Ashtakoot · 36 Gunas
Kundli Guna Milan
All eight kootas worked out from the two birth nakshatras — with the score each one actually produces, the reasoning behind it, and the two kootas where traditions disagree shown as a range instead of a guess.
Ashtakoot Guna Milan: the 36-point system
Kundli Milan, as it is practised across most of North India, means Ashtakoot Guna Milan — a comparison of eight factors between two birth charts, scored out of 36 points. The eight kootas and their weights are Varna (1), Vashya (2), Tara (3), Yoni (4), Graha Maitri (5), Gana (6), Bhakoot (7) and Nadi (8). Add the weights and you get 36.
Six of the eight are computed from the two birth nakshatras rather than from sun signs, which is why a pandit asks for birth details rather than star signs. Varna compares temperament and work orientation; Vashya, the balance of influence; Tara, mutual well-being; Yoni, physical and instinctive compatibility; Graha Maitri, the friendship of the two Moon-sign lords; Gana, temperament type; Bhakoot, the relative positions of the two Moon signs; Nadi, constitution in the Ayurvedic sense.
How the score is conventionally read
The usual thresholds: below 18 out of 36 is traditionally not recommended, 18 to 24 is considered acceptable, 25 to 32 good, and above 32 excellent. Experienced astrologers do not treat the top of that scale as a target — an unusually high score often comes with a shared Nadi or an awkward Bhakoot hidden inside it, and as the next section shows, the score a family is told to hope for is not the score the tables can actually produce.
That number is a screening device. It sorts a shortlist of proposals; it does not decide a marriage. Two families using the same nakshatras and the same rulebook will often produce slightly different totals, because the Yoni and Vashya tables have variant readings in different regional traditions.
What every possible match actually scores
Ashtakoot reads the Moon and nothing else, so the entire input is one nakshatra and pada per person. That is 108 positions each and 11,664 possible pairings in total — few enough to work out every one of them, which is what this page does at build time. The claims usually made about Guna Milan are therefore checkable, and several of them do not survive.
Clearing 18 guna is the ordinary outcome rather than a distinction: 63.6% of all pairings reach it on the strict reading of the two disputed kootas and 76.5% on the generous one. The median total is 20.5. Sorted into the bands families are given, the pairings fall out as 36.4% below 18, 43.4% between 18 and 24, 19.4% between 25 and 32 and 0.8% above 32 — so the band that sounds like a rare blessing holds fewer than one pairing in a hundred, and the band that sounds like a warning holds more than a third of them. Half-guna totals are counted in the lower band, since the bands were written as though totals were whole numbers.
No pairing scores 36 out of 36. The highest total reachable is 35: 16 pairings reach it on the strict reading and 70 once every disputed koota is read generously, out of 11,664. Mrigashira and Rohini is the only pairing that gets to 35 with no disputed koota involved at all, which makes it the one match whose ceiling holds under every lineage's tables. A site that reports 36 out of 36 has either added something Ashtakoot does not contain or rounded a total up.
Nor are the two doshas the rarities they are described as. Bhakoot scores nothing for 50.0% of all pairings — exactly half — and 47.2% of those meet one of its recognised cancellations. Nadi scores nothing for 33.3%, of which 23.2% are cancelled. Finding either in a match is unremarkable; what matters is whether the cancellation applies, and that is read off the two charts rather than the score.
45.4% of all pairings total something and a half, because Tara scores 1.5 guna when one of its two counts falls on an inauspicious tara and Graha Maitri 0.5 when one Moon-sign lord counts the other an enemy while the other stays neutral. A whole number is not always the honest answer, and this calculator does not round to produce one.
Bhakoot and Nadi: the two that override the total
Not all thirty-six points carry equal weight in practice. Bhakoot dosha arises from certain relative positions between the two Moon signs — the 6–8, 9–5 and 2–12 axes — and is traditionally read as a strain on prosperity, health and continuity. Nadi dosha arises when both partners fall in the same Nadi group, which frequently happens when they share a nakshatra, and is read as a constitutional mismatch.
Because these two carry seven and eight points respectively, either one failing drops the total sharply. More importantly, most pandits treat a 30-out-of-36 that carries Nadi dosha as a more serious finding than a 22 that carries none. There are recognised cancellation conditions for both — a shared Moon-sign lord, or the same rashi with different nakshatras — which is exactly the kind of judgement a table of numbers cannot make.
