Guna Milan compares two birth charts across eight tests called kootas. The calculator above runs all eight and shows each one separately, with what it actually compares and how often it scores full marks.
It does not give you a total out of 36. That omission is deliberate, it is the main thing this page is for, and it is defended below with arithmetic rather than opinion.
What the eight kootas actually compare
Each koota takes the Moon's nakshatra or sign from each chart and applies one rule. That is all any of them does.
| Koota | Max | What it compares |
|---|---|---|
| Varna | 1 | A four-way ranking of the two moon signs |
| Vashya | 2 | Which of five animal-type groups each sign belongs to |
| Tara | 3 | The nakshatra count between the two, both ways, modulo nine |
| Yoni | 4 | An animal assigned to each nakshatra, and whether the two are hostile |
| Graha Maitri | 5 | The friendship relation between the two signs' ruling planets |
| Gana | 6 | A three-way temperament class of the two nakshatras |
| Bhakoot | 7 | The distance between the two moon signs |
| Nadi | 8 | A three-way class of the two nakshatras |
Note what is not there. No lagna, no Sun, no houses, no other planet in either chart. Eight readings of two lunar positions.
The problem with adding them up
The standard presentation sums these to 36 and thresholds the total: below 18 reject, above 18 acceptable, above 25 excellent.
Three things are wrong with that as arithmetic, before anyone asks whether astrology works.
The weights have no derivation. Varna is worth 1 and Nadi is worth 8. No surviving source explains why those numbers. They are 1 through 8 assigned in order to the eight kootas, which is a labelling scheme, not a measurement scale. Summing quantities whose weights are arbitrary gives a number whose scale is arbitrary too.
The kootas measure incommensurable things. Nadi is a category match. Bhakoot is an angular separation. Graha Maitri is a relation between two planets. Adding a category match to an angular distance produces a quantity with no unit, in the way that adding a shoe size to a temperature does.
The sum destroys the information. This is the serious one, and it is checkable.
The arithmetic that settles it
I ran every possible combination, 27 nakshatras and 12 signs for each side, giving 104,976 pairs in all, and asked what the 18-point threshold actually does.
The lowest total reachable with no koota scoring zero is 22.5 out of 36.
So every pair without a zero already clears the threshold. The threshold never rejects one.
A pair with a zero can still reach 35 out of 36.
So the threshold never catches one either.
Put those together and the 18-point rule sorts pairs into exactly the same two groups that "does any koota score zero?" sorts them into, except that it does so less reliably and hides which koota failed.
A concrete case makes it vivid. There are pairs that score zero on Nadi and full marks on all seven others. That totals 28 of 36, which the conventional reading calls an excellent match. Most practitioners treat a Nadi zero as the single most serious objection in the entire system. The total says excellent; the tradition says stop. The number is not merely uninformative, it points the wrong way.
That is why this page reports the eight scores and the list of zeros, and stops.
Checking the 22.5 floor by hand
The floor is easy to verify without running anything, which is worth doing since it carries most of the argument.
If no koota scores zero, each must score at least its smallest non-zero value. Varna can only be 0 or 1, so its minimum non-zero is 1. Vashya's smallest non-zero is 1. Tara's is 1.5, since it scores 3, 1.5 or 0. Yoni's smallest non-zero under the simplified grid is 2. Graha Maitri's is 1. Gana's is 1. Bhakoot is only ever 0 or 7, so its minimum non-zero is 7. Nadi is only ever 0 or 8, so 8.
Add those: 1 + 1 + 1.5 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 7 + 8 = 22.5.
The two largest kootas are the reason. Bhakoot and Nadi are both all-or-nothing, and together they are worth 15 of the 36 points. Any pair that scores on both is already at 15 before the other six contribute anything, and 15 is most of the way to 18 on its own.
So the threshold is essentially asking "did you score on Bhakoot and Nadi?" wearing the costume of a 36-point assessment. Which is the same question as "do you have a zero on either", asked less clearly.
What the base rates look like
Each koota has a frequency, measured across all 104,976 combinations:
| Koota | Scores full | Scores zero |
|---|---|---|
| Varna | 63% | 38% |
| Vashya | 28% | 15% |
| Tara | 33% | 0% |
| Yoni | 7% | 7% |
| Graha Maitri | 39% | 6% |
| Gana | 44% | 33% |
| Bhakoot | 50% | 50% |
| Nadi | 67% | 33% |
Two of these are worth dwelling on.
Bhakoot scores zero for exactly half of all sign pairs. The rule fails on six of the twelve possible separations between two moon signs, so a coin flip decides it. That is a large share of the total, seven points, riding on a test that half the population fails.
