Last Updated on August 30, 2021
If you are looking for totally free genealogy websites to research your family tree or trace your history then you have come to the right place. As much as it brings a great sense of belonging, tracing your ancestry is not easy and does not come cheap as well.
This is why we have put together this guide for you listing the best free ancestry sites with no membership required. These are free people finder sites you can trust.
These sites offer different type of records and information; you can identify people from your past that you didn’t know about or have forgotten ever existed in your life. You can use the information to put together a family tree or simply trace your lineage or history.
Is There A Totally Free Genealogy Website?
Yes there are totally free genealogy websites you can access and use online. The reality we can’t ignore is that subscription genealogy sites do have some advantage over the free ones in terms of the amount of information you can possibly obtain but not everyone has enough budget to pay for a membership no matter how low priced it is.
Some amongst a list of genealogy search tips I can provide, I would say start with the no cost ones and if you are not happy with the reports or information presented then you can consider moving into the paid ones but with a completely free trial period. After which you can then choose one of the paid ones and research from there.
What Can You Find From A Completely Free Genealogy Website?
Each ancestry website comes with different features and offerings but below are the main ones that you can typically find across all of them.
- Birth records
- Death records
- Census data
- Directory information
- Photographs
- Transcriptions of tombstones
- Marriage records
Ancestry Websites Accuracy
So how accurate are these totally free genealogy sites? As accurate as any other website can be.
First trust that search engines work hard to vet all the sites they show in their search engines using intelligent algorithms and human reviewers for some cases. Secondly these tops sites are owned by organisations that invest a lot of money into gathering and organisation the information.
Having said that, it is highly possibly that some sites misinterpret some information and maybe mix it up here and there. This is why we advise that you use multiple sources, as listed below to verify the accuracy of the records.
The Best Free Genealogy Websites?
So we took some time scouring the net and testing various finders i..e both totally free people search sites and paid one with the intentionto provide an answer to the question often asked by our readers i.e. what is best free website for genealogy research. We start by simply listing these sites and then we review them one by one.
- FindAGrave – Founded in 1995 by Jim Tipton of Salt Lake City, Utah, This is one of the very few sites available online. It has more than 180 million transcriptions of tombstones and photographs from all over the world.
- FamilySearch – If you are looking for one of the biggest and best free genealogy sites (some even claim it is the largest) out there then this one is actually your best option next to the paid or subscription ones like Ancestry.com. It also comes with an inbuilt family tree tool.
- FindMyPast – This is a genealogy service based in the United Kingdom with 4 billion plus records. These searchable records include historical, census and directory information.It contains mostly British and Irish family history. However, don’t ignore if you are not from these two countries because you may not actually know where your deep roots lie.
- Archives –This is an American non-profit digital library that includes millions of public-domain books, websites, moving images, software applications/games, music, and movies/videos. All these digital products on this accessible Web archive can be accessed and downloaded absolutely free.
- Rootsweb-Founded in 1993 by Karen Isaacson and Brian Leverich, this is the oldest free online genealogical community with valuable sources to learn, collaborate, and share information on family trees.
- JewishGen – This Jewish Generation finder database was founded in 1987 with the sole purpose of providing research tools to genealogists on Jewish family history and heritage. It also forms part of the Museum of Jewish Heritage family.
- AccessGenealogy –This is an absolutely free Native American tribe research database that covers genealogy data for all 50 states. This site is owned by Ancestry.com and gives totally free access to genealogy research data charts. The site also provides some world genealogy data.
- BillionsGraves– Their free mobile app allows people to take pictures of all the headstones in the cemetery and record GPS locations for those graves. You can easily search through this information to find your ancestor’s cemetery and mausoleum.
- GenWeb projects (The US GenWeb Project, Worldgen Project) – This volunteer-powered database offers links to state sites with free U.S. state and county genealogy information. It also includes query boards, listings of local sources for records, county and state histories, online genealogy books, research tips, maps, and links to helpful internet resources.
- Allen county public library– Since 1895, this public library serves the people of Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana, United States, and surrounding areas with more than 2 million records of Family History. This includes Search census, birth, marriage, death records, and more.
- Genealogy– A source of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages sourced from GenForum and other popular genealogy articles from around the web.
- MyHeritage (free 14 days trial)– Being one of the best free trial genealogy websites it was founded in 2003 in Israel, MyHeritage is a digital genealogy platform where families preserve their heritage by meeting online, sharing, exploring, and communicating with each other.
- FindMyPast(14 days free trial) – You can easily trace your ancestry with this UK-based online genealogy service. Since 2007 Find My Past has been providing more than 4 billion searchable records of directory, birth records, census data, obituaries and historical record information.
- Ancestry (14 days free trial)- Another of of the few free trial genealogy websites Ancestry was founded in 1996 by John Sittner, Paul Brent Allen, and Dan Taggart Ancestry is the largest online network of genetic genealogy, historical records, and genealogical websites.
- FultonHistory – if your ancestors lived in New York then you should definitely try this Old Fulton Postcards site. It contains newspaper scans from as far back as about 200 years. The best thing about it is the additional information you may discover about your family not mentioned anywhere else on the web.
- Library of congress – try out this Library to access some digitised information. This includes films, newspapers, maps, drawings, books and more. It’s great to adding detail to what you may have already found out about your family history.
- FreeBMD – If your ancestry have roots in the United Kindgdom (UK) then FreeBMD is worth your time. It is a civil registration of index of marriages, births, and deaths for Wales and England.
- Genuki – This is another UK one stop shop for genealogy. It covers England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. It also includes a database of Churches to help track graves and other records that are related to your family.
- Olive Tree Genealogy – This website helps you trace your history if you believe to be a European Descendant. It has information from various European countries like German Palatine, Mennonite and Huguenot immigrants. You can find information related to voter registrations, oaths and allegiance, naturalization, military databases, orphan lists, registrars of asylum and more
- Toni – Canadian Genealogy – If you want to research your history from a Canadian point of view then this is one of the few totally free genealogy websites you can use. It is operated by the Ontario Name Index (TONI) and contains over 5 million names to sift through. Its info comes from tombstones, family history, tombstones phones and more
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