Although we love free genealogy sites here at Family History Daily we also love and use paid genealogy subscription sites every day and want to help you discover the best family history site for you.
Ancestry, MyHeritage and Findmypast are the leaders in providing subscription-based genealogy records, and have dominated the market for many years, but a lot of people are confused about the differences between them. Each site offers a unique collection of records, tools, and a custom family tree program.
When we ask ourself, “Which genealogy site is the best?” we really need to ask, “Which site is going to be the most beneficial to my unique research?”
It’s important to take into consideration which one of these options has the records you need to find your ancestors (depending on the regions you are researching), which family tree style you like the best and whether or not you are interested in advanced research tools, hints, easy communication with other family historians or like the idea of incorporating DNA.
Make Instant Discoveries in Your Family Tree Now
Imagine adding your family tree to a simple website and getting hundreds of new family history discoveries instantly. MyHeritage is offering 2 free weeks of access to their extensive collection of 20 billion historical records, as well as their matching technology that
instantly connects you with new information about your ancestors. Sign up using the link below to find out what you can uncover about your family.
The following guide is designed to provide a comparison of these three companies so that you can more easily answer these questions and make the most of the records they hold.
We may also earn a fee to support our work if you choose to take advantage of subscriptions or free trials linked to from this page. This helps us support our work but never influences our opinions and reviews.
What’s the best family history site for you?
- Ancestry.com – best for hints and number of records
- MyHeritage – best for unique family tree tools
- FindmyPast – best for research in the UK
Although there are thousands of genealogy sites online, including many free choices, the above choices are the largest and best paid options for most people. Which one of these is the best family history site for you will be based on your goals, budget, research locations and more.
Many people chose to subscribe to more than one site, while others may find that paying for records just doesn’t make sense for them – especially when FamilySearch offers the largest collection of records online and is completely free of charge.
Still, the convenience and advanced tools offered by these websites is very appealing. After reading the information below, you’ll have to make the decision for yourself.
The difference between Ancestry, MyHeritage and Findmypast
In the following comparison we have looked at 12 key elements of the “big three” genealogy subscription sites to help you understand what they have in common and what makes each one unique. These include pricing, whether they offer a free trial, uniqueness, number of records offered, U.S. vs international records, hints, tools and more.
20 Billion Genealogy Records Are Free for 2 Weeks
Get two full weeks of free access to more than 20 billion genealogy records right now. You’ll also gain access to the MyHeritage discoveries tool that
locates information about your ancestors automatically when you upload or create a tree. What will you discover about your family’s past?
Before we explore these differences, it’s important that you understand a couple of things.
What does it mean when a site says they have X number of records?
One of elements we have looked at is the number of records provided by each company. This number is often touted as one of the main benefits of joining particular site, so it’s important to understand what the number means.
While each genealogy company uses slightly different methods for determining the number of records they offer, generally, a record refers to a specific piece of information of genealogical or historical use in a source, such as the name of an individual and associated dates (like on a birth record).
If there are numerous people mentioned on a record, like on a census page or marriage certificate, this page will be usually be counted as multiple records. This may even be true when only one individual is covered if the facts are considered to be unique from one another. For this reason one certificate, document or newspaper page can contain numerous “records.”
Findmypast does a good job of defining the process of record counting here.
For our indexed collections, record counts are defined as the information listed for each specific person included. For example, each line on a census is counted as one record as it contains information about one specific person.
Un-indexed collections such as newspapers, periodicals and electoral registers are trickier as there is no underlying structure to determine the number of individual entries. In these cases, pages are sampled in their entirety and an average is then applied to determine an estimated number of names.
Can the same collection of records be found on more than one family history site?
Large sites group their records into collections. Collections are most often based on the original source that created them, or the purpose they were created for, and are limited by a date range. For instance, Virginia Birth Records 186-1921 or the 1940 Census.
While Ancestry, MyHeritage and Findmypast all offer a number of collections unique to them, many can be found through more than one of these services. This interesting list of the 20 largest genealogy collections online clearly demonstrates this overlap.
Take some time to explore the unique collections of each site before subscribing – the mix of records available is one of the most important elements in determining the best family history site for you. You can learn how to explore individual collections here.
