Taurus and Capricorn compatibility has a quiet twist. Astrology calls this pair a trine, the easiest link two signs can share. Yet of the 12 trine pairs in the zodiac, this one is the rarest in the United States. About 1 random US couple in 79 is a Taurus and a Capricorn.
The reason is not in the stars. It is in the birth count. Capricorn is the smallest Sun sign in US births, and Taurus sits close to the middle. Put them together and you get the trine you meet least.
This page shows the count, what the old books say about the pair, and one more figure of our own. A Taurus and a Capricorn can share a Venus sign in just one case, and it is the sign where Venus is strongest. Read all of it as a lens, not a forecast.
The short version
| Question | What we found. |
|---|---|
| How common is the pair in the US? | About 1 random couple in 79, the 60th most common of 66 mixed pairs. |
| How does it rank among the trines? | Last of the 12 trine pairs, in two separate birth counts. |
| Which trine is the most common? | Taurus and Virgo, about 1 couple in 67. |
| How did the pair do in the 2001 census? | 32nd of 66 mixed pairs, just 0.05 percent above chance. |
| What did Ptolemy say? | Same triangle, same gender, a harmonious link. |
| Can they share a Venus sign? | Only Pisces, in about 1 couple in 114. |
First, what no one can promise
Astrology is not a science. No study has shown that a Sun sign predicts whether a couple will last. So this page gives the pair no score. It uses the old symbols as a way to talk about two styles of life.
Your Sun sign is the slice of sky the Sun stood in when you were born. Each slice is 30 degrees wide. Taurus runs from about April 20 to May 20. Capricorn runs from about December 21 to January 19. The exact hour shifts a little each year, as our guide to the zodiac signs shows.
How common is a Taurus and Capricorn couple?
The signs are not the same size in the birth count. We use one reference for all our pair pages. It holds 62.2 million US births from 2000 to 2014, counted day by day. In that count, 8.29 percent of babies are Taurus. Only 7.63 percent are Capricorn, the lowest share of the twelve.
Now pair two people at random. The couple can be a Taurus woman with a Capricorn man, or the reverse. Both count. So the chance is two times 8.29 percent times 7.63 percent. That gives 1.27 percent, or about 1 couple in 79.
Out of 66 pairs of two different signs, that puts Taurus and Capricorn in 60th place. Only six mixed pairs are rarer, and five of those six hold a Capricorn.
The rarest of the 12 trines
A trine joins two signs that sit four signs apart, or 120 degrees. Each element has three signs, so each element holds three trine pairs. Four elements make 12 trine pairs in all. Here they are, from the most common to the least common in US births.
| Trine pair | Element | US couples, 2000 to 2014. |
|---|---|---|
| Taurus and Virgo | Earth | 1 in 67.5. |
| Aries and Leo | Fire | 1 in 68.5. |
| Gemini and Libra | Air | 1 in 68.6. |
| Cancer and Scorpio | Water | 1 in 69.1. |
| Leo and Sagittarius | Fire | 1 in 70.2. |
| Cancer and Pisces | Water | 1 in 70.3. |
| Virgo and Capricorn | Earth | 1 in 73.3. |
| Gemini and Aquarius | Air | 1 in 73.6. |
| Libra and Aquarius | Air | 1 in 74.0. |
| Scorpio and Pisces | Water | 1 in 76.0. |
| Aries and Sagittarius | Fire | 1 in 77.2. |
| Taurus and Capricorn | Earth | 1 in 79.0. |
Note the odd twist. Taurus sits in both the most common trine and the rarest one. With Virgo, a common sign, Taurus tops the list. With Capricorn, the rarest sign, it falls to the bottom. So the earth element holds both ends of the table.
We checked the result with a second count. The US health statistics office published 40 million births from 1994 to 2003. In that set, Taurus and Capricorn come out at 1 couple in 78.6. It is again the rarest of the 12 trines, and again 60th of 66 mixed pairs.
How big is the gap? A Taurus and Virgo couple is about 17 percent more common than a Taurus and Capricorn one. That is a real gap in the count. It says nothing about love. It only says who you are likely to meet.
Why Capricorn pulls the number down
Two things shrink the Capricorn share. The first is the sky. Earth moves fastest in early January, when it passes closest to the Sun. So the Sun crosses Capricorn in about 29.4 days, the shortest stay of any sign. Our Capricorn sign page gives the exact figure.
The second is the calendar. Fewer babies are born on holidays, because doctors plan fewer births then. In the US count, Christmas Day has 43 percent fewer births than an average day. New Year’s Day has 32 percent fewer. Christmas Eve has 29 percent fewer. All three days fall in Capricorn.
Taurus has no such dip. The Sun stays in Taurus for about 31 days, and spring has no big holiday for births. May 1, for example, sits right at the daily average. That is why Taurus lands near the middle, while Capricorn lands last.
