Best Astrology APIs for Developers: 2026 Buyer Guide

Choosing an astrology API is a structural decision, not a line item. Pick a single-tradition provider and you may stitch three vendors, three auth schemes, and three bills the day you add tarot or numerology. Pick a credit wallet and your monthly cost moves with whatever endpoints your users happen to hit. This guide is a neutral buyer walkthrough. It defines what the category is, what actually matters when you evaluate, and how three publicly available providers compare on coverage, accuracy, AI integration, and price. Every competitor number here was checked on the live public site of each provider in June 2026, with the source URL recorded. Where a fact could not be verified, it was left out rather than guessed.

What makes an astrology API production grade in 2026

A production-grade astrology API turns a date, time, and place into structured calculation output: planetary positions, houses, aspects, dashas, compatibility scores, and horoscopes. The differentiators sit on six axes. Score every candidate, including the one you already favor, against all six before you commit.

• Domain coverage: how many insight domains one key covers. Single-domain providers force a second and third integration when your roadmap grows past astrology.
• Verifiable accuracy: position math validated against a reference such as NASA JPL Horizons, ideally a public benchmark you can clone and run, not a marketing adjective.
• MCP transport: for AI agents, whether the Model Context Protocol server is remote Streamable HTTP (works on any hosted platform) or local stdio (only on a developer laptop).
• Pricing model: flat per-request versus a credit wallet where endpoints cost different amounts and the monthly bill is hard to project.
• SDKs and documentation: typed SDKs and a live OpenAPI playground beat a Postman export that drifts from the running API.
• Licensing: ask any vendor what calculation engine sits underneath. A Swiss Ephemeris dependency carries AGPL copyleft that can reach a network service, so clean commercial licensing matters.

Ready to evaluate against live data? RoxyAPI covers 12 domains under one key. See pricing.

How RoxyAPI, AstrologyAPI, and Prokerala compare

Three providers are public, self-serve, and broad enough to shortlist for production: RoxyAPI, AstrologyAPI, and Prokerala. Other vendors exist (single-tradition Vedic specialists, free-tier hobby projects, regional calculators), but they cover one tradition or gate breadth behind separate products. Every cell below was read from the live site of each provider in June 2026.

The honest read: AstrologyAPI publishes a larger astrology-only endpoint catalog, though a bigger catalog is not the same as a deeper result. It reaches that number by splitting one tradition into many separately billed line items, so on a credit wallet a single chart can draw several calls. Prokerala concentrates on South Asian calendar and Panchang features in regional languages. RoxyAPI covers 12 domains under one key and ships the full advanced Western layer alongside that breadth, and it is the only one of the three with flat per-request pricing, a public accuracy benchmark you can clone and run, and typed SDKs generated from a live spec. On geography, AstrologyAPI and Prokerala are both rooted in the Indian market, with deep Vedic, matrimonial, and regional-language coverage that suits South Asian audiences, while RoxyAPI is built global-first for Western and multi-region apps and ships eight-language output across most domains. None of the three is the universal winner. The right pick depends on what you are building.

A note on counting, because the totals above are not directly comparable across providers. AstrologyAPI lists birth chart, kundli, horoscopes, transits, progressions, KP, and Lalkitab as separate APIs, and Prokerala lists per-feature credit items; most of those are facets of a single astrology tradition. RoxyAPI groups them: its Western Astrology and Vedic Astrology domains already include birth charts, kundli, panchang, dasha, KP sub-lords, transits, synastry, and Guna Milan matching, organized as two domains rather than a dozen separate line items. So the RoxyAPI count of 12 is twelve genuinely distinct categories, two of them astrology (Western and Vedic) and ten more spanning numerology, tarot, human design, forecast, biorhythm, I-Ching, crystals, dreams, angel numbers, and location, not one astrology surface split into many entries. The practical takeaway when comparing any two providers: count the distinct capabilities your app actually needs, not the headline domain or endpoint number.

