15 Best Free Genealogy Websites in 2026 (Ranked and Reviewed)

FamilySearch is the undisputed king of free genealogy. Run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1894, it holds billions of records from over 100 countries — census data, vital records, military files, church registers and more. A free account gives you access to everything, including their enormous collection of scanned microfilms.

Geneanet is a community genealogy platform with over 5 million members who share their family trees. This makes it extraordinarily useful for European — especially French — lineages. You can search other users' trees and often find distant relatives who have already researched the branch you're working on. Basic use is free; a Premium subscription unlocks additional features.

WikiTree's mission is to build one single, unified, accurate family tree for all of humanity. It's completely free and community-maintained. The rigorous sourcing standards make it one of the most reliable free family tree platforms. Connecting your tree to WikiTree can instantly link you to research done by thousands of other genealogists worldwide.

For anyone with English or Welsh ancestry, FreeBMD is indispensable. It's a volunteer project transcribing the civil registration index for England and Wales from 1837 to around 1984 — over 300 million records of births, marriages and deaths. Simple, fast and completely free.

Find A Grave hosts over 230 million memorial records from cemeteries worldwide. It's particularly strong in the US. Each memorial can include photos of the headstone, biographical information, family links and even obituaries. An invaluable resource for confirming dates and finding maiden names.

The official Irish genealogy portal, hosting civil registration records (births, marriages, deaths) from 1864 and Catholic church records from the 1600s. If you have Irish ancestors, this is your first stop — and it's entirely free.

Trove, run by the National Library of Australia, is one of the best free digitized newspaper archives in the world. It covers Australian newspapers from the 1800s to the mid-1900s and is fully text-searchable. Invaluable for Australian family history research.

Italy's national digital archive hosts millions of civil registration records from 1809 to 1910 for free. If you have Italian ancestry, this is a remarkable resource — and it's entirely free of charge.

Matricula hosts scanned Catholic church registers from Germany, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic and other Central European countries. Often the only way to trace family lines before civil registration began. Free to browse.

Once you've found your ancestors using the resources above, you need a place to build and save your tree. FamilyTreeFreeMaker.com lets you create an interactive family tree with photos, dates and notes — completely free, no sign-up, with a save/reload feature so your work is never lost.