Look up the Chinese gender chart
Enter the mother’s date of birth and one pregnancy date. The tool converts both to the Chinese lunar calendar, works out the traditional lunar age, and reads the matching cell of the chart shown below.
What the chart says
Enter the two dates, then select Look up the chart. You will see the lunar year and month of conception, the traditional lunar age, and the matching cell. Or load the worked example to see how the conversion works.
The full Chinese gender chart
Rows are the mother’s lunar age at conception, columns the lunar month of conception. B = boy, G = girl. This is the version used by the 2023 Turkish accuracy study; other websites publish variants that differ in some cells.
| Lunar age | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | G | B | G | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B |
| 19 | B | G | B | G | G | B | B | B | B | B | G | G |
| 20 | G | B | G | B | B | B | B | B | B | G | B | B |
| 21 | B | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | G |
| 22 | G | B | B | G | B | G | G | B | G | G | G | G |
| 23 | B | B | G | B | B | G | B | G | B | B | B | G |
| 24 | B | G | B | B | G | B | B | G | G | G | G | G |
| 25 | G | B | B | G | G | B | G | B | B | B | B | B |
| 26 | B | G | B | G | G | B | G | B | G | G | G | G |
| 27 | G | B | G | B | G | G | B | B | B | B | G | B |
| 28 | B | G | B | G | G | G | B | B | B | B | G | G |
| 29 | G | B | G | G | B | B | B | B | B | G | G | G |
| 30 | B | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | B | B |
| 31 | B | G | B | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | B |
| 32 | B | G | B | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | B |
| 33 | G | B | G | B | G | G | G | B | G | G | G | B |
| 34 | B | G | B | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | B | B |
| 35 | B | B | G | B | G | G | G | B | G | G | B | B |
| 36 | G | B | B | G | B | G | G | G | B | B | B | B |
| 37 | B | G | B | B | G | B | G | B | G | B | G | B |
| 38 | G | B | G | B | B | G | B | G | B | G | B | G |
| 39 | B | G | B | B | B | G | G | B | G | B | G | G |
| 40 | G | B | G | B | G | B | B | G | B | G | B | G |
| 41 | B | G | B | G | B | G | B | B | G | B | G | B |
| 42 | G | B | G | B | G | B | G | B | B | G | B | G |
| 43 | B | G | B | G | B | G | B | G | B | B | B | B |
| 44 | B | B | G | B | B | B | G | B | G | B | G | G |
| 45 | G | B | B | G | G | G | B | G | B | G | B | B |
How to use the Chinese gender predictor
Enter the mother’s date of birth
The tool finds the lunar year of birth. A birthday between January 1 and Chinese New Year counts as the previous lunar year, which is why lunar age can run two years ahead of Western age.
Choose the pregnancy date you know
Enter the conception date if you know it. Otherwise enter the first day of your last period (the tool adds 14 days) or your due date (the tool subtracts 266 days). These are the same conventions due-date calculators use.
Look up the chart and read the conversion
Select Look up the chart. You see the lunar month of conception with its calendar dates, the lunar age with the arithmetic, the chart cell, and your row highlighted in the full chart. The coin-toss accuracy record sits beside every answer.
Chinese gender predictor: the Qing dynasty chart and its actual 50% hit rate
The Chinese gender predictor is a 28-row grid. Down the side runs the mother’s lunar age at conception, 18 to 45. Across the top run the 12 months of the Chinese lunar calendar. Every cell holds one word, boy or girl. The calculator above does the two conversions that trip most people up, turning your ordinary calendar dates into a lunar age and a lunar month, and then reads the cell for you.
Treat the answer as a party game. Three published studies covering about 2.9 million births found that the chart lands on the right answer about half the time, which is exactly what a coin toss achieves. The largest, a Swedish population study of 2.84 million births, concluded that the method is “no better at predicting the sex of a baby than tossing a coin” (Villamor et al., 2010). The details are in the table further down.
Where the chart is supposed to come from
The usual story says the chart was found in a royal tomb near Beijing, is more than 700 years old, and was drawn up for the Qing imperial family. The pieces do not fit together. The Qing dynasty ruled from 1644 to 1912, so nothing Qing can be 700 years old. No museum, archive or academic paper has produced an original, and websites that claim one never show it.