What a trine is, and how exact it gets
Astrologers read the distance between two signs as a kind of mood. Four signs apart is a trine. Both signs share an element, here earth. The tradition reads this as ease: the two signs speak the same basic language.
But a sign is 30 degrees wide. Two people with Suns in Taurus and Capricorn are four signs apart, yet their Suns are not always 120 degrees apart. The gap can run from about 90 to 150 degrees. Astrologers call the allowed error the orb.
Across our pair pages, the share of true aspects stays the same for every pair. About 19 percent of couples have their Suns within 3 degrees of the exact angle. About 36 percent are within 6 degrees, 46 percent within 8 degrees, and 56 percent within 10 degrees. So about half of Taurus and Capricorn couples share a trine in the strict sense.
Right in the middle of a marriage census
The largest test of love signs was run by the social scientist David Voas in 2007. He used the 2001 census of England and Wales, with birth dates for about 10.3 million married couples. He asked if some sign pairs marry more than chance allows. His paper appeared as “Ten million marriages” and was covered in the Skeptical Inquirer in March 2008.
The raw table showed too many couples of the same sign. Voas traced that excess to errors on the forms. Some people wrote their own birthday for their spouse, or left a blank the office filled in. He removed those errors and built a corrected table, his Table 7, with about 9.5 million couples.
We read Taurus and Capricorn from that table. The census held 137,444 such couples. Chance alone predicts 137,369. The gap is 75 couples, or 0.05 percent above chance. Among 66 mixed pairs, that is 32nd place, right in the middle.
Voas noted that any cell in a table this big can drift by up to 450 couples from pure chance. Taurus and Capricorn stay far inside that range. So in real marriages, Taureans and Capricorns do not seek each other out, and they do not avoid each other. They marry at the rate chance predicts.
What Ptolemy said: one triangle, one gender
Ptolemy wrote the Tetrabiblos in the second century. In Book 1, chapter 13, he lists the aspects. He calls the trine and the sextile “harmonious,” because they join signs of the same kind. Taurus and Capricorn are both feminine signs in his scheme, so their trine counts as harmonious.
In chapter 18, he groups the signs into four triangles. The second triangle runs through Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn. He gives it to the Moon and Venus: the Moon rules it by night, and Venus by day. So Venus, the ruler of Taurus, has a say over Capricorn’s element too.
Ptolemy lists two more ties between signs. “Commanding” and “obeying” signs rise in equal time. Signs that “behold” each other have days of equal length. Taurus and Capricorn share neither tie. That holds in the reading by degrees, which William Lilly used, and in the reading by whole signs, given in note 83 of the Robbins translation.
So their bond, in the old view, rests on one thing: the trine itself. It is a single tie, but a strong one.
Two signs where a planet is exalted
An exaltation is a sign where a planet is said to show its best side. Ptolemy gives each planet one, in Book 1, chapter 19. Both of these signs host one.
| Sign | Ruler | Planet exalted here | Planet in fall here. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Taurus | Venus | The Moon | None. |
| Capricorn | Saturn | Mars | Jupiter. |
A fall is the opposite of an exaltation, the sign where a planet is weakest. Ptolemy explains his choices with the seasons. The Moon is exalted in Taurus, the first sign of her own triangle. Mars is exalted in Capricorn, because the fiery planet runs farthest south there. Jupiter, the planet of growth, is exalted in Cancer, so he falls in the opposite sign, Capricorn.
Symbolically, the pair holds a calm Moon on one side and a disciplined Mars on the other. One sign is at ease with feeling. The other is at ease with effort. Our Taurus sign page covers the Moon’s exaltation in more depth.
The one Venus sign they can share
Venus is the planet of love and taste in astrology. It never strays far from the Sun, at most about 47 degrees. So your Sun sign limits your Venus sign to five choices.
A Taurus has Venus in Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini or Cancer. A Capricorn has Venus in Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius or Pisces. Only one sign sits on both lists: Pisces. And Pisces is the sign where Venus is exalted.
We measured how many in each sign have Venus there. We tracked the Sun and Venus from 1600 to 2400 and summed the time in each sign.
| Venus sign | Share of Taurus Suns | Share of Capricorn Suns. |
|---|---|---|
| Scorpio | Never | 9.17 percent. |
| Sagittarius | Never | 29.17 percent. |
| Capricorn | Never | 23.15 percent. |
| Aquarius | Never | 28.81 percent. |
| Pisces | 9.00 percent | 9.71 percent. |
| Aries | 29.23 percent | Never. |
| Taurus | 24.35 percent | Never. |
| Gemini | 29.01 percent | Never. |
| Cancer | 8.41 percent | Never. |
A Taurus has Venus in Pisces 9.00 percent of the time. A Capricorn has it there 9.71 percent of the time. For both to have it at once, multiply the two. That gives 0.87 percent, or about 1 couple in 114.