Now, let’s take a look at what each one of these services offers. In this comparison we have focused on the U.S. version of a site. Availability of records and pricing varies from location to location.
6-month memberships range from $119 to $259 for the same selections. This makes the most inexpensive membership option $19.83 per month for U.S. only records when you buy a 6-month membership upfront. If you need access to all records through World Explorer (Canada, UK, Europe, Mexico etc) you’ll pay $28.16 per month if you choose the 6-month option. All Access works out to $43.16 per month when purchased upfront.
What Makes This Site Unique: Ancestry has long been a leader in online genealogy research and offers more records than anyone else, as well a great diversity of record types and locations covered. Many family historians consider Ancestry a must-have subscription.
Number of Genealogy Records: Ancestry currently reports having 30 billion records. See the explanation above for how record numbers are calculated. We offer various
articles on using Ancestry’s site here.
U.S. vs Global Records: Ancestry offers a nice mix of records for locations across the world. This includes Canada, many locations in Europe (including the UK and Ireland), Australia and New Zealand, Mexico and locations in Asia and Africa. You can view, search and sort all of their record collections in their
online catalog here.
Searching Without a Subscription: You can search all of Ancestry without a subscription but cannot view most records unless you have one. Ancestry does offer a good selection of free records as well that do not require a paid membership and you can
read about that here.
Downloadable Family Tree: Ancestry does not offer a downloadable family tree program.
RootsMagic is a good option if you want to use desktop software that syncs with Ancestry. It’s available for a one-time cost of $39.95 (although future upgrades may cost additional).
You can learn more about this program here.
Family Tree Privacy, Sharing and Discovery: Ancestry trees can be kept private or made public. Both private and public trees are easy to share with family and fellow researchers, and public trees are included in Ancestry’s search. Private trees can also be included but the information is inaccessible to others unless they request your permission. Only paid members can access other people’s family trees.
Hints: Ancestry is famous for its hints, which show up on names in your tree and tell you that there are record suggestions, or possible matches in another person’s tree. These hints can be a wonderful way to build on your research if used carefully. Always be very cautious with hints from trees, however, as they can be riddled with errors and undocumented information. We cover Ancestry hints extensively, including dos and don’ts,
in our Ancestry Crash Course.
Additional User Tools: Ancestry offers some ability to create charts and reports, and run an error check, if you upgrade to Pro Tools.
Read more here.
Mobile Friendliness: Ancestry offers mobile apps for iOS and Android devices that sync with a tree kept on their site, and their regular site is also mobile accessible for tree usage and searches.
DNA Testing or Tools: Ancestry offers a
DNA test and tools that integrate the information from your family tree with your genetic matches (they have the largest database of individuals to match against). They do not, however, allow free uploads of your raw DNA if you have already tested elsewhere – you must test with AncestryDNA. To view the difference between the ethnicity reports provided by Ancestry and other companies,
see this article.
Pricing: MyHeritage
offers four annual subscriptions, they do not offer monthly options. Premium ($129/y) and Premium Plus ($209/y) are focused on their family tree site service and do not include record access. For record access, you will need the Data or Complete Plan.
The Data Plan includes a 250 person family tree and access to all records (US and global) for $189 per year. The Complete Package includes an unlimited family tree (including reports and error checking), access to all records, advanced DNA tools, instant record discoveries (similar to Ancestry’s hints) and all of their popular photo editing tools for $299 per year.
All options include a significant savings for the first year ($100 savings on the Complete Plan). That means that the Complete Plan works out to $16.58 per month for the first year and $24.91 per month after that.
What Makes This Site Unique: Next to Ancestry, MyHeritage offers more records than any other genealogy subscription provider. They have also experienced dramatic growth in the last couple of years in the number and diversity of records, the availability of user-requested tools and in their DNA platform. They have some unique offerings no one else has (such as their advanced photo editing tools) and are definitely worth checking out.
Number of Genealogy Records: MyHeritage currently has more than 20 billion records.
U.S. vs Global Records: Both U.S. and global records are offered and are included in all record subscriptions, no special subscription is required for access to world records opposed to U.S. records. As with Ancestry, collections are available for Canada, many locations in Europe (including the UK and Ireland), Australia and New Zealand, Latin America, including Mexico, and areas in Asia and Africa.
