Aries compatibility: what Mars meets in each of the twelve signs

Compare Aries with any sign

Aries is filled in. Pick the other Sun sign for the symbolic reading, or switch to two birth dates and we look up Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars for both of you. No birth time and no account needed.

Birth-date positions use Swiss Ephemeris calculations based on NASA JPL planetary data. Read about the data and precision. The historical date tables below use a separate PyEphem calculation.

Venus, Mercury and Mars on Aries Sun dates

Our sample has one chart for every day from 1950 to 2005, cast at noon UTC. The Sun was in Aries on 1,708 of those dates, about 30.5 a year, and on every one of them it sat in its exaltation, one of the Sun's two strong signs in traditional astrology.

Venus, the planet astrologers read for attraction, was in Aries on 31.7% of sampled Aries Sun dates. On the other 68.3% it was in Taurus (24.6%), Pisces (24.1%), Aquarius (10.2%) or Gemini (9.5%). Venus in Aries turned up more often on Taurus Sun dates (34.3%) and Pisces Sun dates (33.8%) than on Aries Sun dates. Of the 2,068 sampled dates with Venus in Aries, 595 fell in Taurus season, 568 in Pisces season and 541 in Aries season.

Mercury, read for how you talk, was in Aries on 48.1% of Aries Sun dates, Pisces on 35.0% and Taurus on 16.9%. Mars rules Aries, yet it was in Aries on only 11.4% of Aries Sun dates, against 7.1% of all sampled dates. Its most frequent sign on Aries Sun dates was Taurus, at 14.3%, then Gemini at 12.3%. The quick temper credited to every Aries belongs, in astrology's own terms, to Mars sitting in Aries, and 88.6% of Aries Sun dates had Mars somewhere else.

Every calendar day counts once here. These are shares of dates, not of people or couples, and a different span of birth years would shift them a little. The table below gives the full Venus and Mercury spreads and the six most common Mars signs. The calculator above checks two real birthdays.

Aries with each sign, read by what Mars meets

Ptolemy laid out the planets' signs around the Sun's and the Moon's. Saturn got the two signs opposite them, Jupiter the two in trine, Mars the two in square, Venus the two in sextile and Mercury the two next door (Tetrabiblos I.17). For Aries compatibility, that means reading Mars, the Aries planet of drive, against the planet that rules the partner's sign.

Mars meets Mars with another Aries, where both people tend to wait for the other to ask for help. It meets Mars again in an Aries and Scorpio pair, since Scorpio is Mars's other sign in traditional astrology (modern astrologers add Pluto). There the question is who says 'so, what are we?' first. Mars meets Venus in Taurus and Libra. Aries with Taurus is about pace and the Venus swap, where each Sun has the other's Venus sign, and the opposite-sign match with Libra is about who keeps count of favors, money and turns.

Mercury rules Gemini and Virgo, so those pairings run on talk and on checking. With a Gemini partner, the test is whether a tease lands as a joke or a jab. The Virgo pairing asks what to do when a warning light comes on: push through, or stop and look. The Moon rules Cancer, and the Cancer square asks how much of a safety net a risk needs. The Sun rules Leo, and Leo with Aries comes down to loyalty in public. Whose side are you on?

Jupiter rules Sagittarius and Pisces. Sagittarius alongside Aries needs someone to say no when both want to say yes. With Pisces, the sign just before Aries (modern ruler Neptune), the question is what each of you has to finish before starting over. Saturn, the planet of limits, rules Capricorn and Aquarius. With a Capricorn partner, the question is who makes the rules and who breaks them, and the Aquarius sextile (modern ruler Uranus) is about arguing over ideas without it getting personal.

Aries compatibility chart: all twelve signs, best to hardest

Search for an Aries compatibility chart and you'll mostly find percentages that don't agree. On October 5, 2026, zodiacsign.com scored Aries and Capricorn at 38%, jobcannon at 44% and Google's AI Overview at 65–80%. For Aries and Leo the same three gave 83%, 100% and 85–90%.