What each provider actually costs

Pricing is where the three diverge most, because two of them use credit wallets and one uses flat per-request billing. The sticker price tells you little. What matters is the cost to cover every domain your app needs at the volume it runs. RoxyAPI publishes flat tiers; AstrologyAPI and Prokerala publish credit wallets where each endpoint draws a different number of credits.

RoxyAPI flat tiers, every domain included on every plan, 1 request equals 1 unit:

Two structural notes from this table. Adding a domain does not change the bill: Starter at $39 already includes all 12 domains, so tarot, numerology, or biorhythm cost zero extra. And the effective per-request cost falls about 6.7x from Starter to Enterprise. Annual billing lowers the monthly rate further (Starter $389/yr, Professional $1,489/yr).

The two credit-wallet models work differently. AstrologyAPI runs a single unified credit wallet that covers every API (Indian, Western, Horoscope, PDF), with 100 free calls on signup and no monthly commitment: you top up and pay per call. Prokerala offers a forever-free tier plus a credit wallet, where credits reset monthly and do not carry forward, and each endpoint draws a published credit amount. On Prokerala that amount ranges widely: a basic Panchang call is 10 credits, a birth chart is 50, a Mangal Dosha check is 30, a full Kundli is 50 to 300, a daily horoscope is 250, and a regional calendar call is 2,000 (top-up: 100,000 credits for 2,500 rupees). A horoscope-heavy day and a calendar-heavy day on the same wallet cost very differently, so the monthly total is harder to project than a flat per-request plan. On authentication, RoxyAPI uses a single X-API-Key header; AstrologyAPI uses HTTP Basic auth with a userId and apiKey pair (both verified June 2026).

Why MCP transport matters more than MCP presence

By 2026 several providers ship something MCP-shaped, so the useful question is not whether a provider has MCP but what transport it uses. Remote Streamable HTTP is a hosted endpoint: any agent on any platform points at the URL, passes a key, and is calling tools in seconds. Local stdio is a wrapper the developer installs and runs as a local process, which hosted automation platforms cannot reach.

Two of the three providers here ship remote MCP. RoxyAPI exposes one MCP tool for every endpoint, so the tool count tracks the full API at more than 164 tools, served across 12 per-domain Remote MCP servers over Streamable HTTP (for example /mcp/astrology) plus a dedicated docs MCP server for setup questions, all authenticated with the same X-API-Key as the REST API, so there is no second credential to manage. AstrologyAPI runs a single Remote MCP endpoint exposing 109 tools across Vedic and Western systems, authenticated with a custom header. Prokerala lists no MCP server on its developer site as of June 2026. Among the unnamed single-tradition vendors, several ship local stdio wrappers, which work for a personal Cursor or Claude Desktop session but not for a hosted agent your end users reach. If your agents run on a server or an automation platform, remote transport is the line that decides whether the integration is even possible. See the RoxyAPI MCP guide for the full transport documentation.

How to make your first call with location first

Every coordinate-dependent endpoint (natal chart, horoscope, panchang, dasha, synastry, compatibility) needs latitude, longitude, and timezone. The correct pattern is to resolve the birth city first, then feed those values into the chart endpoint, so users never type coordinates. Here is the two-step call against the live RoxyAPI surface, with the request fields taken straight from the OpenAPI spec.

# 1. Resolve the birth city to coordinates and an IANA timezone
curl -s "https://roxyapi.com/api/v2/location/search?q=Mumbai" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY"
# -> cities[0] = { latitude, longitude, timezone: "Asia/Kolkata", ... }

# 2. Generate the natal chart with those coordinates
curl -s -X POST "https://roxyapi.com/api/v2/astrology/natal-chart" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"date":"1990-07-15","time":"08:30:00","latitude":19.0760,"longitude":72.8777,"timezone":"Asia/Kolkata"}'

The chart response returns planets, houses, aspects, ascendant, midheaven, and a summary, as structured JSON you normalize into your own schema. Browse the full request and response shapes in the interactive API reference, which ships a working test key so you can run calls before subscribing.

