calculator shows that version. In the tarot, each Sun sign has a Major Arcana card, and our daily tarot by sign draws one card per sign each day.
Questions
What is my zodiac sign?
It is the sign the Sun was in at your birth. Use the table above for most dates, or enter your birth date in the calculator for an exact answer, especially if you were born near the 20th to 23rd of a month.
What zodiac sign is someone born on a cusp?
One sign, not two. At any moment the Sun is in exactly one sign. A cusp birth means the Sun was in the first or last degree of that sign. Enter your birth time and place to see which side of the line you fall on.
Why do different websites give different dates for zodiac signs?
Because the Sun enters each sign at a slightly different time each year, and the date also depends on your time zone. Most sites print one fixed set of dates, which is wrong by a day for some years.
Is my zodiac sign different in Vedic astrology?
Often, yes. Vedic astrology uses the sidereal zodiac, which in 2026 is about 24 degrees behind the tropical zodiac. If your Sun was in the first 24 or so degrees of a tropical sign, your sidereal Sun sign is the previous one.
Did NASA change the zodiac signs?
No. NASA has pointed out that the constellations along the ecliptic do not match the astrological signs and that there is a thirteenth constellation, Ophiuchus, but that is astronomy, not a change to astrology. Western astrology's signs are twelve equal 30-degree sections tied to the equinox, not the constellations.
More astrology calculators
Read your birth chart
Planets, houses and aspects from your birth date, time and place.
Calculate my chart