Free BaZi Calculator: Check Your Four Pillars
Check a free BaZi chart with a worked example. Find your Day Master, check year boundaries and birth-time settings, then read your Luck Pillars.
Enter the Gregorian birth date, time and birthplace, then compare the Year, Month, Day and Hour pillars. Your Day Master is the stem of the Day pillar. Check these inputs and labels before interpreting Ten Gods, element balance or Luck Pillars.
Open the free BaZi calculator and keep your result beside the worked example below.
Open toolWhat to enter in the calculator
Use a Gregorian date in Lingtai’s date field. If your family recorded a lunar birthday, convert it first, including whether the birth month was a leap month. The Hong Kong Observatory calendar tables provide a public reference for checking that conversion.
Enter the recorded time and check the birthplace and longitude. An approximate birth time is a range, not an exact input: compare the ends of that range if an hour boundary is close. For a birth outside the time convention used by the calculator, confirm the historical time zone and daylight-saving offset before treating the result as settled. A city name alone does not establish those rules.
A worked Four Pillars example
This demonstration uses 1 January 2026 at 08:00, male, Shanghai, longitude 121.5°E. It is a sample input, not a customer’s birth record. We checked the calculator on 13 September 2026: the four labels below appeared in its result.
Find the column names before comparing charts: some displays run right to left. In this example the Day pillar is 乙亥, so the Day Master is 乙, Yi Wood. The branch 亥 is not the Day Master, and the year animal is a different field.
| Pillar | Result | How to identify it |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 乙巳 · Yi Si | Year stem and branch |
| Month | 戊子 · Wu Zi | Solar-term month |
| Day | 乙亥 · Yi Hai | The first character, 乙, is the Day Master |
| Hour | 庚辰 · Geng Chen | Hour stem and branch after the tool’s time adjustment |
All inputs must match to reproduce this example. The labels show calculation output, not evidence of a predicted life outcome.
Why a January 2026 birth can show the previous year pillar
A calendar-year label and a BaZi year boundary answer different questions. HKO’s 2026 calendar lists Spring Commences on 4 February and the first day of the first lunar month on 17 February. Neither is 1 January, the date in our example.
Before calling a Year pillar wrong, check the calculator’s year-boundary rule. The same discipline applies to month boundaries: do not assume that a numbered lunar month is automatically the Month branch used by a BaZi calculation. Once the four columns agree, follow the BaZi chart reading guide to explore their relationships.
What to compare when calculators disagree
Compare the date convention, clock time, longitude, time-adjustment method, midnight rule and solar-term boundary. Lingtai’s time summary currently shows a longitude-based adjustment against 120°E; it does not include the equation of time. Its form has no historical time-zone or daylight-saving input. Do not treat an overseas birth as settled simply by choosing a city.
For Luck Pillars, compare direction and the exact start date as well as the displayed age. An integer age range is not the same as an elapsed age expressed in years, months and days. Do not change your birth record merely to make two results match.
Read the result one layer at a time
Start with the Day Master, then look at the Month branch, visible stems and hidden stems. Ten Gods are relationships to the Day Master; they are not ten independent verdicts. Five-phase counts are a summary, not an instruction to add a supposedly missing element.
The Day Master guide explains the reference point, while the Ten Gods guide explains those relationship labels. Keep the original result open as you read so every term has a visible place in the chart. Traditional interpretations can help organize reflection, but they do not establish what will happen in someone’s life.
Open the free BaZi calculator and keep your result beside the worked example below.
References used for verification
- 香港天文台 / HKO: Gregorian–Lunar Calendar Conversion
- 香港天文台 / HKO: 2026 calendar and solar terms
- lunar: calendar, Eight Characters and Ten Gods reference
This guide was checked against the public references above and the fields available in the matching tool. Traditional interpretations are cultural references, not professional advice.
Short answers
Can I reproduce the chart in this guide?
Yes. Enter 1 January 2026, 08:00, male, Shanghai and longitude 121.5°E. The checked result was 乙巳, 戊子, 乙亥, 庚辰 in Year-to-Hour order.
Is my Day Master my Chinese zodiac animal?
No. The Day Master is the Day pillar’s heavenly stem. The familiar year animal comes from the Year branch.
What if I do not know my birth time?
Do not treat an invented time as a complete birth record. Keep the uncertainty visible and compare candidate hours where appropriate.