FamilySearch vs Ancestry: what's different, and which to use.
FamilySearch is free and has one shared family tree that everyone works on together. On Ancestry you build your own tree free, pay a subscription to see most of its records, and can buy a DNA test. Many family historians use both: FamilySearch for what others have already found, Ancestry for its records and DNA matches.
Side by side.
| FamilySearch | Ancestry | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free to everyone | Free to start a tree. Most records take a subscription, with a free trial |
| The family tree | One shared tree that anyone can edit | Your own tree, which you control |
| Records, by each one's own count | 16.93 billion searchable names | 71 billion records |
| DNA | No test of its own | A DNA network of over 30 million people |
| Getting your file out | No GEDCOM download from Family Tree | The owner can export a tree as a GEDCOM file, with or without a subscription |
The two record counts measure different things, so don't read them as a straight race.
Which to use.
- Start with FamilySearch if you're new or don't want to pay. Someone may already have built part of your family.
- Add Ancestry if you want a DNA test and matches, or you've run out of free records for a line.
- Check before you believe. Anyone can change the shared tree, and anyone can copy a mistake into a private one. Treat both as leads, and check them against a record.
Where Ancestral Fire fits.
Ancestral Fire isn't a third place to build a tree. It reads what's already on FamilySearch with your own sign-in, changes nothing there unless you approve it, and tells you who those people were, with the source behind each fact. It can't sign in to Ancestry, but it can take the GEDCOM file you export from there. See how it compares, including what it doesn't do.
Or just ask.
Tell Ancestral Fire one name, and it reads your tree, searches FamilySearch Family Tree once you connect it, and tells you what it found, with the source behind each fact. A real answer:
(The published Kennedy file, brought in from the first screen.)
The tree at a glance: 208 people · 75 families · born 1728–1984. Commonest surnames: Kennedy, Bouvier, Caulfield, Mahoney, Skakel, Fitzgerald.
What Ancestral Fire showed seconds after the Kennedy family's published GEDCOM was brought in.
See a whole conversation on How it works, or what it finds in one family: The Kennedy family tree, from Wexford to Dallas.
Keep reading.
- Start a family tree from almost nothing. Start with yourself and go back one generation at a time: your parents, then your grandparents, writing down only what you know and where you learned it.
- Free family tree template to print. Print this free family tree template and fill it in by hand: you, your parents, your four grandparents and your eight great-grandparents, on one letter-size page.