View all collections in their catalog here. We also offer help for using the
MyHeritage site here.
Searching Without a Subscription: MyHeritage’s records can be searched without a subscription, but cannot be accessed without a paid membership.
Online Family Tree: MyHeritage offers a robust family tree which can be used for free until 250 individuals are included. If you exceed this number you will need to gain a family site with a paid membership (see membership breakdown above). You can read more about the MyHeritage family tree in our
tree comparison guide.
Downloadable Family Tree: MyHeritage offers a free downloadable family tree program that syncs with their online family tree or can act as a standalone program. You
do not need a subscription to use it, but you will be encouraged to sign up if you download the software.
Download Family Tree Builder here.
Family Tree Privacy, Sharing and Discovery: Trees on MyHeritage can be kept private or made public and several setting are available to tweak the level of privacy your tree has. Public trees are included in MyHeritage searches and are used as part of Smart Matching (see below).
Hints: MyHeritage offers something called Discoveries when you upload or add a tree to their site. The discoveries system attempts to match the information in your tree with records and includes Smart Matching that also looks for matches in other people’s trees. The Discoveries system is very helpful and we have used it to
successfully break down a very stubborn brick wall. Although, as with Ancestry’s hints, we encourage extreme caution with discoveries from other people’s trees as the information contained in them can be inaccurate.
Read more about MyHeritage’s Discoveries here.
Additional User Tools: MyHeritage continually releases new research tools and they offer some unique ones, such
tree statistics, a visual relationship calculator,
a powerful error reporting tool that catches inconsistencies in your tree, the ability to
create charts and books as well as
numerous photo tools. Thus far, they have always included these for paid subscribers rather than offering them as an additional upgrade (unlike Ancestry Pro Tools).
Mobile Friendliness: MyHeritage has a mobile-friendly site as well as apps for Android and iOS. Syncing happens automatically across all devices when using the app.
DNA Testing or Tools: MyHeritage offers
DNA testing and an easy to use system for using your results in your research. You’ll find a variety of tools to help you better understand how you connect with your matches, including surname and tree matching and a chromosome browser.
Read all about this system here. MyHeritage is also the only company in this comparison guide that offers free uploads of DNA data if you’ve already tested.
You can upload your own DNA here.
Pricing: Findmypast offers monthly, 3-month and yearly memberships at two different levels. Their Essential British and Irish package is $19.99 monthly and $159 yearly and their Ultimate British and Irish package is $29.99 monthly and $219 yearly. The second option includes access to more records and educational materials.
This means that their cheapest subscription (paid annually) works out to just $13.33 per month and their more robust subscription works out to $18.33. They also offer a Premium package that adds on the 1921 UK census (exclusive to Findmypast). This option is only available annually for $299. While not comparable to Ancestry or MyHeritage for global and US records, they do offer many in both categories. However, it’s when you are researching UK and Irish ancestors that Findmypast will really be worth your time.
What Makes This Site Unique: Findmypast specializes in providing records for the UK and Ireland. While you will find a very good number of records from other locations, such as the US and Canada, you will benefit most from using this site if some of your ancestors come from England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
You can see all of their record collections here. Number of Genealogy Records: Findmypast offers more than 14 billion records. This is the lowest amount in this comparison, but since they offer a unique collection of UK records they are definitely worth using if you have ancestors from that area of the world, especially if you will need access to the 1921 UK census.
Searching Without a Subscription: You can search the Findmypast collections without a subscription but will not be able to access the records without a paid membership. Some records are provided free of charge and
those can be found here.
Online Family Tree: Findmypast offers a free family tree which can be used with or without a membership. There is no limit to the number of individuals that you can enter.
Downloadable Family Tree: Findmypast does not offer a downloadable family tree or sync with any other downloadable tree programs.
Family Tree Privacy, Sharing and Discovery: Trees can be kept private on Findmypast or made public to other Findmypast registered members. Findmypast allows you to search other (public) trees on their site.
Hints: Hints are built into the Findmypast tree as with Ancestry and MyHeritage. Read more about their
hints system here.
