Start here: choghadiya is a division, not a calculation
Choghadiya takes the interval from sunrise to sunset, cuts it into eight equal parts, and labels each from a fixed cycle of seven names beginning at the weekday's ruling planet. Night is the same procedure from sunset, entered at a different point. That is the whole system.
There is nothing in it for a tool to get cleverly right. Given the same sunrise, any correct implementation produces the same eight names at the same eight times. DrikPanchang produces them correctly. So do we. So does a competent person with a watch and a division.
Which makes the usual comparison framing — whose choghadiya is more accurate — close to meaningless. Where two tables genuinely disagree, it is almost always because they disagree about sunrise, and that is a real and interesting disagreement we come back to below.
Where DrikPanchang is the better tool, plainly
It is a reference almanac, and it is a good one. If your need is “show me today's table for my city, in my language, next to the tithi and the vrat dates”, it does that job better than we do and it does it free, with no account.
- City coverage. Its location list is far larger than the eleven Indian cities we have computed and written up. If your town is small, it will very likely be there and we will not have it.
- Regional and language breadth. Panchang is not one tradition, and an almanac that serves several regional conventions and several languages is doing something we currently do not.
- The rest of the almanac. Choghadiya is one line of a panchang. Festival dates, vrat lists, muhurat calendars and printable monthly panchangam are the reason people have the site bookmarked, and they are outside our scope.
- Longevity and familiarity. It has been the default free panchang reference for years. That is not nothing — a table people already know how to read is worth more than a marginally prettier one.
If any of those is what you came for, use it. This page is not going to pretend otherwise.
What we publish that almanacs generally do not
An almanac's job is to state the answer. Ours, on the choghadiya pages at least, is to state where the answer comes from and how much weight it carries. Three concrete differences:
1. The ranking weights, not a three-colour key
Nearly every choghadiya table sorts the seven names into good, neutral and avoid. That rounding hides the case that matters. Our muhurat engine scores Amrit 0.95, Shubh 0.88, Labh 0.85, Chal 0.72, Udveg 0.38, Rog 0.35, Kaal 0.32, and those are the numbers it actually uses when it orders candidate windows. Chal is favourable and clearly the weakest of the four favourable names — which is exactly what the tradition means when it calls Chal the traveller's slot rather than an all-purpose good one. We publish the weights because a number is more honest than a colour.
2. The year, not just today
An almanac answers “what is running now”. Our city pages answer “how much does this move”, which is the question that stops people mis-remembering a timing. A daylight choghadiya in Delhi runs 1h 17m in late December and 1h 45m in late June — 28 minutes of variation in the same named slot. In Bangalore the same figure is 12 minutes. Neither number is on a daily table, and both change how you should use one.
3. What the system cannot do
Every choghadiya page we publish carries an explicit honest-limits block: it has no personal component, it does not know your task, it sits below Rahu Kaal and below a properly elected muhurat, and a “bad” slot is a preference and never a prohibition. That block is there because the most common harm from this system is not a wrong time — it is someone treating a label as permission or as a warning.
The disagreement that is actually real: sunrise
When two choghadiya tables differ for the same city and date, the choghadiya is not the culprit. The culprit is sunrise, and there are three legitimate ways to define it: the geometric one (the sun's upper limb at the standard 90°50′ zenith, which is what we compute), the visible one over a real horizon of hills or buildings, and whatever regional convention a particular almanac follows.
The consequence is structural rather than cosmetic. Every one of the eight boundaries is measured from sunrise, so a one-minute disagreement at the start is a one-minute disagreement at every boundary — and if the two tools also disagree about sunset, the slot length differs too and the gap widens across the day.
This is the single most useful thing to know when comparing any two panchang sources, and it is why we state our sunrise method on every page rather than only the result.
Side by side
| Dimension |  AskSoma |  DrikPanchang |
|---|---|---|
| Eight-part day and night choghadiya | Yes | Yes |
| Free without an account | Free tier; account for chat | Yes |
| Breadth of city coverage | Narrower | Substantially larger |
| Regional calendars, festivals, vrat lists | Partial | Substantially deeper |
| Language coverage | Growing | More mature |
| Printable / downloadable panchang | No | Yes |
| Publishes its own ranking weights per choghadiya | Yes | Not prominently |
| Annual range of slot length per city | Yes — computed and published | Not prominently |
| Explicit honest-limits block on the method | Yes | Not prominently |
| Conversational follow-up on a result | Yes — AI astrologer | No |
| Sunrise method stated on the page | Yes — NOAA solar position, geometric | Not prominently |
Compiled from public product surfaces in 2026, and describing what each site foregrounds rather than what it is capable of. Platforms change; verify anything that will affect a decision.
Which to use, by what you came for
- “What is the choghadiya right now in my town?” — an almanac, and DrikPanchang is the obvious one. Breadth of cities wins.
- “Why is my table different from my cousin's in another city?” — our city pages, which compute the sunrise and the longitude offset that explain it.
- “Is Chal actually good?” — ours, because we publish the weight rather than a colour.
- “Should I sign this contract in Labh or wait for Amrit?” — neither, on its own. That is a muhurat question, and choghadiya is the layer below it. Both sites will tell you the slot; only one of them will argue with you about whether the slot is the right question.
- “I want the whole panchang, printed, for the month.” — DrikPanchang, straightforwardly.
Frequently asked
Is DrikPanchang's choghadiya accurate?
For what choghadiya is, yes. The calculation is a division: sunrise to sunset, cut into eight, labelled from a fixed cycle starting at the weekday's ruling planet. Any implementation with a correct sunrise agrees with any other to within the difference in their sunrise, which is typically under a minute. Accuracy is not the axis on which choghadiya tools differ.
Why do two choghadiya tables show different times for the same city?
Almost always because they disagree about sunrise, not about choghadiya. Some sources use the geometric sunrise, some the visible one over a real horizon, and some follow a regional convention. Because all eight boundaries are measured from sunrise, a one-minute disagreement propagates through the whole grid.
Is Chal choghadiya good or neutral?
Favourable, and the weakest of the favourable four. Most tables round it into a colour and lose the distinction. Our engine weights it 0.72 against Amrit's 0.95 — genuinely positive, genuinely specialised to things that move rather than things that begin.
Which is better for choghadiya, AskSoma or DrikPanchang?
They are different products. For today's table in one of thousands of cities, in your language, next to the festivals and vrat dates, DrikPanchang is the stronger tool and it is free. For understanding why the table looks the way it does, or asking a follow-up about your own situation, that is what we are built for.
Can choghadiya tell me whether something will succeed?
No, and no tool can make it do so. It has no personal component: it does not read a chart, does not know your task, and gives everyone in a city the identical table. It expresses a conventional preference between otherwise equal moments, and the tradition itself ranks it below Rahu Kaal, the panchang and a properly elected muhurat.
Read further
- Choghadiya today — the live day and night table
- Choghadiya — the whole system in one page
- Din ka choghadiya, and why each weekday opens where it does
- Raat ka choghadiya, and the one rule that generates every night row
- Choghadiya in Mumbai, computed across the year
- The broader AskSoma vs DrikPanchang comparison
- How AskSoma computes and what we refuse to claim