Chinese Zodiac Calculator

Enter your exact birth date. We'll return your precise Eastern animal, your Yin-Yang Five-Element profile, your Western sign, and the Primal Zodiac archetype that emerges when the two collide.

We use the exact Chinese New Year boundary for every year — so January birthdays get the correct animal, not the lazy one.

Why most zodiac calculators get January wrong

The Chinese zodiac follows the lunar calendar. The animal doesn't change on January 1 — it changes on Chinese New Year, which falls somewhere between late January and mid-February. So someone born on, say, 15 January 1995 is actually a Dog (the 1994 animal), because Chinese New Year 1995 didn't arrive until January 31. Lazy calculators that just read the calendar year would wrongly call them a Pig.

Zodiactly stores the exact Chinese New Year date for every year from 1900 to 2050, so the boundary is always handled correctly.

How your element is calculated

Your element comes from the year's Heavenly Stem (天干) in the sexagenary cycle. The ten stems pair the five elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water — with a Yin or Yang polarity, cycling every 60 years. That's why a Dragon born in 1988 is a Yang Earth Dragon while one born in 2000 is a Yang Metal Dragon: same animal, very different temperament.