Twenty questions people ask most often, answered from what the app actually does, including where the answer has limits, dharma by dharma.
No. ZindSa serves six dharmas, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jain and Buddhist. You choose yours when you first open the app, and the home screen, the calendar, the scripture library and the daily verse all change to that tradition. It is not one tradition with five add-ons: each dharma has its own event calendar, its own texts in their own script, and its own daily practice screens. You can change your dharma later in Settings.
On your phone. Your birth date, time and place stay on the device, and the chart is computed there, there is no kundli API to call, and the whole calculation engine is plain Dart running locally. Family details, floor plans and daan records stay on-device too. What does go to a server is deliberately small: your name, email and phone for login, and a billing record if you buy Pro. Two features contact the outside world by design, and each says so on its own screen, the AI Salahkar sends your question and your dharma, never your name or birth details, to the AI provider that composes the answer, and the live-darshan card connects to YouTube only after you tap play. So the honest claim is not that nothing ever leaves your phone; it is that your birth data does not.
University of Islamic Sciences, Karachi, Fajr and Isha at 18°, calculated on your own device. You can choose the Asr school in Settings: Hanafi (shadow factor 2, the default) or standard/Shafi (factor 1). Maghrib is set 3 minutes after sunset and Dhuhr 2 minutes after solar noon as a safety margin; those two offsets are common practice rather than a figure from a published source, and the app says exactly that on the prayer card. The 18° twilight angles are not adjustable, because no other convention's angles could be sourced well enough to ship without guessing them. Times may differ by a few minutes from your local mosque. The qibla arrow is a great-circle bearing to the Kaaba, corrected from magnetic to true north using the device's geomagnetic field model.
On your phone, from astronomical series, not looked up from a stored almanac. The Sun uses a truncated VSOP87 series and the Moon a truncated Meeus/ELP series, with a ΔT correction applied; tithi, nakshatra and yoga follow from those positions, reckoned sidereally (nirayana) with the Lahiri ayanamsa. When a reading falls within a few minutes of a boundary the app shows sandhi instead of pretending the boundary is exact. Where traditions genuinely differ, Tamil and Malayalam panchangs use a different day-rule, the app names the divergence rather than quietly picking one. Muhurats whose tables could not be verified are left out altogether rather than guessed.
Devotional practice is free, and that is enforced by a check that runs on every build rather than left as a promise: scripture reading, jaap mala, Ram Shalaka, prayer times, qibla, the dharmik calendar, sankalp, daan, verse of the day and Life Guidance sit on a protected list, and a Pro gate cannot be added to any of them at all. The rule carries no exemption today: the published exemption list is empty. One exemption did stand until 6 August 2026, the Quran-audio beta, where the recorded recitation was Pro-only. It was removed, because recited tilawat is the practice and not an extra sold beside it. Kundli, Numerology, Vastu, Muhurat and Predictions are free too, with nothing locked. The Quran-audio beta (currently 3 short passages, Muslim dharma) is free for everyone too. The AI Salahkar gives every user 3 questions a day. Pro adds unlimited Salahkar questions and reports, your own first structural report is free once per dharma with every source shown, while a repeat, a family member's report or the deeper tier is paid; the first tier is included with Pro and the deeper tier is discounted. Current prices are on the home page.
For Founding Lifetime, in the words of the checkout page itself: “If ZindSa is not right for you, request a full refund within 15 days of purchase, no questions asked, email support@zindsa.com … after 15 days, purchases are final, consistent with a one-time lifetime access product.” The same page adds: “Once your refund is approved, the money is sent back through your original bank/payment method, this can occasionally take up to 30 days to actually reflect in your account, separate from the 15-day approval window above.” Pro subscriptions bought through Google Play are refunded through Google Play's own process. Guru Connect is different and the Terms say so: the session fee is paid directly between you and the guru and never passes through ZindSa, so a dispute over it has to be settled with the guru.
Ten, each a full interface language in its own script: English, हिन्दी, ਪੰਜਾਬੀ, বাংলা, मराठी, ગુજરાતી, தமிழ், తెలుగు, اردو and العربية. Urdu and Arabic are laid out right-to-left. Scripture is always shown in its own script, Gurbani in Gurmukhi, the Quran in Arabic, whichever interface language you have chosen.