So this chart gives reasons instead of scores: how far apart the signs sit, which planet rules the partner's sign, and the verdict most published lists reach. It runs roughly from the signs usually called best to the two usually called hardest.

• Leo sits four signs away, a fire trine, and its ruler is the Sun, the planet exalted in Aries. It's first or second on most lists.
• Sagittarius is the other fire trine, ruled by Jupiter. It tops more published rankings than any other sign.
• Gemini, two signs on and ruled by Mercury, is the quick, talkative air sextile.
• Aquarius, the other air sextile, belongs to Saturn in traditional astrology and Uranus in modern astrology. Lists call it exciting and independent.
• Libra is the opposite sign, ruled by Venus. Modern lists say opposites attract, while Ptolemy classed the opposition as disharmonious.
• Another Aries shares the sign and the ruler. Lists split between a perfect match and two people competing; PureWow ranked it last of twelve in January 2024.
• Taurus, the next sign on, belongs to Venus. Lists usually rate it middling: warm, but slower than Aries likes.
• Pisces, the sign before Aries, belongs to Jupiter, or Neptune in modern astrology. Lists call it the doer and the dreamer, and most rate it low.
• Scorpio is five signs away and shares Mars as its traditional ruler. Most lists say intense, and they agree on little after that.
• Virgo, also five signs away, is Mercury's sign and the most disputed match. PureWow put it second; most others put it near the bottom.
• Cancer squares Aries and belongs to the Moon. It's one of the two signs most often called Aries' worst match.
• Capricorn, the other square, belongs to Saturn. It's the other usual worst match, and the one where published scores disagree most.

Best match for Aries: Leo and Sagittarius, the Sun's sign and Jupiter's

Leo and Sagittarius are the other fire signs, four signs from Aries in each direction, and Ptolemy already called the trine harmonious (I.13). Ptolemy gives a second, older reason. He didn't give the fire signs to Mars. He gave them to the Sun by day and Jupiter by night, 'since Mars is not of the solar sect' (I.18). The Sun rules Leo and Jupiter rules Sagittarius. So Aries' two favorite matches belong to the planets that govern its own element. Astrology expects the same match of pace in bed, where all three fire signs like a direct approach.

Gemini and Aquarius come next on most lists, as sextiles in air, the element astrology pairs with fire. On Aries Sun dates Mercury can only be in Pisces, Aries or Taurus, so it rarely shares an element with an air sign's Mercury. Among the twelve Aries pairings in our model, Mercury signs share an element least often for Aries and Aquarius (10.5% of modeled pairs of dates), then Gemini (13.1%) and Libra (13.5%). Aries and Sagittarius share one most often, at 38.7%.

Venus and Mars signs each share an element in about one modeled pair in four across all twelve Aries pairings, so on that measure they don't separate one match from another. If the banter with a Gemini or an Aquarius keeps misfiring, compare the two Mercury signs before you blame the Sun signs.

Worst match for Aries: Cancer, Capricorn and where the friction starts

Cancer and Capricorn are named most often. On October 5, 2026, Google's AI Overview called them 'the absolute worst' matches for Aries. Both square Aries from three signs away, and all three signs open a season: Aries at the March equinox, Cancer at the June solstice and Capricorn at the December one. Two starters tend to commit to a plan before checking with each other.

The rulers make it sharper. In Ptolemy's chapter on exaltations, Mars, the Aries ruler, is in its depression (the modern 'fall') in Cancer and exalted in Capricorn. Saturn, Capricorn's ruler, is depressed in Aries. So with Cancer, the Aries planet is at its weakest in the partner's sign. With Capricorn it cuts both ways: Mars is at its best in Capricorn, and Capricorn's own planet is at its weakest in Aries. Astrologers read the first as tempers that don't match and the second as respect with a power struggle attached.

