Free vs. Paid Genealogy Sites: What You Actually Need

How far you can get without paying, the free back doors into paid databases, and when a subscription is worth it.

2 min read

Genealogy ads make it seem like you need a subscription to get started. You don't. Many of the most important records in American research are free, and many paid databases are available free through your library. Here is how to get the most out of free resources, and how to decide when paying makes sense.

What you can do completely free

• FamilySearch is the biggest free genealogy site. You need a free account, but there's no charge for its billions of indexed records, including every available federal census, millions of vital records, and digitized court and church records. It also has the Research Wiki, the best free how-to guide for every state and county.
• Government sites are free: the National Archives, the 1950 census site, land patents at the Bureau of Land Management, and most state archives.
• Free newspaper collections like Chronicling America and many state newspaper projects. Your state guide lists them.
• Cemetery sites like Find a Grave and BillionGraves.

Free back doors into paid sites

Before you subscribe to anything, check these:

• Your public library. Many libraries offer Ancestry Library Edition free on library computers or library Wi-Fi. Many also offer HeritageQuest Online, often usable from home with your library card. Ask at the reference desk; some libraries also have Newspapers.com or MyHeritage.
• FamilySearch Centers and affiliate libraries. Visitors can use several premium sites free, as well as records that are restricted to view at a FamilySearch location.
• Free access weekends. The big companies regularly open certain collections free for a few days, often around holidays like Memorial Day or Veterans Day.
• Free indexes. Many paid sites let you search their indexes free and only charge to view the image. The index alone can tell you whether a record exists before you pay.

What the paid sites do better

Paid sites earn their price for some things:

• Exclusive collections: some records, and many indexes, exist only on one site.
• Better search and hints: automatic record matching can save hours.
• Huge user-tree networks, which are useful as leads (see How to Use Online Family Trees).
• Newspapers: the largest newspaper archives are paid.
• DNA matching is tied to the company you test with.

A smart way to pay

1. Exhaust the free sources first, for the specific question you're working on.
2. Use your library's access to test whether a paid site actually has what you need.
3. Subscribe for one month when you have a focused project, like a list of specific records to find. Work through your list, save every image with its citation, then cancel or pause.
4. Pick by region: Ancestry for broad U.S. coverage, Findmypast for British and Irish research, MyHeritage for continental Europe, American Ancestors for colonial New England.

Our Resource Directory marks every site as free, fee or paid, so you can see your options at a glance.