What your kundli shows
Lagna (ascendant) is the sign rising on the eastern horizon at the moment you were born. It sets the first house and shapes how the rest of the chart is read, which is why the birth time matters so much.
Rashi is the sign the Moon was in. Vedic horoscopes, including the ones on this site, are read from your rashi.
Nakshatra is the Moon’s lunar mansion, one of 27. It decides the order of your dasha periods and is used for kundli matching and naming.
Vimshottari dasha divides a 120-year cycle among the nine grahas. The mahadasha you are in, and the antardasha inside it, colour the themes of each period of life.
North or South Indian chart?
Both show the same positions. In the North Indian chart the houses stay fixed and the sign numbers move, with the first house in the top diamond. In the South Indian chart the signs stay fixed, starting with Meen in the top-left corner, and the lagna is marked with a diagonal line. Use whichever you are used to.
Questions
About your kundli
Why do the horoscopes use my moon sign?
Vedic astrology reads your horoscope from your rashi, the sign the Moon was in when you were born. It can differ from the sun sign used in Western horoscopes. If you're not sure of yours, the rashi finder works it out from your birth details.
How accurate is the free kundli?
Planet positions are calculated with a professional astronomy library and the Lahiri ayanamsa, the standard used in Indian astrology. In our tests our engine matched FreeAstrologyAPI to within one arcminute (a sixtieth of a degree). Other software can give different results, for example if it uses another ayanamsa. The result depends most on your birth time: the lagna moves about one sign every two hours. The disclaimer explains more.
What if I don’t know my birth time?
Tick "I don't know the birth time". You still get your rashi, nakshatra, planet positions and dasha periods, with a Moon chart (Chandra lagna) in place of the birth chart. The founders can help estimate your birth time in a consultation.
Planet positions: Astronomy Engine by Don Cross (MIT licence). Place data: GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0.