Yes, a Verse of the Day in each of the six dharmas. It is drawn deterministically from that dharma's own sourced corpus, so everyone on the same date sees the same verse, and it arrives with its meaning and its citation. The reading streak is deliberately gentle: missing a day costs you nothing. For Sikh users, Life Guidance draws one shabad per calendar day in the manner of a Hukamnama, from the app's own Gurbani corpus, framed as today's Vak for reflection, with its already-vetted translation and no prediction attached. It is a personal daily draw from the app's own Guru Granth Sahib corpus, not a live Hukamnama feed from a gurdwara, ZindSa does not carry such a feed, and never labels a personal draw as one.
Most of the app is the same in all six. The scripture library in the tradition's own script, Verse of the Day, the dharmik calendar, Life Guidance, the AI Salahkar, sankalp, daan, jaap mala, reports and all ten interface languages are there whichever dharma you choose, and the devotional ones among them sit on a protected list that a Pro gate cannot be added to at all.
What differs is the calculated surface, and it is not evenly distributed. The dharmik calendar carries 33 computed Hindu events, 12 Muslim, 10 Christian, 7 Jain, 5 Sikh and 3 Buddhist. Beyond that: Hindu users get kundli, panchang, muhurat, choghadiya, numerology, vastu, Ram Shalaka and the Vimshottari dasha; Muslim users get prayer times, the qibla and the Quran reader with its recitation, which is free; Sikh users get a daily Vak drawn from the app's own Gurbani corpus and a daily reminder; Christian users get Easter computed in both the Western and the Orthodox reckoning, feasts scoped to their denomination, and a Sunday reminder; Jain users get a Digambar or Shvetambar calendar, Pratikraman and Navkarsi timings, and a parva reminder; Buddhist users get three Ambedkarite observances, an Uposatha reminder and sunrise and sunset practice entries.
That asymmetry is real and we would rather publish it than let you guess at it. Kundli, panchang, muhurat, vastu and numerology are Hindu-jyotish systems with no counterpart in the other five traditions, the app says on its own screens that it carries no muhurat system and no vastu equivalent from any other tradition, rather than relabelling them. Where a tradition has less here, the reason is usually that the material could not be sourced to the standard the rest of the app is held to, and the question below on what ZindSa does not do names those gaps one dharma at a time.
It computes it, on your phone, from the year alone. Western Easter uses the Anonymous Gregorian computus, usually published as Meeus–Butcher; Orthodox Easter uses the Julian-calendar variant from Meeus's Astronomical Algorithms, converted afterwards into a proleptic Gregorian date with a thirteen-day offset. Which you see follows the denomination you choose after your dharma, Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, changeable later in Settings. There is no stored table of Easter dates anywhere in the app.
Good Friday is derived, not stored: it is Easter minus two days, taken from whichever Easter your denomination uses, so it cannot drift out of step with it. Advent is the fourth Sunday before Christmas by the Roman liturgical rule, also computed. The one Julian fixed feast, the Nativity kept on the Julian calendar's own Christmas Day, is converted with the same thirteen-day offset, and that conversion throws rather than extrapolate if it is handed a year outside 1900–2099, because that is the range it was calibrated for.
Denomination also decides which feasts appear at all, and the app states it plainly: the Assumption and All Souls' Day are shown only to Roman Catholic profiles, the four-Sunday Advent only to Western ones, the Julian Nativity only to Orthodox ones. All Saints is deliberately left unscoped, because it is kept in all three streams and narrowing it would be a decision with no source behind it.
The limits, so you are not surprised by them. Ten Christian events ship. Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Ascension, Pentecost and Lent are not among them, their offsets from Easter are written in the code and no event uses them yet. The Orthodox Nativity Fast is absent because its date does not fall out of any calculation in this project and hand-typing a liturgical date is the one thing the repo's discipline forbids. And ZindSa does not adjudicate between the Julian and Revised Julian jurisdictions; it computes the Julian reckoning and labels it as that.
You choose, immediately after choosing your dharma, and you can change it in Settings. What the answer changes today is your calendar and nothing else, that is the app's own wording, on the screen where it asks. A Digambar profile gets Das Lakshan; a Shvetambar profile gets Paryushan and Samvatsari; the texts, translations and guidance are the same for both.
Both are computed from tithis rather than looked up. Paryushan opens on Bhadrapada Krishna Dwadashi, Samvatsari falls on Bhadrapada Shukla Chaturthi, and Das Lakshan runs from Shukla Panchami to Chaturdashi. They are two separate rules under one engine, the code records that they were cross-verified against each other, and that the Shvetambar eight-day reckoning and the Digambar ten-day one are two traditions' own parvas rather than one convention silently chosen. Where a parva has a counterpart in the other tradition, the app shows that date beside yours instead of pretending there is only one.