What Guna Milan leaves out
This is the part missing from almost every online matching result. Ashtakoot says nothing about Mangal Dosha, which is assessed separately from the position of Mars. It says nothing about the seventh house or its lord in either chart, which is where marriage actually lives. It ignores the condition of Venus and Jupiter, the significators of marriage for a woman's and a man's chart respectively in classical practice.
It also ignores timing entirely. Two charts can score 30 and still describe a couple entering opposing dasha periods, one in a supportive phase and the other in a difficult one. A complete compatibility reading covers the 36-point score, the doshas, the seventh house of both charts, and the dasha positions of both people — and no free calculator does all four.
What this tool does
All eight kootas are functions of a single quantity per person: the Moon's position at birth, expressed as a nakshatra and a pada. Nothing else enters the calculation — not the ascendant, not the Sun, not the date as such. So that is what this calculator asks for, and it then performs the same arithmetic a pandit performs: the varna ranks, the tara count and its remainder, the yoni animals, the friendship of the two Moon-sign lords, the gana matrix, the Bhakoot distance, and the three nadis.
Six of the eight — Varna, Tara, Graha Maitri, Gana, Bhakoot and Nadi, worth 30 of the 36 guna — have rules that every source states identically, and they are computed exactly. Yoni and Vashya are not like that. Their extreme cases are agreed, but the intermediate grades differ between lineages and between the published tables derived from them, so this tool reports those two as a range and lets the total carry it. The range is never wider than three guna, and for roughly seven pairs in eight it still gives a definite answer about the conventional threshold of 18.
That range is also the answer to a question families ask constantly: why two astrologers quote two different scores for the same couple. Usually neither is wrong — they are grading Yoni or Vashya from different tables.
What the tool cannot do is weigh the result. The cancellations that neutralise Nadi and Bhakoot dosha depend on the two charts, and everything outside the eight kootas — the seventh house, Venus and Mars, Mangal Dosha, the running dasha — is not part of Ashtakoot at all. If a decision rests on it, have a pandit read both charts.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good guna score for marriage?
Conventionally, 18 out of 36 is the minimum considered acceptable, 25 to 32 is good and above 32 is excellent. Worth knowing what those bands are worth: of all 11,664 possible pairings of two birth stars, 63.6% clear 18 and the median total is 20.5, so clearing the bar is the ordinary case. Only 0.8% of pairings land above 32. Treat the bands as a shortlisting device rather than a verdict — the presence of Bhakoot or Nadi dosha, and whether it is cancelled, matters more to most pandits than a few points either way.
Is 36 out of 36 the ideal match?
No pairing of birth stars can score 36 out of 36. Working out all 11,664 possible pairings, the highest total the eight kootas produce is 35, reached by 70 of them, and Mrigashira and Rohini is the only pairing that reaches it with no disputed koota involved. The reason is that the kootas pull against each other. Yoni's full four guna need the same yoni animal and Gana's full six the same gana, both of which want the two stars alike, while Nadi's eight need different nadis. Only three pairings of birth stars manage all three at once — Chitra and Vishakha; Uttara Phalguni and Uttara Bhadrapada; Hasta and Swati — and every one of them then gives up guna elsewhere, on Tara in each case, the best of them topping out at 34.5. So a result of 36 out of 36 means something has been added to Ashtakoot, or a total rounded up. High totals are not the goal in classical practice either: a couple can be well matched at 26 with no doshas at all.
What is Bhakoot dosha, and is it serious?
It arises from specific relative positions between the two Moon signs — the 6–8, 9–5 and 2–12 axes — and is read as strain on prosperity, health and continuity. It carries seven of the 36 points, so it moves the score sharply. There are recognised cancellations, including a shared Moon-sign lord, which is why it needs a pandit's reading rather than a table lookup.
Is Guna Milan enough to decide on a marriage?
No, and classical practice never claimed it was. Guna Milan omits Mangal Dosha, the seventh house and its lord in both charts, the condition of Venus and Jupiter, and the dasha periods both people are entering. A complete reading covers all of those. The 36-point score is the first filter, not the analysis.