Calculator · Empty houses
Empty house calculator
Twelve houses, ten planets, one lookup. See which of your houses are empty and which planet speaks for each one.
Photo: NPS / Jacob W. Frank
At a glance
Enter your birth details and the calculator places the Sun, Moon and eight planets in whole-sign houses, marks every empty house, and finds each one's ruler. Expect around 6 empty houses: that was the most common count in 120,000 sampled charts.
- Planets placed
- 10Sun to Pluto
- House system
- Whole signrising sign = 1st house
- Typical result
- 6 empty33.68% of charts
- No birth time?
- Solar housesSun sign = 1st house
- Cost
- Freeruns in your browser
How it works
What the calculator does with your birth time
First it turns your local birth time into Universal Time, using the daylight-saving rules of your birth city on that date. Then it computes where the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were along the zodiac, using the astronomy-engine library, accurate to well under a degree.
Next comes the Ascendant, the degree rising in the east, from your latitude, longitude and sidereal time. The sign of that degree becomes your 1st house, the next sign your 2nd, and so on around the wheel. Any house with no planet is marked empty, and the calculator looks up the ruler of its sign and where that ruler sits.
All of it happens in your browser. Nothing is stored or sent anywhere except the place search.
The sky behind it
Planets: astronomy-engine (geocentric, true ecliptic of date). Ascendant: lib/rising.ts, mean sidereal time and mean obliquity, the same formula as Shymea's chart backend. Houses: whole-sign.
Modern or traditional
Two sets of rulers, one toggle
Try this today
- Run your chart with modern rulers, then traditional. Note any empty house whose ruler changes.
- Read the house page for that empty house with each ruler in mind.
Three signs have two rulers. Scorpio is ruled by Pluto in modern astrology and Mars in traditional astrology; Aquarius by Uranus or Saturn; Pisces by Neptune or Jupiter. The other nine are the same in both.
That matters for empty houses, because the ruler is the whole reading. If your empty 8th is in Scorpio, the modern lookup sends you to Pluto's house and the traditional one to Mars's. Try both with the toggle and see which story feels more like your life. Many astrologers read both.
Birth time
How accurate does my birth time need to be?
Planet signs barely move in an hour (except the Moon, which moves about half a degree). The rising sign is the sensitive part: it changes roughly every two hours, and with it every house in a whole-sign chart shifts by one.
So if your birth time is rounded or a family guess, run the calculator for half an hour either side. If the rising sign changes, your empty houses shift too, and you will see both versions. No birth time at all? The calculator uses solar houses, putting your Sun sign in the 1st. That is a real tradition, but treat its empty houses as a sketch.
Calculator
Find my empty houses
Birth date, time and place. Leave the time blank if you do not know it. Or tap your rising sign to see the sign and ruler of every house.
More to read
One shorter read. It opens in place.
After the result
Got your empty houses? Read them
Each empty house has its own page with its numbers, ruler table and meaning. Start with the one that surprised you most.
The ruler lookup table
The rulers the calculator uses, for every sign.
| Sign | Modern ruler | Traditional ruler |
|---|---|---|
| Aries | Mars | Mars |
| Taurus | Venus | Venus |
| Gemini | Mercury | Mercury |
| Cancer | Moon | Moon |
| Leo | Sun | Sun |
| Virgo | Mercury | Mercury |
| Libra | Venus | Venus |
| Scorpio | Pluto | Mars |
| Sagittarius | Jupiter | Jupiter |
| Capricorn | Saturn | Saturn |
| Aquarius | Uranus | Saturn |
| Pisces | Neptune | Jupiter |
All times are UTC. In the Americas the local date can be a day earlier; in Asia and Australia a day later.
Quick answers
How do I know which houses are empty in my chart?
Enter your birth date, time and place in the calculator. It lists all twelve whole-sign houses and marks the ones with no planets.
Why does another site show different empty houses?
Probably a different house system. Placidus houses vary in size, so a planet near a boundary can change house. This calculator uses whole-sign houses.
Does the calculator count the North Node or Chiron?
No. It counts the Sun, Moon and eight planets, the usual definition of an empty house. Points like the nodes, Chiron or Lilith are not counted.
Can I use it without a birth time?
Yes. It switches to solar houses, with your Sun sign as the 1st house. The planet signs stay accurate; the houses are an approximation.
How many empty houses should I have?
Anywhere from 2 to about 9. In our sample the most common count was 6 and the average 5.61.
Is my data saved?
No. The chart is computed in your browser and is not stored.