Nadi scores zero for exactly a third. Each of the three nadis holds nine of the twenty-seven nakshatras, so two independent picks match a third of the time. This is derivable rather than measured, which is why the figure is exact.
Neither of those is an argument that the tests are wrong. They are the denominators, and a test that a third or a half of people fail is describing something common rather than identifying something rare.
What the calculator leaves out, and why that matters
The classical literature contains a substantial body of cancellation rules, being conditions under which a Nadi zero or a Bhakoot zero does not apply. Same nakshatra but different pada, same sign but different nakshatra, particular lordship relations, and others.
Those are not implemented here. Several depend on details this page does not collect, several vary between traditions, and implementing a few of them would produce a result that looks complete and is not.
That omission is itself a reason not to print a total. A total implies a finished computation. A partial computation with a confident number attached is worse than a partial computation that says what it left out.
Where the system is strongest
It would be easy to read all of the above as a dismissal, and it is not one. Two things about Guna Milan are genuinely well built, and they are worth naming.
The first is that every koota is fully specified. Given two nakshatras and two signs, there is no judgement left: the rules produce one answer, and any two people applying them carefully will agree. That is unusual. A great deal of chart interpretation cannot be checked at all because it never commits to anything falsifiable. This can be checked, and the checking is what this page has done.
The second is that the tradition's own practice is better than its popular presentation. Practitioners look at zeros and at cancellations. The 36-point sum with its thresholds is a compression of that practice for people who want one number, and the compression is where the information is lost. The underlying procedure is more careful than the score that represents it.
So the criticism here is narrow and specific. It is not that the kootas are arbitrary, though the weights are. It is that summing them and thresholding the sum is a step the tradition does not require and that provably discards the thing the tradition cares about.
Why another site gives a different result
The ayanamsa. Every koota depends on the Moon's nakshatra or sign, so all eight shift with it. Lahiri and Raman are about a tenth of a nakshatra apart, which moves roughly one pair in ten on the nakshatra-based kootas.
The Yoni grid. Some texts give a fuller graded matrix between animal pairs than the same/hostile/neutral simplification most implementations use, including this one, which is stated rather than glossed.
Vashya boundaries. Several traditions split Dhanu and Makara at their midpoints into two different groups, so a Moon in the second half of Makara gets a different vashya class.
Which cancellations are applied. Sites vary from none to many, and this is often the whole difference between a rejection and an acceptance.
A missing birth time, on a date where the Moon changed nakshatra during the birth day. Six of the eight kootas depend on the nakshatra, so an unsettled nakshatra unsettles most of the result. The page checks this and says so.
What to do with the eight numbers
If you are going to use this at all, the useful reading is not the sum.
Look at the zeros first. They are what practitioners act on, and they are the only part of the output the conventional total actively obscures.
Check whether the nakshatras are settled. If either birth date had the Moon crossing a boundary and no time is known, six of the eight scores are provisional.
Note which zeros they are. A Nadi zero and a Varna zero are treated very differently by every tradition, and the total treats them as differing by seven points, which is a claim nobody has ever justified.
Ask about cancellations. If a zero appears, the next question in the classical procedure is whether it is cancelled. That question is asked far less often than the zero is announced.
The one thing the eight do agree on
There is a structural observation worth making, because it cuts against the impression the eight kootas give of being eight independent opinions.
They are not eight independent tests. They are eight readings of two numbers.
Every koota takes the bride's Moon and the groom's Moon and asks something about them. Varna, Vashya, Graha Maitri and Bhakoot all read the two moon SIGNS. Tara, Yoni, Gana and Nadi all read the two NAKSHATRAS. And a nakshatra determines a sign, so even those two groups are not independent of one another.
That means the eight scores are heavily correlated by construction. Two charts whose Moons are close together will score similarly across several kootas at once, not because several independent factors agree but because several tests are looking at the same fact.
This matters for how much a high total can mean. Eight independent tests all passing would be a strong signal. Eight correlated readings of one relationship all passing is one signal counted eight times, with weights nobody can justify. It is another reason the sum overstates what has been established.
What this page will not do
It will not tell you whether to marry someone, and it will not give you a percentage.
What it computes is eight small comparisons between two lunar positions, each with its rule stated and its result shown alongside how common that result is. Every one is checkable by hand from a nakshatra table.
The refusal to total them is not squeamishness about the tradition. It is the opposite: the tradition's own practice keys on the zeros, and the 36-point sum is a modern convenience that buries them. Running all 104,976 combinations shows the sum adds nothing the zeros do not already say, while concealing the one thing that matters most. A number that behaves like that should not be printed just because people expect to see one.