The licensing question almost nobody asks

Ask every vendor on your shortlist one question, and get the answer in writing: which calculation engine runs underneath, and if it is Swiss Ephemeris, do you hold a commercial license?

This is not a formality. Swiss Ephemeris, the library the previous generation of astrology software was built on, is dual licensed. You either buy a commercial license from its authors, or you take it under the AGPL, and the AGPL is the one open-source license written specifically to close the SaaS loophole. Its copyleft is triggered by network access, not by distribution. Google says so in its own public policy: AGPL-licensed code "MUST NOT be used at Google", because a product or service reachable "over a remote network interface" can be required to release "the complete corresponding source code of the product or service ... to the world under the AGPL license", and "the risks heavily outweigh the benefits" (Google Open Source, AGPL policy).

Now read that with your own product in mind. An astrology API is a network service. If a provider serves your users from an AGPL engine without holding a commercial license, the exposure does not stop at the provider. It travels downstream to the application built on top of it, which is yours.

Neither credit-wallet provider in this comparison publishes which calculation engine it runs (checked June 2026). That is not an accusation. It is the point: you cannot audit what is not disclosed, so ask the question and keep the reply.

When a provider IS open source, you can check in about sixty seconds, and this is the trap most buyers walk into. Open the project package manifest and look for a Swiss Ephemeris dependency: swisseph or pyswisseph in a Python project, SwissEphNet in a .NET one, sweph or a vendored libswe in C or Node. A permissive license on the wrapper does not launder the license of the engine underneath. A project can be MIT, and genuinely be MIT in its own code, while every chart it returns is computed by an AGPL-or-commercial library it depends on. The MIT badge on the repository tells you about the wrapper. The dependency list tells you about the engine, and the engine is the part that does the astrology.

RoxyAPI removes the question. Roxy Ephemeris is a custom engine built from the ground up for APIs, agents, and serverless, verified against NASA JPL Horizons. There is no AGPL in the calculation path, no copyleft, and no per-user royalty, and the terms are published in full at /policy/license.

Which provider should you choose

There is no single best astrology API; there is a best fit for your requirements. Use this as a decision map. Each option, including building it yourself, wins in a specific case.

Choose RoxyAPI when you serve a global or Western-first audience, you need several insight domains under one key (Western and Vedic astrology plus tarot, numerology, dreams, I-Ching, biorhythm, or human design), you want flat per-request pricing with no credit math, you are wiring AI agents into hosted platforms and want remote per-domain MCP with one key, you need a public accuracy benchmark to audit before signing, or you want to ship fast with typed SDKs, drop-in UI components (MIT web components with a shadcn registry), and free MIT templates you clone and white-label.

Choose AstrologyAPI when your product centers on the Indian or South Asian market, you need classical Vedic sub-systems we do not cover (Lal Kitab, Varshaphal, multi-level dasha), you need palmistry from a hand photo, or you are comfortable with a credit wallet and pay-per-call billing.

Choose Prokerala when your app is Vedic-first for the South Asian market, you need regional calendars and Panchang in Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, or Hindi, or you need prebuilt PDF report artifacts, which we do not ship.

Build it yourself when you need exactly one domain, you have in-house astrology and ephemeris expertise, your accuracy requirements are niche enough that a general API will not match them, and you can take on the licensing question directly (if you reach for Swiss Ephemeris, the AGPL copyleft can attach to your network service, so confirm your obligations first). For a single fixed calculation you control end to end, owning the code can be the right call. For breadth, cross-domain consistency, and verified accuracy across many traditions, that build is months of work, not a weekend.

Accuracy is a public claim or it is marketing

Astrology APIs claim accuracy constantly; few publish a benchmark you can audit. Of the three providers here, RoxyAPI is the one with a public MIT-licensed accuracy repository you can clone, run, and check before you sign up. It cross-references position output against NASA JPL Horizons DE441, the same physics reference professional astronomy tools use, and reports both median and worst-case arcsecond deviation (16 arcsec median, 32 arcsec max). The other two report no public reproducible benchmark, which does not mean their math is wrong, only that you cannot independently verify it. For anything where calculation accuracy is load-bearing (dasha timing, KP cusps, transit windows), ask for a benchmark you can run, from any vendor. The public gold-standard tests writeup documents the full verification methodology.

