The one-sentence version
Ashtakavarga is a point system. Each planet hands out “points” to the houses in your chart. Houses with many points are the areas of life where things flow. Houses with few are the areas where life resists.
The league-table analogy
Imagine every house in your chart has to field a team — a team that will play for 12 areas of life: career, marriage, wealth, family, children, and so on.
Each of the 7 main planets and the ascendant gets to award points based on how well that house “lines up” with their own natural favour. The points stack up. At the end you have a league table — 12 houses ranked by how well-supported they are across the whole chart.
A house at the top of the table (high bindu count) is going to do well in life. A house at the bottom struggles — even if it has a planet sitting in it.
The two grids
Bhinnashtakavarga — the individual grid
For each planet (Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn), you get a 12-house grid showing how that planet alone rates each house. These individual grids are Bhinnashtakavarga.
Example use: if your Saturn Bhinnashtakavargahas a high score in your 10th house, Saturn's transit through your 10th house is favourable for career. If low, the same transit can feel like a grind.
Sarvashtakavarga — the combined grid
Add up all seven planets' contributions per house, and you get the Sarvashtakavarga (or SAV) — a single 12-house grid summarising the total support each house receives.
A total SAV across all 12 houses is always 337 bindus. How that 337 is distributed across your houses is the signature of your chart.
What the numbers look like
Individual (Bhinnashtakavarga) scores per house range from 0 to 8. Combined (Sarvashtakavarga) scores per house typically range from ~18 to ~48.
- ≥ 30 SAV — strong house. That area of life has structural support.
- 25 – 30 SAV — average. Results depend on other factors.
- < 25 SAV — weak. Life pulls at this area more than it gives.
Practical uses
Timing transits
When a planet moves into a house that has high bindus for that planet, its results during that transit are favourable. The classical Gochara (transit) rules use Ashtakavarga as the fine-tuning layer.
Deciding between options
If you're choosing between two cities to live in, the Ashtakavarga of your 4th house (home) and 10th house (career) can sharpen the call. Stronger houses at the new location → easier life.
Seeing the whole picture
Some charts look “average” on sign and house placement but have exceptional bindu patterns. Others have all the flashy yogas but low bindus in the houses that matter — and the life underperforms the chart's surface promise.
What the app does
- Computes the full Bhinnashtakavarga grid for all seven planets.
- Computes your Sarvashtakavarga.
- Flags your strongest and weakest houses — the areas life pushes and the areas it resists.
- Integrates Ashtakavarga into transit reading automatically — daily readings know whether today's transits are landing on strong or weak bindu territory for you.
Classical source
Ashtakavarga is laid out in BPHS chs. 48 – 52 and in a standalone classic called Ashtakavarga Siddhanta by Narayan Bhatta. The transit-interpretation layer is in Phaladeepika ch. 26 and Uttara Kalamrita.