What circulates today is a family of near-identical grids copied from site to site, and they do not even agree with each other. None of this makes the chart less fun. It does mean there is no “authentic” version to appeal to when two websites give you different answers.
Lunar age is not your age plus one
In traditional Chinese reckoning a baby is one year old at birth, and everybody gains a year at Chinese New Year rather than on their birthday. Your lunar age at conception is therefore the lunar year of conception minus the lunar year of your birth, plus one.
Two details matter. First, the lunar year starts on Chinese New Year, which falls between January 21 and February 20. Someone born on January 20, 1985 belongs to lunar year 1984, because New Year 1985 fell on February 20. Second, the plus one applies to everyone. Together they put lunar age one to two years ahead of Western age, and the popular shortcut of simply adding one to your age gives the wrong row for anyone whose birthday or conception date sits between January 1 and Chinese New Year.
| Mother born | Lunar birth year | Conceived | Lunar age (Western age) | Chart cell |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 20, 1985 | 1984 (before New Year on Feb 20) | March 25, 2026, 2nd lunar month | 43 (41) | Girl |
| March 1, 1985 | 1985 | March 25, 2026, 2nd lunar month | 42 (41) | Boy |
Both mothers are 41 in Western terms and conceived on the same day, yet the chart sends them to different rows and returns opposite answers. That is the chart working as designed, and a hint of how arbitrary it is.
Lunar months and the leap-month problem
The Chinese calendar is lunisolar. Months begin on the new moon and last 29 or 30 days, and roughly every third year a thirteenth, leap month is inserted so the year keeps pace with the seasons. Your conception date converts to the lunar month that contains it. In 2026, for example, the 1st lunar month runs from February 17 to March 18 and the 2nd from March 19 to April 16, so a March 10 conception falls in month 1 and a March 25 conception in month 2.
The chart has no column for a leap month. This tool follows the most common convention and uses the column of the month the leap month repeats, so a leap 6th month reads as month 6, and the result panel tells you when that has happened. Some websites split a leap month in half instead. There is no authority to settle the question, which is one more reason to hold the whole exercise lightly. The calendar dates used here come from the Hong Kong Observatory conversion tables for 1901 to 2100.
A worked example you can reproduce
Select Load worked example: mother born May 15, 1990, conception March 25, 2026. Chinese New Year 1990 fell on January 27, so May 15, 1990 sits in lunar year 1990. New Year 2026 fell on February 17, so March 25, 2026 sits in lunar year 2026, in the 2nd lunar month. Lunar age = 2026 − 1990 + 1 = 37. Row 37, column 2 reads Girl.
Now move the conception date back to March 10, 2026. Same mother, same lunar age, but the date now falls in the 1st lunar month, and row 37, column 1 reads Boy. A two-week difference in dating flips the answer. That matters because a conception date estimated from a last period or a due date is itself uncertain by days to weeks; our conception date calculator explains why the estimate is a window rather than a day.
What the studies actually found
| Study | Births | Setting | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Villamor et al., 2010, Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology | 2,840,755 singleton births | Sweden, 1973–2006 | Agreement with the baby’s sex no better than chance (kappa 0.0002). Also tested a website’s own algorithm in 1,000 births: same result. |
| Katz and Wylie, 2009, conference abstract | 38,394 singleton births | 1995–2008 (setting not given in the summary) | 50.2% correct, as summarised by Jafarzade et al. |
| Jafarzade et al., 2023, Actual Gynecology and Obstetrics | 17,580 births | Ankara, Turkey, 2017–2023 | Kappa 0.002, p = 0.797: “not a reliable method for determining sex.” Used the same chart version as this page. |
Kappa measures agreement beyond chance; a value near zero means the chart’s answers line up with the babies’ actual sex no more often than two coin flips would. The Swedish team also checked whether the chart did better for particular years, maternal ages, education levels, body mass index or birth order. It did not. Claims of 70% or 90% accuracy that appear on some websites come with no data behind them.
