Your solar return
Once a year the Sun comes back to the exact degree it held when you were born. The chart for that moment is read as the shape of the year that follows — and finding the moment is arithmetic, so this is free like everything else here that is.
Cast for your birthplace unless you say otherwise.
A solar return needs your birth time — without it the Sun's natal degree is only known to within half a degree, which moves the return by up to twelve hours and changes the whole chart. Nothing here is stored.
How to read it
Read the solar return as a year rather than a life. The rising sign of the return sets the tone of the twelve months; whichever house the Sun lands in tends to be where the year's attention goes; and a stellium in one house is usually the year's subject whether it was chosen or not.
It is not a replacement for the birth chart and it does not override it. A return chart is a lens over the natal one — the same person, one year at a time. Cast the birth chart first if you haven't; it is free too.
One honest note on precision: the moment of return is found from one ephemeris and the chart is drawn by another, and the chart is cast to the minute rather than the second. The result is a Sun a few arcseconds from its natal degree — the exact figure is printed with every chart cast here, rather than rounded away.
Questions
What is a solar return chart?
The chart for the exact moment the Sun comes back to the degree, minute and second it held when you were born. It happens once a year, near your birthday, and is traditionally read as the shape of the year that follows.
Why isn't my solar return exactly on my birthday?
Because the tropical year is not a whole number of days. The Sun returns to its natal degree about six hours later each year until a leap day pulls it back, so the moment drifts across the day before and the day after your birthday, and lands at a different clock time every year.
Do I need my birth time for a solar return?
Yes. Without a birth time the Sun's natal degree is only known to within about half a degree, which moves the return moment by up to twelve hours — enough to change the rising sign and every house in the chart. This calculator asks for a time rather than guessing.
Does it matter where I am for my solar return?
For the planets, no — they are in the same signs and degrees wherever you stand. For the houses and the rising sign, yes: those are drawn from the horizon at one spot on the ground, so a return cast in Tokyo and one cast in Lisbon have the same planets in a different frame.