The search term people actually type is “Solar Fire alternative mobile”, and the word doing the work in it is mobile. This page assumes you can already read a chart cold, that you have opinions about house systems, and that you are not looking for an app to explain your Moon sign to you. It is about where the chart engine lives and what it computes.
Desktop-first professional astrology software is a serious category, written by serious astrologers, and it earned its position honestly. It also comes with an architectural fact rather than a flaw: a program installed on a machine runs on that machine. If your practice happens at a desk, that costs you nothing at all.
If your practice happens somewhere else, it costs you the chart. Readings taken from a café, chart prep in the car before a pickup, the ten minutes before a video consultation when a client sends a corrected birth time — those are the moments where the tool is either in your hand or it is not. That is the gap most people are trying to close when they land here.
PathFinder runs in a browser, on whatever you are holding. Mobile apps are in beta. That is the entire platform claim, stated without decoration, and it is the main reason this page exists.
Thirteen is not twenty. Mature desktop packages compute more chart forms than we do, and if your practice depends on one we have not built, the right conclusion is to stop reading here rather than to subscribe and find out. We would rather lose the sale than the trust.
What thirteen buys is the working set for timing practice: natal, transits, outer-planet transits, annual profections, solar return, lunar return, secondary lunar return, tertiary lunar return, secondary progressions, solar arc, synastry and composite, zodiacal releasing, and astrocartography. Birth-time rectification is included, which matters when a client arrives with “sometime in the evening” and a family story.
Zodiacal releasing and annual profections are in that list rather than absent from it, which is the specific thing most people are checking for when they compare a web tool against a desktop one. All house systems and aspects are available on PathFinder+.
Charts are computed from real astronomical ephemeris data, validated against JPL Horizons. You will want to verify that yourself, and you should — cast a chart you have already cast elsewhere and compare the positions to the degree. It is a ten-minute test and it settles the only question that cannot be settled by reading marketing copy.
You do not need software to interpret a chart. You have spent years learning to do exactly that, and an app that tries to do it for you is solving a problem you do not have.
What the interpretation layer is genuinely useful for is preparation. It uses retrieval-augmented generation over a curated astrological knowledge base, reads essential dignity, sect and aspect patterns from the actual placements, and synthesises several timing layers at once — flagging where techniques converge on the same theme. Used well, that is a well-read assistant handing you a first pass before a reading: a reminder of the aspect you would have caught on the second look, not a replacement for your judgement. It can be wrong, in the way a reference book you disagree with can be wrong. Treat it accordingly.
The PathFinder Method is a systematic seven-layer framework for astrological timing — secondary progressions, solar arc directions, outer-planet transits, and four return-chart cycles, all derived from the natal chart — built around convergence: the principle that a period matters more when independent techniques point at the same theme in the same window. You may already work this way informally. Having it computed and surfaced is mostly a time saving, and time is the constraint that matters when you are preparing three readings in a week. There is a longer write-up of how the seven layers fit together if you want to inspect the logic before trusting it.
The free tier holds three birth profiles. PathFinder+ removes the limit, which is the practical requirement if you are keeping client data rather than studying your own chart and two friends'.
On that data: traffic is encrypted with TLS, storage is encrypted at rest, passwords are hashed, and our primary application servers are in Falkenstein, Germany, inside the EU. We never sell data and there are no advertising or tracking SDKs in the product. AI readings run through a US-based inference provider under EU Standard Contractual Clauses with zero data retention. If you hold other people's birth data professionally, those are the sentences you needed, and the privacy policy has the rest.
The free tier is permanent and takes no card: natal chart, daily transits, annual profections, three birth profiles, two AI mini-readings a day. PathFinder+ is $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year, with a 7-day free trial on the annual plan, and includes all thirteen chart types, full interpretation, the daily digest, the transit calendar, the Method, all house systems and aspects, and unlimited profiles.
A subscription is a different shape of commitment from a one-off purchase, and it is entirely fair to dislike that shape. The honest counter-argument is that the free tier is generous enough to test the calculations properly before any of that matters.
Cast a chart you know cold — your own, or a client's you have read three times. Check the positions against whatever you currently trust, to the degree. Then cast that person's solar return for a year that has already happened, and check the profection year against events you can date. Then run the progressed chart over the same period and see whether the progressed Moon was where the life was.
If the numbers do not match what you expect, you should not use this, and you will know inside an hour. That is a better use of an afternoon than reading any more pages like this one — including the other switching guides.
The real question is not whether a browser can replace a desktop program. It is which parts of your practice you have quietly reshaped around where your software happens to run — and what you would do differently if it ran anywhere.
Free permanently, no card. Cast a natal chart and check the positions to the degree.