Why different websites show different charts
Because there is no original, sites copy from one another and copying errors persist. We compared the version used here, cell by cell, with another widely copied version: they disagree in 36 of the 336 cells, spread across 15 of the 28 age rows. Add the different lunar-age shortcuts and leap-month conventions in use, and two “Chinese gender predictors” can easily give you opposite answers for the same dates.
This page uses the version tested in the 2023 Turkish study, so the accuracy data above describes the grid you are actually reading. If a friend’s result differs, one of the charts or one of the conversions is different; neither is right.
How to find out for real
If you want to know, two established methods exist. Cell-free DNA screening from a maternal blood sample looks for Y-chromosome sequences. A systematic review in JAMA found overall sensitivity of 95.4% and specificity of 98.6% for fetal sex, with tests before 7 weeks unreliable and performance rising to about 99% after 20 weeks (Devaney et al., 2011). The mid-pregnancy screening scan, offered in the NHS usually between 18 and 21 weeks, checks the baby for a set of conditions; you may be asked at that appointment whether you would like to know the sex (NHS, 20-week screening scan).
Both are medical tests with a purpose beyond curiosity, so they are discussed with your maternity team, not looked up. To see where a date falls in pregnancy, our pregnancy week calculator converts a due date or last period into the current week. Nothing on this page should influence a decision about a pregnancy; the chart has no predictive value at all.
Method, sources and review status
Calendar conversion uses month-start dates read from the Hong Kong Observatory’s published tables for 1901 to 2100 and re-checked day by day against the Chinese calendar implementation in ICU, the library behind browsers’ date formatting. Lunar age follows the traditional rule described above; a leap month maps onto the month it repeats. The chart grid was read directly from the source website’s HTML and is reproduced in full above so you can check any cell yourself.
This is an entertainment page built on a folklore chart. It is not a medical tool, has not been clinically reviewed, and makes no claim beyond what the cited studies report. Your dates are processed in your browser and are not stored or transmitted. Prepared on September 16, 2026.
Questions about the chart
How do I work out my Chinese lunar age for the gender chart?
Take the lunar year of conception, subtract the lunar year of your birth and add one. Each lunar year starts on Chinese New Year (between January 21 and February 20), so a birthday or conception date before New Year belongs to the previous lunar year. The calculator does this from your calendar dates; the popular shortcut of adding one or two to your age is often wrong.
Which column do I use if I conceived in a leap month?
The chart has 12 columns and no leap column. This tool uses the column of the month the leap month repeats, so a leap 6th month reads as month 6, and it tells you when a leap month applied. Other websites use other conventions, for example splitting the leap month between two columns. There is no authoritative rule.
Is the Chinese gender predictor accurate?
No better than a coin toss. A Swedish study of 2,840,755 births (Villamor et al., 2010), a series of 38,394 births (Katz and Wylie, 2009) and a Turkish study of 17,580 births (Jafarzade et al., 2023) all found agreement with the baby’s actual sex at chance level, about 50%. Claims of 70% or 90% accuracy on some websites are not supported by any data.
Why does another website give a different answer for the same dates?
Three things vary between sites: the chart itself (the version here differs from another common version in 36 of 336 cells), the way lunar age is calculated, and the way leap months are handled. Because no original chart exists, none of these versions can be called correct.
Can I use the chart to plan for a boy or a girl?
The studies show the chart has no predictive value, so timing conception by its rows changes nothing. It should not influence any decision about a pregnancy. If you want to know the sex, cell-free DNA screening and the mid-pregnancy ultrasound are the established methods, discussed with your maternity team.
Are my dates stored or shared?
No. The conversion runs in your browser, nothing is saved or sent, and the dates are not added to the page address. Reset clears the fields. Copy summary places text on your own clipboard only.
Educational tool, not medical advice. Check this tool’s method and limitations before interpreting a result. Talk to a qualified healthcare professional before making decisions about medication, diet, exercise, or treatment. See our Terms of Use.
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Written by Marko Šinko
Co-Founder & Lead Developer
Computer scientist and developer working on calculator implementation, data handling, and accessible interfaces. His authorship describes development work, not independent medical review.
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