Backing Up Your Tree: Findmypast makes it easy to back up your tree as a GEDCOM but there is no way to easily back up your records in a downloadable family tree, as with MyHeritage and Ancestry. Instead, we suggest you download records manually and store them in a folder with your GEDCOM, or
use a system like this to store records externally and link to them from your tree.
Additional User Tools: Findmypast offers many educational materials, but does not offer other tools such as error reporting or charts.
Mobile Friendliness: Findmypast offers mobile apps for Apple and Android.
DNA Testing or Tools: Findmypast does not offer DNA testing or DNA integration into their tree.
So, which one of these genealogy subscription companies should you choose?
The truth is, there is no best family history site for everyone, and not one of these sites qualifies as the “winner.” Ancestry, MyHeritage and Findmypast all offer different records and tools and are all worth exploring individually. You will need to review all of the differences and decide which ones are worth your money.
Because each site offers a free trial period, and limited records at no cost, you should be able to get a fair idea of each site’s pros and cons before subscribing.
Utilizing many search sites and databases in your searches is vital to discovering everything you can about your ancestors. To save money, focus and organize your research around specific questions and then subscribe to and use a single site at a time if it offers records you need. Or you can even fit as much research as you can into the two free weeks you can get with each site (find links above) and then determine if an ongoing subscription is valuable.
We hope this guide will help you to decide which of these big three genealogy subscriptions is the best family history site for you.
By Melanie Mayo, Family History Daily Editor
Image: A group of girl workers in Greenabaum’s Canneries, Seaford, Del. 1910. Wikimedia Commons.
Now that Ancestry is charging by the month or 6 monthly instead of a yearly option, this makes it double the yearly price of both my heritage and findmypast??
This certainly doesn’t make it the least expensive option for Australian users.(Of which there are many) Thankfully one can upload a gedcom to myheritage and findmypast in order to compare search and hint functions, which then gives one a choice of comparing programes. Ridiculous the protool and omni extra functions on Ancestry and myheritage, which used to be free to use and access. Sad that a hobby such as family history research has now become a money grabbing business by those holding the records we wish to access.
I have been a long time user of Ancestry, using Family Tree Maker as my main genealogy program that syncs to Ancestry. I have tested with Ancestry and then uploaded for free to MyHeritage. MyHeritage DNA tools are nice in some aspects and not in others. MyHeritage offers more colors, but you can’t easily them, they offer notes but you can easily see them either. MyHeritage lets you see how your shared marches are related to each other. Ancestry color coding and notes are viewable from the main DNA Matches screen. For more DNA tools, you must pay for the Pro Tools at $10 per month. I love MyHeritage tree consistency checker, I am finding lots of errors in my Tree that neither FTM or Ancestry inform me of them. I didn’t realize that the subscription I purchased was only for my tree, so I am very dissapointed.
Interestingly enough I find that while paper records can be incorrect or missing, DNA records never seem to be wrong. So, after shunning DNA tests for years, I’ve finally had my DNA tested by 5 companies and notice the results are all different, which tells me they all test different parts of the DNA string. That’s probably good but for me that meant I have five different DNA tags to deal with. I should also note that there are three different types of DNA testing reports, namely atDNA (autosomal), Y-DNA (male only), and mtDNA (female only). atDNA Autosomes carry a majority of your gene information and can tell you a lot about your ancestry, your health, and who you are at the most biologically personal level. Two of my five testing companies (Ancestry and MyHeritage) did autosomal atDNA testing while the other three companies (23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, and LivingDNA) did both Y-DNA and mtDNA testing. When you get the DNA reports, you will likely see an ancestral map that tells you where your ancestors came from. Be aware that with DNA testing you may see some unusual and unexpected ancestral areas. I have this crazy Irishman in my own DNA past that is difficult to locate. Are all Irishmen this challenging…? [Rhetorical question] My paper records do not reflect the Irishman’s presence. Ooops…
To Darrel Miller:
It really is a mistake to use the same password for all your online work. If someone gets the password from one site, they have all of them. There goes your money. Also you should know, the website maintainer (on most sites) can see your password.
ScotlandsPeople is total crap. It costs 11 pounds just to see a census! You don’t need to see many censuses before you’ve spent enough to purchase an entire year subscription of findmypast.