Scorpio and Virgo, five signs away, turn up on plenty of worst lists too. Modern astrologers call that distance a quincunx, and it isn't one of Ptolemy's four aspects. Scorpio is the strange one. It shares Mars with Aries, yet Ptolemy put the two signs among those with no familiarity at all (I.16). A shared ruler isn't a link in his scheme.

None of this rules anyone out. The tradition is really talking about Mars in Cancer or Capricorn, and a Sun sign can't tell you where either person's Mars sits. The Mars sign calculator checks it from a birth date. With Cancer, agree on what a risk needs before you take it. With Capricorn, agree on whose rules apply where.

Born on March 20 or April 20? Checking the Aries cusp

Most date lists, ours included, start Aries on March 21. That label fits older birthdays better than recent ones. The Sun enters Aries at the March equinox, and in US Eastern time that moment has fallen on or before March 20 every year since 1980. It fell on March 19 in 2020 and 2024, and it will again in 2028. For births from 1990 to 2026, every March 20 was at least partly Aries, and Aries held most of the day in 20 of those 37 years. So a person born on March 20 can be Pisces or Aries, depending on the year and the hour.

The other end moves too. In US Eastern time the Sun moved into Taurus on April 19 in 22 of those 37 years and on April 20 in the other 15, so an April 19 evening birth can be Taurus and an early April 20 birth can still be Aries. A search for a Pisces-Aries or Aries-Taurus cusp is really asking which sign the Sun was in, and at any given moment it's one or the other. Enter the birth date, time and place in the What's My Zodiac? tool and it settles a cusp birthday from real planetary positions. Without a time, it works from local noon.

Who should Aries marry? Soulmate lists, Saturn and the long run

The usual astrological answer is Leo or Sagittarius, for marriage and for soulmates alike, with Libra close behind for the opposite-sign pull. Google's AI Overview named Leo and Sagittarius as Aries soulmates on October 5, 2026, citing a gemstone retailer's blog, and mindbodygreen (April 2025) suggested marrying Libra, Scorpio or Sagittarius.

Sun-sign marriage advice has actually been checked. A 2020 study of Swedish population registers by Helgertz and Scott covered 66,063 marital unions and found no consistent pattern for the Sun-sign pairings it tested, either in who married or in who divorced. It didn't look at whole birth charts.

For the long run, astrologers watch Saturn, the planet they read for commitment and stress tests. Its stay in Aries, the sign of its depression, runs from February 13, 2026 to April 12, 2028. In 2026 Saturn's exact passes reach the Sun degrees of birthdays from about March 20 to April 4, 48.9% of sampled Aries Sun dates. The 2027 passes cover about March 29 to April 18 (65.1%), and the 2028 passes about April 11 to 20 (30.0%). Every Aries Sun gets at least one before Saturn leaves, and Saturn in Aries covers what astrologers expect from it.

On February 20, 2026, Saturn met Neptune at 0°45′ Aries, their first conjunction since 1989. Neptune, the planet astrologers tie to idealizing a partner, had settled into Aries on January 26, 2026 for a stay that runs into 2039.

Between two charts, astrologers also check where one person's Mars lands: on the other's Venus, Moon or Mars. A synastry chart answers that in both directions, and with birth times it shows which house of one chart the other person's planets fall in.

Aries as a friend: who keeps up, and who says no

In astrology's telling, Aries is the friend who starts things. They sign the group up for a 10K, book the court for Sunday and text 'leaving in five' before anyone has agreed. The friendships that last are with people who either want in or can say no without a fuss.

The sextiles often do better as friends than as couples. Gemini makes the quick, teasing friend and Aquarius the one who'll argue an idea for hours, and neither friendship needs the daily closeness a relationship asks for. Sagittarius says yes to everything, which is fun until nobody remembers the plan. Scorpio is read as the loyal friend who doesn't forget a slight.