Mahavir Janma Kalyanak carries no sect scoping, deliberately: both traditions observe the birth kalyanak on the same tithi, so scoping it to one would be a silent editorial choice. Mahavir Nirvan Kalyanak and Kartik Ashtahnika are unscoped for the same reason. Seven Jain parvas ship in all; any one profile sees five.
Three limits the app discloses itself. The opening day of Kartik Ashtahnika is a point where sources genuinely differ, and ZindSa follows the shastriya rule and says so on the event rather than matching an older anchor. Mahavir Janma Kalyanak's computed date has not been cross-checked against any outside Jain panchang. And the Tattvartha Sutra passages the app quotes use the Shvetambara sutra numbering, which diverges from the Digambara numbering in the relevant chapter, recorded in the code as an editorial call not yet made, not as one already settled. Separately, no Jain nimitta or Jyotish calculation ships at all, because no verbatim source could be verified to the standard the rest of the app holds.
Three: Dhammachakra Pravartan Din, the opening of Pavarana and Kathina Kaal, and Kartik Purnima Vandana. All three are computed from a lunar month and a tithi, none is a stored date, and all three are specifically Ambedkarite observances, Dhammachakra Pravartan Din marks the dhamma-deeksha taken at Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur in 1956, and the app says so in its own explanation of the day. This is the thinnest calendar of the six; the Hindu one carries 33.
There is also an Uposatha reminder, which is a notification rather than a calendar entry. It fires on the lunar days the app can already compute, tithis 8, 15, 23 and 30, and it does not tell you which Uposatha, because the app does not know which tradition's reckoning you keep. Sunrise and sunset practice entries sit alongside it.
Vesak, Asalha Puja and Magha Puja are absent, and the reason is written into the code rather than left to be discovered. Those are exactly the observances that fall on different days in different traditions. The tradition tag you pick at onboarding, Theravada, Mahayana or Vajrayana, is at present a descriptive label that no calculation reads, and the comment beside it says that wiring it into a calculation before a tradition-varying event exists would be forcing a false calculation. So the tag waits, and the observances that need it are not shipped.
The corpus is three texts in Pali: the Tisarana, the five Panca Sila precepts, and Dhammapada verses 1, 5 and 183, against a Dhammapada of 423 verses across 26 vaggas. Only verses that could be reproduced with full confidence in exact Pali were added. Buddhist Life Guidance never returns a computed answer, and two of its seven domains, health and travel, surface no verse and no citation at all, because those three texts contain nothing about the body or about journeys. The onboarding screen puts the whole position in one line: ZindSa carries one Buddhist corpus, in Pali, and shows it to every school; it holds no Mahayana or Vajrayana material yet.
A daily Vak, drawn deterministically by calendar day from the app's own Gurbani corpus, with its already-vetted translation and no prediction attached, so everyone opening the app on the same date sees the same passage and it cannot be rerolled. It is a personal daily draw from the app's own Guru Granth Sahib corpus, not a live feed from a gurdwara; ZindSa carries no such feed and never labels a personal draw as one. A daily reminder can be switched on.
The corpus is ten passages in Gurmukhi from four Angs: the Mool Mantar and the Slok and first two pauris of Japji Sahib from Ang 1; the closing Slok of Japji Sahib and the opening line of So Dar from Ang 8; the Sukhmani Sahib Mangalacharan from Ang 262; and the first pauri of Anand Sahib from Ang 917. Further Japji pauris and the body text of Rehras and Chaupai Sahib were deliberately not added in that pass, and the omission is recorded as an omission rather than as a plan.
Five gurpurabs ship, and this is the part to be precise about: their dates are computed from the Bikrami lunar tithi, not from a Nanakshahi calculation. There is no Nanakshahi engine in ZindSa and no sangrand computation anywhere in the code. Two of the five additionally carry a fixed Nanakshahi date under the SGPC 2003 calendar, shown beside the Bikrami one as a labelled alternative, because the two reckonings genuinely disagree and picking one silently would be the wrong call. Those two Nanakshahi dates are constants in the source rather than derived, the only hand-held dates in the Sikh calendar, and disclosed as an alternative reckoning rather than presented as the answer.
