Lumia vs Co-Star: an alternative that reads BaZi and tarot too

Co-Star is daily Western astrology with a social graph: short, blunt horoscopes from your natal chart, and comparisons with friends who are also on the app. Lumia is one birth chart read in depth through Western astrology, BaZi and tarot, with a daily practice and a journal built around it. Which is better depends on whether you want a notification or a reading.

What Co-Star is, in its own words

Co-Star describes itself as “hyper-personalized, real-time horoscopes” that decipher “the mystery of human relations through NASA data and biting truth”. The App Store listing names the parts: a natal chart to the birth minute, daily personalized horoscopes, friend comparison and compatibility, push notifications from the day’s reading, and educational content about the chart. It is Apple’s Editors’ Choice with over two hundred thousand ratings. It is free to use; Pro-Star is $8.99 a month, and advanced charts, relationship reports and question packs are sold separately.

What Lumia does differently

It reads the whole chart, not a line a day

Co-Star’s unit is the daily horoscope: one or two sentences, sharp, often about your day. Lumia’s unit is the reading: your Birth Blueprint written out as one piece — who you are, what pays you, how you love, what wears you down — with every placement explained under the wheel. The daily layer exists too, a card and a message each morning, but it sits on top of a chart you can actually read.

It reads BaZi from the same birth entry

BaZi, the Chinese four pillars, turns the year, month, day and hour of your birth into elements and reads how they balance. Lumia casts it beside your Western chart and reads both against each other, and folds the two, with Zi Wei Dou Shu, into your LifePrint — what you are built for and the decade you are in. Co-Star is Western astrology only. BaZi vs Western astrology explains what each is good at.

It has tarot for the questions a horoscope cannot take

A horoscope tells you about the day; it cannot answer “should I take this job?” Lumia’s tarot is question-driven: one card for a clear yes-or-no, three for past, present and future, seven for the whole situation, each read against your question and your chart. Co-Star has no tarot.

It keeps a journal

What a reading said and what you wrote back sit together, so a month later you can see what the sky was doing when you felt the way you did.

What Co-Star does that Lumia does not

The social graph. Co-Star’s compatibility is with friends who are on the app, and its feed shows what their days look like next to yours. Lumia reads compatibility with anyone whose birth details you enter, but there is no feed and no friends list. If the social part is why you open Co-Star, keep Co-Star.

Side by side

Co-Star details are from its App Store listing, September 2026.