If you're the Aries, ask once and take the first no at face value. If your friend is the Aries, say no plainly, because a vague maybe gets heard as a yes. The same goes for an Aries boss or coworker. For the closest friendships, two Moon signs say more about comfort than two Suns do.

Aries with every sign

Twelve pairings in zodiac order. Each guide explores a different practical question, with an illustrative example and the relevant planetary date counts. Dates below are approximate; sign boundaries vary by year and time zone.

• fire · cardinal · March 21 – April 19

  Aries and Aries

  Two Aries can both run on empty and call it fine, so the real test is who asks for help first. Their Venus signs match in 23.9% of modeled pairs of dates, the most of any Aries pairing.

  Aries and Aries compatibility, in full →

• earth · fixed · April 20 – May 20

  Aries and Taurus

  Can a quick decision wait for a considered one? Mars meets Venus in the next sign along, and the pace question runs through money and affection. Plenty of Taurus Suns have Venus in Aries, so the two Venus signs can swap.

  Aries and Taurus compatibility, in full →

• air · mutable · May 21 – June 20

  Aries and Gemini

  Teasing draws Mars and Mercury together until a joke lands as a jab. Their Mercury signs share an element in only 13.1% of modeled pairs of dates, second lowest of the twelve, so the same line can be heard two ways.

  Aries and Gemini compatibility, in full →

• water · cardinal · June 21 – July 22

  Aries and Cancer

  What does a risk need before you take it? One partner wants to leap and the other wants a safety net first. Mars, the Aries ruler, is in its depression (the modern fall) in Cancer.

  Aries and Cancer compatibility, in full →

• fire · fixed · July 23 – August 22

  Aries and Leo

  Backing a partner in public gets harder when you think they're wrong, and both signs notice who took whose side. The Sun, Leo's ruler, is exalted in Aries, a link no other fire pairing has.

  Aries and Leo compatibility, in full →

• earth · mutable · August 23 – September 22

  Aries and Virgo

  Push through or stop and check? A warning light comes on, in a car, a budget or a body, and the two signs answer it differently. In our date sample, their Venus signs never once matched.

  Aries and Virgo compatibility, in full →

• air · cardinal · September 23 – October 22

  Aries and Libra

  Favors, money and turns get counted differently across the opposition, where Mars and Venus each rule the sign opposite the other's. One partner keeps a quiet tally, and fair doesn't always have to mean even.

  Aries and Libra compatibility, in full →

• water · fixed · October 23 – November 21

  Aries and Scorpio

  So, what are we? Chemistry comes fast when both signs belong to Mars, and the harder part is turning it into a commitment. Who says it first matters, and Ptolemy counted the two signs unconnected even though Mars rules both.

  Aries and Scorpio compatibility, in full →

• fire · mutable · November 22 – December 21

  Aries and Sagittarius

  The fire trine runs on enthusiasm and needs someone to say no when both want to say yes. Their Mercury signs share an element in 38.7% of modeled pairs of dates, more often than in any other Aries pairing.

  Aries and Sagittarius compatibility, in full →

• earth · cardinal · December 22 – January 19

  Aries and Capricorn

  Who makes the rules, and who gets to break them? Mars is exalted in Capricorn and Saturn is depressed in Aries, so each sign holds the other's ruler at an extreme. Two starters meet in this square.

  Aries and Capricorn compatibility, in full →

• air · fixed · January 20 – February 18

  Aries and Aquarius

  Can you argue about ideas without it getting personal? This sextile loves a debate, yet its Mercury signs share an element in just 10.5% of modeled pairs of dates, the lowest of the twelve Aries pairings.

  Aries and Aquarius compatibility, in full →

• water · mutable · February 19 – March 20

  Aries and Pisces

  Pisces ends the zodiac and Aries begins it, so one partner may still be finishing something when the other wants to start. A March 20 birthday can belong to either sign, depending on the year and hour.

  Aries and Pisces compatibility, in full →

Aries compatibility questions