FAQ

What is the best astrology API for developers in 2026? For most developers building a modern app, RoxyAPI is the strongest pick: 12 insight domains under one key, flat per-request pricing, Remote MCP for AI agents, typed TypeScript, Python, PHP, C#, and Go SDKs, and a public MIT-licensed accuracy benchmark you can run before you pay. It is the only one of the three that bundles astrology with tarot, numerology, dreams, and more, and the only one publishing a reproducible accuracy benchmark. A single-domain Vedic build for the India market can also be served by a credit-wallet incumbent, but for breadth, predictable billing, and AI-native tooling, start with RoxyAPI.

Which astrology API supports both Vedic and Western astrology? RoxyAPI ships both Western and Vedic astrology as two of its twelve domains under one key, with KP sub-lords, dasha, panchang, synastry, and 36-point Guna Milan included. A single integration covers both traditions, and the same key adds tarot, numerology, dreams, and eight more domains as your roadmap grows, so you never stitch a second provider for the other system.

Is there an astrology API with tarot and numerology in one bundle? Yes. RoxyAPI bundles Western and Vedic astrology, tarot, numerology, human design, forecast, I-Ching, dream interpretation, crystals, angel numbers, biorhythm, and location under a single key with flat per-request pricing. One subscription and one API key cover all twelve domains, so you never stitch or re-bill separate vendors when you add tarot or numerology next to astrology.

Does having MCP make a provider AI-ready, or does the transport matter? The transport matters. Remote Streamable HTTP MCP works on hosted platforms and servers; local stdio MCP only works on a developer machine. RoxyAPI ships 12 remote per-domain MCP servers over Streamable HTTP, one tool per endpoint (164+ tools) plus a docs server, all authenticated with the same key as REST, so an agent points at a URL and is calling verified tools in seconds with no local install. If your agents do not run on a local laptop, you need remote transport.

How much does an astrology API cost for a startup? Flat per-request pricing is the most predictable for a startup. RoxyAPI Starter is $39 per month for 25,000 requests across all 12 domains, and because every call is one request, a feature-rich session costs the same per call as a simple lookup and the bill never moves with your endpoint mix. Size your plan against your real monthly call volume rather than a per-call credit rate that fluctuates with which endpoints your users hit.

Can an astrology API create AGPL liability for my app? It can, which is why the engine question belongs on your checklist. Swiss Ephemeris, the library the previous generation of astrology software was built on, is dual licensed: a paid commercial license from its authors, or the AGPL. AGPL copyleft is triggered by network access rather than distribution, which is why Google bans AGPL code company-wide and states that the risks heavily outweigh the benefits. If a provider runs an AGPL engine without a commercial license, that exposure can reach the product you built on top of it. Ask every vendor which engine it runs and whether it holds a commercial license, and keep the answer in writing. RoxyAPI runs Roxy Ephemeris, a custom engine with clean commercial terms and no AGPL in the calculation path (/policy/license).

Can I use an astrology API to build a dating or compatibility app? Yes. RoxyAPI ships POST /astrology/synastry for Western synastry and POST /vedic-astrology/compatibility for Vedic Guna Milan scoring.

Conclusion

The serious end of the astrology API market in 2026 comes down to a fit decision, not a ranking. AstrologyAPI and Prokerala are astrology-only, credit-wallet providers built primarily for the South Asian market. RoxyAPI covers 12 domains under one key, ships the full advanced Western layer alongside that breadth, and is the only one of the three with flat per-request pricing, a public accuracy benchmark you can clone and run, typed SDKs, and Remote MCP. Map your requirements to the axes above, then verify the current numbers on the live site of each provider before you commit. To weigh RoxyAPI yourself, explore the product catalog, check pricing, or run live calls in the API reference.