The Sikh mechanism never returns a computed reading, for any question asked, and the reason it gives is Gurbani's own caution against seeking predictions and calculated auspicious timings. It offers a shabad for reflection instead. One gap worth naming: the Punjabi nakshatra names in the interface are still English placeholders, because no Punjabi jantri could be sourced to translate them from.
First, the one that applies to all six: ZindSa checks its own content against published editions - the source, locator and date for each check are on record in the app itself. No external scholar and no religious body has endorsed it, and this page does not claim otherwise. What is checked here is mechanism, not authority, and where a claim would need such a review, the claim is left out rather than hedged.
Then, dharma by dharma, the largest gaps as they stand today. Hindu: eight table-dependent muhurats are omitted because their tables are unverified, and the naam-akshar table is shown as a suggestion rather than a rule because its source verse was never found. Muslim: only the Karachi 18°/18° convention ships, because no other institution's angles exist in this project and writing them down from recollection is not allowed; and the Maghrib and Dhuhr offsets are common practice rather than a cited published figure. Sikh: there is no Nanakshahi engine, and the Punjabi nakshatra names are still English placeholders. Christian: the seven passages are quoted in translation, not in the original Hebrew or Greek, and Urdu has no wording of its own yet, so an Urdu reader sees the King James English; the Life Guidance module keeps no Bible wording of its own and gives the reference instead. Jain: no nimitta or Jyotish calculation ships, and Jain reflection covers four of seven life domains. Buddhist: three texts, three observances, and no Mahayana or Vajrayana material.
Two more that are the same for everyone. Muhurat and vastu are Hindu-jyotish systems shown to whoever opens them, and the app states on its own screens that it carries no equivalent from any other tradition, it does not relabel them as yours. And the plain-language meanings printed beside the verses, in every dharma, have authorship the licence register has not established; that is one open row standing for all six, and it is open rather than quietly closed.
Panchang is pancha plus anga, five limbs. A daily panchang is not one reading; it is five separate measurements of the same moment, and each answers a different question. They are tithi, vaar, nakshatra, yoga and karana. ZindSa computes all five for the day you are looking at, and names each one on the same card.
A tithi is the angle between the Moon and the Sun, cut into steps of 12°. The Moon has to gain 12° on the Sun for one tithi to pass, so a lunar month gives 30 of them, Shukla 1 to 15 as the Moon fills, Krishna 1 to 15 as it empties. Because the Moon does not move at a constant rate, a tithi is not a fixed number of hours: it can run short of a day or well over it.
Take the length of the day, sunrise to sunset, and divide it by eight. Rahu kaal is one of those eight parts, and which one depends only on the weekday. Gulika kaal and yamaganda kaal are derived exactly the same way from two other weekday tables. That is all there is to it arithmetically.
Muhurat, choghadiya and rahu kaal: what the difference actually is
ZindSa divides sunrise-to-sunset into eight equal parts, and sunset-to-next-sunrise into eight more. Each slot carries one of seven names in a fixed repeating cycle, Udveg, Chal, Labh, Amrit, Kaal, Shubh, Rog. The cycle order never changes. The only thing the weekday changes is which name the first slot of the day starts on, and separately which one the first slot of the night starts on.
Muhurat, choghadiya and rahu kaal: what the difference actually is
Brahma Muhurat is taken as 96 to 48 minutes before sunrise, and the app notes that some panchangs instead take the fourteenth of the night's fifteen muhurats, which shifts it. Abhijit is the eighth of the day's fifteen muhurats, so it is centred on solar noon and stretches or shrinks with the day, and the app records that the tradition of skipping it on a Wednesday is a rule whose source verse it has not verified. Godhuli is taken as twelve minutes either side of sunset, with the divergence noted. Nishita is the eighth of the night's fifteen. Amrit Siddhi Yoga is not a clock division at all: it occurs when the weekday's own paired nakshatra is running, so its window is the nakshatra's window.
Muhurat, choghadiya and rahu kaal: what the difference actually is
It fires on the lunar days the app can already compute, tithis eight, fifteen, twenty-three and thirty, found by walking forward through the next month and testing each day's tithi. It is on by default for users whose own dharma is Buddhist and can be switched off in Settings. The copy is two lines: Uposatha today, a day for precepts and practice. It does not tell you which Uposatha, because the app does not know which tradition's reckoning you keep.
What ZindSa shows for Buddhist observance, and what it leaves out
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