Qimen Dunjia Chart: Web Tool or Phone App — Which Should You Pick?
Casting a Qimen chart is easy; choosing a tool you trust is the hard part. This article does not rank brands — it shows how to judge a casting tool by the data its chart displays.
Three ways to cast
There are three ways to produce a Qimen Dunjia chart, and they trade off speed, completeness, and how much you actually understand by the end.
- By hand: paper, pencil and the formulas. You work from the solar term, the three yuans and the ju number all the way to the nine palaces. It is slow — but by the third chart you push through on your own, you genuinely understand where the chart comes from, because you laid down every layer yourself.
- Web tool: open a browser and go, nothing to install. The full four layers of the chart — the nine palaces, the nine stars, the eight gates and the eight spirits, with the stems written over one another — sit on a big screen, which makes it easy to study and cast at the same time.
- Phone app: open it anywhere. It suits people who already know the system and just want a quick result. The drawback is that the chart is usually compressed to fit a small screen, with little room left to show all four layers of information.
Side by side
| By hand | Web tool | Phone app | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to first chart | Slow | Fast | Fastest |
| Chart data | You write it yourself | Usually the most complete | Mostly trimmed down |
| Verifiability | Highest | High (checkable palace by palace) | Low (often just a verdict) |
| How fast you learn | Fastest route to understanding | Medium | Slow |
| Privacy | Fully local | Depends on the site's implementation | Depends on app permissions |
For a beginner the most efficient combination is a web tool for the chart plus a guide article to study alongside. Let the tool do the casting; keep the understanding for yourself. An app is not wrong — it is simply built for someone who can already read the chart and only needs the result fast.
Six things to check before you trust a tool
- Are all four layers present? The nine palaces (positions and directions), the nine stars, the eight gates and the eight spirits. Miss one layer and you cannot see the full shape of the situation.
- Are the heaven-plate and earth-plate stems listed separately? Pattern judgement rests entirely on the combination of the heaven-plate stem over the earth-plate stem. A tool that does not list them separately leaves you unable to read the pattern at all.
- Does it show void and horse? These two decide directly whether a matter is solid or hollow, still or moving.
- Does it state the solar term, yuan, ju number and dun type? Without them you cannot check whether the cast is correct, and you cannot compare your chart with anyone else's.
- Does it say which method it uses? Hour-based or day-based? Turning plate or flying plate? A tool that will not say will not line up with a chart from another school — and you will assume the mistake is yours.
- Does it print only a "lucky / unlucky" line? A tool that gives a verdict and hides the raw chart is fine for play, but you cannot learn from it.
One more thing to check: how you enter the time. Some tools default to the present moment (convenient, but you cannot cast for another hour); others let you pick a time (more flexible, but you have to confirm the input is right yourself).
What to watch on privacy
Casting a chart needs only a moment in time — not your name, birth date or contact details. If a tool asks you to register or fill in personal data before it will cast, ask yourself what that data has to do with the chart. As a rule, plain casting does not need any of it.
How this site does it
The casting page on this site is a plain web tool: no registration, open it and cast. The chart lists the nine palaces, the nine stars, the eight gates, the eight spirits, and the heaven-plate and earth-plate stems in full, plus void, horse, the solar term and yuans, and the ju number — so you can check it palace by palace. Every example in the Learn section is produced by the same engine, so after reading an article you can open a chart and read it side by side. For the step-by-step mechanics of the cast, the calculator guide walks through them.