Ethnicity is just an estimate, I would take anyone’s results with a pinch of salt. They are only guessing according to the data they have
Several years ago, I found Ancestry has a problem with deleting records. If you have an attachment that is NOT found via Ancestry, and if you delete the record it is attached to, you cannot get to the attachment. The result is that Ancestry does NOT delete that profile, it just hides it. The best way to realise this, is to compare the number of records of a tree on “your profile” page, to the number of records as shown when you “List all People”. I had about 1000 ‘ghosts’ in a tree of 7,500 profiles. I told Ancestry about this, and the reply “Yes, we know about this.. we’re fixing it”. As I pointed out at the start, this was several years ago.
If you want accurate dna results, I would avoid MyHeritage. I have dna results from MyHeritage, 23andMe, Ancestry, MyLiving DNA and MyFTDNA. My paternal side is predominantly Germanic Europe….the only dna test that failed to show any Germanic dna was MyHeritage. The others were all in the 33 to 35% range. One third of my dna…not found by MyHeritage. They had other discrepancies as well. If you download your dna file…you can upload it to most if not all of those sites,,,for free…and see the results. You will be very surprised at the variance in results.
Some who have posted comments here seem unaware that building a family tree is…WORK. It takes effort, trial and error, and patience. If you lack those, don’t start. It took me months of sitting at my desk for hours every day to build a tree of 3,360 people…and that number is mostly limited to many generations of grandparents and perhaps only 20% including aunts and uncles, cousins, etc. Along the way you run into a lot of incorrect info and spend time correcting it. Records are not always that easy to find, and I have my tree on 4 different sites each with its own available records.
A little math to indicate how daunting it can be. Just following the parental/grand parental lines you would have this many ancestors through 10 generations. Each generation doubles the number of ancestors in the previous generation. Therefore…2+4+8+16+32+64+128+256+512+1024=2,046 ancestors. If you were including aunts, uncles and cousins for each generation….let’s be conservative and say that would amount to 6 additional people per each ancestor in each generation…then you would add 12+24+48+96+192+384+768+1536+3072+6144=12,276 plus the 2,046 for a total of 14,322. Try fitting that in your tree. Aunts, uncles and cousins for the first 3 or 4 generations is ok, but after that….stick to parents and grandparents….just to keep your sanity.
I have more than 3,000 people in my tree…do you think, for even a moment, that all of those could appear on screen at the same time? It is not even remotely possible.
These are the limitations in Ancestry:
1) As the tree grows past the second generation, the program will collapse children into little icons beside parents names. The children of those children are completely invisible until you click on their parents’ icons. That means you can’t view the whole tree at one time. You can’t navigate through the tree without opening icons, which then automatically collapse other parts of the tree to display, say, three generations of a family. Is there a genealogy program that allows the entire family tree to be displayed without collapsing parts of it?
2) Adding information to a new member of the tree can be cumbersome. The default entry screen only provides for the birth date / location and death date / location. Parents, children, and spouses can’t be specified on this form. You have to go back to the tree view (one click plus navigate to the person you’re working on) and click on the person’s name. That will display the profile form for that person, which allows you to enter new family relationships and events. If you’re entering a bunch of names, this is time consuming.
3) The profile form doesn’t use sticky boxes with the name of the person you’re working on. This can cause problems. For example, if you’ve scrolled down on the profile form to enter a child under a parent name, and then decide to enter the child’s spouse or kids, you may not see whose profile you’re working on and inadvertently enter a name as a sibling instead of a child or spouse. You can fix the mistake by going back up to the tree, selecting the editing tools, and reclassify the relationship, but it’s a hassle that can be avoided if the form used a sticky box that stayed on the screen while you scrolled down.
4) There is no backup option in Ancestry. If you’re working on a large tree and have more than one editor, it’s possible for one of the editors to delete information by mistake. The date will be lost without a trace.
Thanks. Interesting and informative. Consequently I wonder what the cost is for a subscription to Ancestry UK if you dont live in the UK though the ancestry you are interested in are all English and you are interested in access to copies of the earliest English original documents (i.e. from 1538 onwards, or any before 1538).
