Which is the Best Genealogy Website?

Find out which family tree website is best for tracing your family history and finding ancestors with the Family Tree review of the major UK genealogy websites.

Family history websites can be a huge help with our research, providing you with fascinating information about your ancestors in the comfort of your own home. But how do you decide which is the best family history website for you?

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The adverts may look tempting, with ancestors seemingly revealed to you at the click of a mouse. But with varying subscription rates and options, how do you decide which family tree website to join, and what can you expect for your money?

Firstly, why would you need to spend money at all? There are certainly many great free of charge family tree sites, but once you’ve explored these, there’ll come a point when you need to spend money to get any further with your search.

Subscription/pay as you go family history websites, including the ‘big three’ – Ancestry, Find My Past and The Genealogist – offer huge amounts of information about our ancestors, from the basics such as birth, marriage and death records, through to more specialised and hard to find resources including occupational records, parish registers and emigration data.

If time or resources prevent you from travelling around the country to the archives and libraries to which your family tree research leads you, a subscription to a family history website could well save you money in the long run.

Which family history website is best for you?

When deciding which family history website to sign up to, whether on a pay as you go or subscription basis, it’s important to bear in mind that no one site is going to hold all the information you need. Each of the ‘big three’ websites has its own unique set of records, which we’ll explore below, and their coverage of the UK’s regions does vary.

This is why it can be useful to try before you buy, taking advantage of the trial period offered by Ancestry, Find My Past and The Genealogist and/or accessing these websites at the nearest library or record office which offers free of charge access to its visitors.

During your trial, think about what type of records you’ll be using (eg, parish records, wills, Armed Forces) and assess how useful your chosen site(s) would be. If you’re still unsure, consider proceeding on a ‘pay as you’ basis to begin with.

The ‘big three’ compared

Ancestry

Billed as the world’s ‘largest online family history resource’, the UK Ancestry website offers wide coverage of UK BMD, census and parish records, along with more specialised datasets such as criminal, military, immigration, tax records and Irish records. The site also has a helpful forum and member connect network, whilst the Ancestry Academy video courses offer useful tips on using the site, and you don’t have to be a member to view these.

Find My Past

Find My Past is home to over a billion records, with new record releases announced every Friday. The site has forged partnership with family history societies around the UK in order to make available their region-specific records, many of which are difficult to find elsewhere. Find My Past is also the sole home of the 1939 register, which bridges the census gap between 1921 and 1951, and also has the most comprehensive online collection of British military records – from 1656 to 2005.

The Genealogist

The Genealogist is a UK-focused site which offers complete tithe maps for England and Wales, and unique datasets including wills, directories and occupational records. The site’s records date from 1127 to 2005, and highlights include a surname concentration map and the official non-parochial BMDs for non-conformists. The site also has an extensive archive image database.

Before you pay… free family history websites to get you started

FreeBMD - Birth, marriage and deaths records from around the country

FreeCen - A 19th-century UK census project

FreeReg - UK baptism, marriage and burial record data

Family Search -  Millions of names from the International Genealogical Index of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Discover more useful online family history resources in our website section.

 (photo copyright Takoto Marui; keyboard copyright Colin)