Star Wars: Inside the Astrology Industry’s Battle to Sell You an App

With their impossibly cool vibe and frighteningly spot-on predictions, astrology apps are coming for your wallet

Illustration: Terrell Davis

Tali Edut hates astrology memes — the kind you’d find on Instagram accounts like @cancermajesty and @yourmomshoroscope. They focus only on the zodiac signs, she says, which leaves out an entire galaxy’s worth of other pertinent information — information that could help you make sense of your relationship with your sister, or a period of professional upheaval, or a new paramour. “I want to burn them all,” she fumes.

Edut is one-half of the AstroTwins, a popular astrologist duo. Tali and her identical twin sister, Ophira, are Elle’s official astrologers. They also run their own website and have been profiled in the New York Times. They’re fairly mainstream, as far as these things go. Yet, when it comes to the memes, Tali is a firm nonbeliever.

She might be the only one. The popularity of astrology memes is just one symptom of astrology’s broader cultural renaissance: astrology merch, books, makeup, podcasts, meta–think pieces, and celebrities are all on the rise.

Certain people — savvy, technologically sophisticated, money-aware people — have capitalized on the frenzied interest. Enter the apps: Co-Star, the Pattern, and Sanctuary, to name a few. These products communicate old ideas in contemporary, highly accessible ways, but more important, they’ve managed to harness the zeitgeist and have risen to the top of our collective consciousness. Impossibly cool, aesthetically pleasing, and generously funded, they want to entice every millennial with a smartphone to fall headfirst into astrology.

It’s a crowded market, and competition is fierce. Whichever lucky app comes out on top could stand to rake it in à la Calm, an early meditation app reportedly valued earlier this year at $1 billion. And so, in the classic mold of Uber vs. Lyft or Instagram vs. Snapchat, each app is doing whatever it can to stand out as the definitive guide to your future.

The entrepreneurs behind these apps have reason to expect a hefty payday. According to a recent report by market research company IBISWorld, Americans forked over…