So in more than 99 couples out of 100, a Taurus and a Capricorn love in different Venus signs. That is not a bad sign. It only means the Sun match tells you little about their taste in love. Our page on Taurus and Capricorn Venus placements reads the same two signs through Venus instead.
One more detail: a Taurus has Venus in Taurus, its own sign, about 24 percent of the time. In the old books, Venus is at full strength in her own sign.
How the symbols read the pair
Here is how the tradition reads the two signs. Taurus is fixed earth, ruled by Venus. The symbol points to comfort, the senses, and things built to last. Capricorn is cardinal earth, ruled by Saturn. The symbol points to goals, rules, and long climbs.
Cardinal signs start things. Fixed signs keep things going. So the old reading gives Capricorn the plan and Taurus the staying power. Both are earth signs, so both want proof in the real world. Talk matters less to them than what gets done.
Modern authors read the earth element in plain terms. Stephen Arroyo ties it to the need for practical results. Liz Greene writes about Saturn as a slow teacher who rewards patience. In this reading, the two signs build trust through shared work. They judge love by what each partner shows up to do.
Where the pair snags
A trine is easy, and ease has a cost. The symbols give both partners a taste for routine. So the classic snag is not a fight. It is drift. Two busy people can run a home well and still stop talking about feelings.
The second snag is pace. Capricorn, the cardinal sign, wants the next goal. Taurus, the fixed sign, wants to enjoy what they already have. One partner can feel rushed. The other can feel held back.
| Theme | Taurus side | Capricorn side. |
|---|---|---|
| Money | Spend on quality and comfort | Save for the next step. |
| Time off | Rest at home | Plan the next project. |
| Care | Touch and small treats | Keeping promises. |
| Change | Slow to agree | Keen if it serves a goal. |
None of this is fate. Plenty of Taureans love change, and plenty of Capricorns love a lazy Sunday. The table only shows how the symbols frame the two signs.
The rest of the chart counts for more
A Sun sign is one point in a chart. A full birth chart holds the Moon, Venus, Mars and the rising sign too. Each of these shapes how a person loves and argues.
As we saw, a Taurus and a Capricorn share a Venus sign in about 1 couple in 114. Their Moons, which change sign every two or three days, can land anywhere. So two couples with the same Sun signs can have very different charts.
For more on how the rarest sign pairs up, see our page on Leo and Capricorn compatibility. For the Taurus side, our page on Taurus and Pisces compatibility looks at Venus from another angle.
How we measured
For the Sun signs, we used the 2000 to 2014 US birth file from the Social Security Administration, as published by FiveThirtyEight. It lists 62.2 million births by date. We placed each day in a sign with the true time the Sun entered it, using US Central Time. When the Sun changed sign during a day, we split that day’s births by the hours on each side. We checked the result against the 1994 to 2003 file from the National Center for Health Statistics.
For a pair of two signs, the chance is two times the first share times the second. For a pair of the same sign, it is the share times itself. We ranked all 78 pairs, then the 12 trines.
For the census, we used Table 7 in the Voas paper. It leaves out couples with a birthday on the first of a month, since too many of those dates came from blanks the office filled in. It removes the excess of same sign couples. The expected count for each cell is the row total times the column total, divided by the grand total.
For Venus, we used the astronomy-engine library. First, we found every moment the Sun or Venus changed sign from 1600 to 2400, and summed the overlaps. Then we sampled the sky every seven hours over the same span. The two routes agree to within one hundredth of a percent. For the old rules, we read Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, Book 1, chapters 13 to 19, in the Robbins translation.
Frequently asked questions
Are Taurus and Capricorn compatible?
Astrology reads them as a trine, an easy link between two earth signs. Ptolemy calls this aspect harmonious. No study has shown that this or any sign pair lasts longer, so treat it as a lens, not a forecast.
How common is a Taurus and Capricorn couple?
In US birth data from 2000 to 2014, about 1 random couple in 79 is one Taurus and one Capricorn. That makes it the rarest of the 12 trine pairs.
Why is Taurus and Capricorn the rarest trine?
Capricorn has the smallest share of US births. The Sun crosses it fastest, and fewer babies are born on Christmas and New Year’s Day. Any pair with Capricorn starts low.
Do Taurus and Capricorn marry each other more than chance?
No. In the 2001 census of England and Wales, the pair was only 0.05 percent above chance. David Voas judged gaps of this size to be noise.
Can a Taurus and a Capricorn have the same Venus sign?
Only if both have Venus in Pisces, the sign where Venus is exalted. That happens in about 1 couple in 114.
Go deeper with your personal Astrovision report
Reading about astrological concepts is a great start, but nothing compares to hearing how they apply directly to you. Our users love our audio-first approach, calling it “friendly, personal, and easy to understand.” While this article gives you the “what,” a personal report gives you the “so what.” Discover your unique path with an Astrovision report—your personal ‘user manual’ delivered in our celebrated podcast format.