Zodiac sign by birthday: find your sign from your date of birth

Your zodiac sign by birthday is the sign the Sun was passing through on the day you were born. Find your birth date in the table below and you have your Sun sign, the one people mean when they ask “what’s your sign?”

For most birthdays, the table settles it. For a few days a year, when the Sun changes sign, you need one more detail. That detail is your birth time, and there is more on it further down.

Zodiac sign dates at a glance

Sign	Birthday range	Element	Month guides
Aries	March 21–April 19	Fire	March, April
Taurus	April 20–May 20	Earth	April, May
Gemini	May 21–June 20	Air	May, June
Cancer	June 21–July 22	Water	June, July
Leo	July 23–August 22	Fire	July, August
Virgo	August 23–September 22	Earth	August, September
Libra	September 23–October 22	Air	September, October
Scorpio	October 23–November 21	Water	October, November
Sagittarius	November 22–December 21	Fire	November, December
Capricorn	December 22–January 19	Earth	December, January
Aquarius	January 20–February 18	Air	January, February
Pisces	February 19–March 20	Water	February, March

Every month holds two signs. The changeover lands somewhere between the 18th and the 23rd. So a birthday late in the month often belongs to a different sign than one early in it. For the twelve signs themselves, start with all zodiac signs.

How sign dates work

The zodiac is a circle of 360 degrees split into twelve signs of 30 degrees each. Over one year, the Sun appears to travel once around that circle. It moves a little less than one degree a day, so each sign gets roughly a month of the Sun’s time.

The circle starts at the March equinox, the moment the Sun crosses the celestial equator heading north. That point is 0° Aries. The rest follows in order. The other three season markers fall at the start of the other cardinal signs. Cancer begins at the June solstice, Libra at the September equinox and Capricorn at the December solstice.

So zodiac dates follow the seasons, and they do not follow the constellations you can see at night. A Leo birthday is a high-summer birthday in the Northern Hemisphere, every year without fail.

Why the dates shift by a day

This part confuses people. The Sun enters each sign at one precise moment, and that moment is rarely midnight. It also moves around from year to year.

Our calendar year is 365 days, while the Sun’s full cycle takes about 365 days and 6 hours. So each year the changeover lands about six hours later than the year before. Then a leap year adds February 29 and pulls it back. Over a four-year stretch, the same sign change can fall on two different calendar dates.

Time zones add one more wrinkle. The Sun changes sign at the same instant everywhere on Earth. That instant might be the evening of the 20th in Los Angeles and the early hours of the 21st in London. Two babies born at the same moment on different continents share a Sun sign but not a printed birth date.

Your sign stays put through all of this. The tables are averages, nothing more.

Born on a cusp?

A cusp is the border between two neighboring signs. If your birthday falls on the first or last day of a range, you may have heard you are “on the cusp” and therefore a blend of both.

The honest version is simpler. When you took your first breath, the Sun stood in a single sign. On a changeover day, it might have been in the last degree of one sign or the first degree of the next. Your birth year and the hour decide which. Once you know, that is your Sun sign.

The “blend” idea does hold a grain of truth. A Sun at 29° of a sign is seasoned and close to the next sign’s themes. A Sun at 0° has the new sign’s qualities raw and fresh. Plenty of people born on a cusp day also have other planets in the neighboring sign, which can make both feel familiar.

To check a cusp birthday, enter your birth details in the birth chart calculator. If you do not know your birth time, our guide to an unknown birth time explains what you can still learn.

Decans, the three parts of each sign

Each sign’s 30 degrees can be divided into three decans of 10 degrees, about ten days of birthdays each. The first decan is co-ruled by the sign’s own planet. The second and third borrow a co-ruler from the next signs of the same element.

Take Aries. The first decan (roughly March 21–30) is Mars through and through. The second (around March 31–April 9) takes on a touch of the Sun from Leo, which adds warmth and a bit of showmanship. The third (around April 10–19) picks up Jupiter from Sagittarius, adding range and restlessness.

Decans fine-tune a sign. They do not make a separate one. They explain why two people of the same sign, born three weeks apart, can feel quite different. Each month guide lists the decans that fall in that month.

Browse by month

Each month page explains which two signs share it and when the change usually happens. It also shows what each sign looks like in that season and which decans fall in it.

January · February · March · April · May · June · July · August · September · October · November · December

Inside each month, you will also find pages for single birthdays, with the Sun’s approximate degree and decan for that day.

Your birthday sign is one layer

Your Sun sign describes a central drive. It shows what you reach for and how you like to shine. It is a useful layer, and it is also only one.

Your Moon sign shapes how you feel and what calms you down. Your Rising sign shapes how you meet the world and how others first read you. Our guide to the big three shows how these work together.

Our method goes a step further. It weighs how strong each planet is, how the elements balance across the whole chart and how the core of the personality is built. Two people born on the same birthday in different years can come out very different, and this layer shows why.

Every year, around your birthday, the Sun returns to the exact degree it held when you were born. Astrologers call the chart for that moment a solar return and read it as a sketch of the year ahead.