Chinese Zodiac Calculator by Date of Birth

How to Use the Chinese Zodiac Calculator

What is my Chinese zodiac sign by date of birth?

Your Chinese zodiac sign is the animal of the Chinese year you were born in, and the Chinese year starts on Chinese New Year, not on January 1. Enter your birth month, day and year above. If your birthday is in January or February, the calculator checks it against that year's New Year date and tells you whether you belong to the new animal or the one before.

Chinese zodiac animals and elements by year

The twelve animals repeat every twelve years, always in the same order: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. Each Chinese year also has an element (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal or Water) and is yin or yang, so the full cycle is 60 years. This table covers 1984 to 2031. Find your animal in the left column and read across to your year, and the element of that year is in brackets. If you were born in January or February, check the New Year table below first.

January and February birthdays: the New Year cutoff

Chinese New Year falls on a different date every year, anywhere from January 21 to February 20 in the years from 1901 to 2100. Anyone born before it belongs to the previous animal. A simple calendar-year lookup gets these people wrong, so the calculator checks the New Year date first.

Chinese New Year dates: last 10 years and next 10 years

Use this table to see where your birthday sits. The dates are from the Hong Kong Observatory's Gregorian-Lunar conversion tables, which run from 1901 to 2100. They are dates in China, so a birth on the New Year date itself in a different time zone is a case to check by hand. The calculator above holds the dates for every year from 1901 to 2100.

Chinese zodiac element and yin or yang

The element and polarity come from the last digit of the Chinese year: two digits for each of the five elements, with the even digit yang and the odd digit yin. That gives a 60-year cycle, because the 12 animals and the 10 combinations of element and polarity only line up again after 60 years. A Wood Snake is born in 1965, 2025 and every 60 years either side. You can read your element straight off the table below, or from the brackets in the year table above.

Use the Chinese year, not the calendar year. For a birthday before New Year, take the digit of the year before.

Chinese zodiac compatibility

Traditional Chinese zodiac compatibility uses three groupings. The three harmonies (san he) link animals four years apart: Rat, Dragon and Monkey; Ox, Snake and Rooster; Tiger, Horse and Dog; Rabbit, Goat and Pig. The secret friend (liu he) is a one-to-one partner for each animal. A clash is the animal six years away on the cycle, which is the one directly opposite. This is cultural tradition, not a measured effect, so read it as a conversation starter and not a verdict.

The result box above gives you the harmonies, secret friend and clash for your own animal. To compare two Western signs instead, use the zodiac compatibility calculator.

Chinese zodiac for 2026 and 2027

The Year of the Horse began on February 17, 2026, and the Chinese year runs until February 5, 2027. The Year of the Goat begins on February 6, 2027. The 2026 Horse year is a Fire Horse (Bing-Wu), and the 2027 Goat year is a Fire Goat (Ding-Wei). Enter each family member's birthday separately; January and February birthdays are where families most often disagree about whose year it is.

Bazi and the four pillars: what this page does not cover

Bazi, or the four pillars, reads the year, month, day and hour of birth, each with a stem and a branch. The year pillar is the animal and element on this page. The month, day and hour pillars need the solar terms and the exact birth hour, which makes it a different tool. If you searched for a "month day hour" Chinese zodiac result, this page gives you the year pillar and nothing beyond it.

Where the twelve animals come from

The best-known story is a race. The Jade Emperor called the animals to a race across a river, and the first twelve to arrive gave their names to the years in the order they finished, Rat first and Pig last. It is folklore and there are several versions, so treat it as a story and not a history. The twelve-animal cycle is also used across East and Southeast Asia, which is why the same twelve names turn up in Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese calendars, with a few animals swapped.

Using this calculator in the US, UK, Australia and Canada

The Chinese zodiac is the same in all four countries, and so is the New Year cutoff. Readers in the UK, Australia and Canada often write the date day first, so enter the month by its name here to avoid mixing up January and February birthdays, which are the ones the cutoff matters for. Chinese New Year is celebrated widely in all four countries, with large festivals in London, Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto, Vancouver and across the US. The dates in the table are dates in China, which matters only for someone born on the New Year date itself in another time zone.

Chinese and Western zodiac signs side by side

The Chinese zodiac gives one animal to a whole year and follows the moon, since the new year starts at a new moon. The Western zodiac gives one sign to about a month and follows the Sun. You have both. To find your Western sign, with exact sign-change times for cusp birthdays, use the zodiac sign calculator. If you want a third birth-date system, the Mayan day sign calculator reads the 260-day Tzolk'in. For the exact number of days between your birthday and Chinese New Year, the date calculator works it out.