I recently signed up for a free trial but can’t afford the subscription fee so I would like to cancel my subscription /account plz thanks
Alan Richards
I started using Ancestry with a known birth certificate of my grandfather, filling in all the boxes only to find 250,000 matches and the actual certificate not even shown, never did find it through their search engine. I did a similar search with my Welsh grandparents marriage, and the same result, hundreds of thousands to troll through and the original not to be seen. I work in computers so it’s not like I don’t know my way around these programs.
Today I use ScotlandsPeople and all the Scottish records are online, it’s free to browse and you buy credits, which are very cheap to view the records, unlike the American companies and the one British which I think fleece people and don’t give results, even when you are holding the documents you do a test run on.
Wow! I sure hope you haven’t been hacked. ALL OF YOUR ONLINE PASSWORDS THE SAME??? If they steal one, they steal your entire life, there goes all your money. I hope you decided to use different passwords since 2 years ago. KeePass and other programs can store passwords for you, so you still only have to remember one.
I had read this kind of outcome on subscription sites for last 10-15 years and decided I would use my own software so it can’t be ruined. Copied by photo snipping and the like…. IF ONLY THE “SNITCHERS” would reference our sources we would not be so offended. But we know the integrity of our information is evidenced up to three ways-so at least it’s correct snitching
My Heritage is a horrible site to use. Very difficult. My searches kept bringing up Family Trees with no verification of the information. No copies of records. Several of my searches referred me to Family Search which is a free site. No need to go thru My Heritage. Found it very clunky as others have stated. Canceled my subscription but they got me for a one year membership. Took me about 10 minutes to find where to cancel. Would not recommend. Money much better spent for Ancestry. Their site is much more user friendly. Only complaint is they are too expensive. Cost more for world wide. Cost more for Newspapers. Cost more for Fold 3. Just goes on and on. But on the bright side I find the automatic hints to be very good. The automatic hints found me information that I would not have other wise found.
One mistake in your review. Findmypast DOES allow you to export and download Gedcom genealogy files.
You realized this wasn’t the site you needed to do this in right? You need to email that company. A comment here will do nothing. I hope someone helped you out.
I am cancelling my trial membership to MyHeritage as of April 11, 2019. The research was laborous and time consuming. Please send me an email confirmation that my trial subscription is canceled and that I will not be charged for the monthly or yearly cost of $89. Thank you
I have to agree with you, Mary. I love how I can tweak family trees in MyHeritage and add notes to my heart’s content. But finding info on their site feels like a circus and I thought it was just me having a hard time. I work on trees in MyHeritage but find all of my documents on Ancestry.com, although I do maintain trees on both sites so it’s easier to pull up a name.
All three sites plus Genealogist have NOT had (in the last 10+ years) ANY records of my UK ancestor except one who shared a similar name but born one year earlier and died in infancy. So no point in researching any alternative records as he came out to Australia in 1837 (not shown in the 1832 UK Poll or Roll records either). No existing details where he was born in UK or any clues in Australia (incl. marriage which appears to be non-existent, but had 13 children). 10+ year exhaustive research without success. I’ve tried all three, eg. Ancestry, FindMyPast and MYHeritage, and for me, was a waste of money. I also paid The Genealogist fees to search for me without any success either. So I don’t have any complimentary comments. Sorry.
You have failed to mention the bugs in Ancestry and its poor searching and matching algorithms.
I am so disappointed in this DNA source. I posted my first wife’s nam and all I got was her
Family history, I got very little on my lineage which is why I chose this program. Next my heretage wanted me to change my password. I use the same password for all my on line business and communications and DO NOT want to change it, The company told me they would send a new one at least 6 times, To expedite this I waited but never received one! I was so disappointed I went to Ancestors.com and have had no such problems. In my opinion “ My Heretage “ stinks and I will let the world know on social media!
I think these three sites (all of which I have used) should be compared on ease of use. I call it a clean piece of paper. When I started on ancestry, I found it very easy to build my tree and navigate around it. I find both My Heritage and Find My Past very clunky to use. I care about how much information is on my screen and how easy it is to navigate around. I like my My Heritage and Find My Past but not in this regard.
I was disappointed yesterday when I got an email from Find My Past, it said that all the records that I have previously viewed, will no longer be available free to view. I will need a paid subscription to view previously viewed records. They are getting ‘money hungry’ like Ancestry !!!!!! I am not happy !!!!!!