The short answer: FamilySearch is the best free genealogy site overall — a nonprofit with billions of searchable records and a free family tree; all you need is a free account. Round it out with the National Archives' free 1950 census site, Find a Grave for cemeteries, and the Library of Congress's Chronicling America for old newspapers.
Everything on this page is free to use — no trials that quietly renew, no "free" pages that stop at a paywall. Where you need a free account or a library card, we say so. We check these links by hand, and when a well-known site goes offline (as the old CastleGarden.org database did), we point you to the free replacement.
New to all of this? Read our first-steps guide first — you'll search far better with three generations already penciled in.
The top 10 at a glance
| Site | Best for | What's free |
|---|---|---|
| FamilySearch | Records of almost every kind, plus your tree | All free; free account needed to search records |
| 1950 Census (National Archives) | The newest public census | All free, no account |
| Arrival Search (Ellis Island Foundation) | Immigrant ship arrivals | Search and manifest images; account only to save |
| Find a Grave | Headstones, burial places, family links | Free to search; free account to request photos |
| Chronicling America | Old newspapers, 1700s–1963 | All free, no account |
| WikiTree | Cousins' research on one shared tree | Free to browse; free account to add your family |
| FamilySearch Research Wiki | Which records exist for your county | All free |
| HeritageQuest Online | Censuses and local histories | Free with a library card, if your library offers it |
| BLM Land Records | Federal land patents | All free, no account (30 public-land states) |
| USGenWeb | County records and lookups | All free |
Best free site for…
- Building a family tree: FamilySearch, or WikiTree if you like a volunteer-run shared tree.
- Census records: the 1950 census site; FamilySearch for 1790–1940.
- Immigration: Arrival Search, then FamilySearch for other ports and years.
- Military: WWI draft cards on FamilySearch; WWII Army enlistments in AAD.
- Obituaries and newspapers: Chronicling America and your state's newspaper project; Legacy.com for recent deaths.
- Cemeteries: Find a Grave, BillionGraves (free to search), and the VA Gravesite Locator for veterans.
- Land: BLM General Land Office Records — public-land states only.
- African American roots: the Freedmen's Bureau Search Portal.
- Jewish roots: JewishGen.
Start here
FamilySearch
familysearch.org • free account required to search recordsWhat to search here: almost everything — censuses, births, marriages, deaths, immigration, military. The largest free record collection in the world and the best free home for your tree (one shared world tree; living people stay private). If you use one site from this page, use this one.
FamilySearch Research Wiki
familysearch.org/en/wikiWhat to search here: not records but maps to records — a free page for every U.S. state and county telling you which records exist, for which years, and where they're kept. Search "[your county] genealogy" here first.
WikiTree
wikitree.com • free; free account to contributeWhat to search here: one shared, sourced world tree built by volunteers. See whether a distant cousin has already researched your line — then verify their sources, as always.
Census records
National Archives — Census Records
archives.gov/research/censusWhat to search here: the official guide to every released census, 1790–1950, pointing to the Archives' own 1950 census site and free copies of the 1790–1940 censuses on FamilySearch. Censuses go public 72 years after they're taken.
1950 Census (National Archives)
1950census.archives.govWhat to search here: the newest public census, free, no account. Find a relative who was alive in April 1950 and see the whole household — the perfect first record for a beginner. Its name index was made by handwriting-recognition software and misses some people — try other spellings or the head of the household.
HeritageQuest Online — through your library
ask at your public libraryWhat to search here: censuses, local histories, and books — often available free from home with a public library card. One call to your branch tells you if you already have it.
Immigration & ship passenger lists
Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation Arrival Search
statueofliberty.org/arrival-search • free; a free account lets you save recordsWhat to search here: the foundation's Arrival Records Collection began with the Port of New York — the Ellis Island years (1892–1954) and the earlier era — and in 2026 grew to more than 100 million records, 1790s–1970s, from ports across the United States. Searching and viewing the scanned manifests are free, no sign-in. Old Passenger ID links saved before April 1, 2026 no longer work — search by name instead. Walk-through in our passenger list guide.
Steve Morse One-Step Search Tools
stevemorse.orgWhat to search here: powerful free search forms for the Ellis Island–era arrival data, with sound-alike name matching — useful when a misspelled name is hiding. Each result’s “view” link opens the free manifest image on the foundation’s site (a printed copy is optional and costs extra).
National Archives — Passenger Arrival Records
archives.gov/research/immigrationWhat to search here: the official overview of federal passenger arrival records (1820 onward, with gaps): what the lists reveal, which years are restricted, how to order copies, and links to partner sites where the scans are searchable.
Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild
immigrantships.netWhat to search here: more than 30,000 ship manifests typed up by volunteers, browsable by ship, port, or year — handy for reading a whole voyage once you know the ship's name.
Military records
WWI Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918 (FamilySearch)
familysearch.org • free accountWhat to search here: about 24 million men — roughly 23% of the entire U.S. population in 1918 — registered for the WWI draft, whether or not they served. Depending on which registration he signed, a card shows his birth date, address, occupation, and employer; his exact birthplace appears on the 1917 and June 1918 cards, his nearest relative on the 1918 cards. If your male ancestor was born between 1872 and 1900, he's probably here.
National Archives — WWI Draft Registration
archives.gov/research/militaryWhat to search here: the official explanation of the three 1917–1918 registrations and what each card contains — useful for decoding what you find.
National Archives AAD — WWII Army Enlistment Records
aad.archives.gov • free, no accountWhat to search here: about 9 million Army enlistments, 1938–1946, in the Archives' free Access to Archival Databases — serial number, enlistment date and place, birth year, education, civilian occupation. Army only, not Navy or Marines.
National Archives — Military Service Records
archives.gov/veterans/military-service-recordsWhat to search here: how to request a 20th-century relative's military service file. Veterans and next of kin get copies free; anyone can order a file once 62 years have passed since the service member left the military (flat fee: $25 for 5 pages or less, $70 for more). A 1973 fire destroyed about 80% of Army files for soldiers discharged 1912–1960.
Cemeteries & obituaries
Find a Grave
findagrave.com • free to search; free account to request photosWhat to search here: more than 265 million cemetery memorials created by volunteers, many with headstone photos, dates, maiden names, and family links. Check the surrounding plot — cemeteries keep families together. Walk-through in our beginner's guide.
BillionGraves
billiongraves.com • free to search; some features need the paid Plus planWhat to search here: a second big headstone database with GPS-tagged photos — worth a look whenever Find a Grave comes up empty.
VA Nationwide Gravesite Locator
gravelocator.cem.va.gov • freeWhat to search here: burial places of veterans and their families in VA national cemeteries, military post cemeteries, and many state veterans cemeteries. Veterans in private cemeteries appear only if the grave got a government headstone or marker since 1997.
Legacy.com
legacy.comWhat to search here: recent obituaries (roughly the last 25 years) from thousands of newspapers and funeral homes — the fastest way to document a modern death date and surviving family.
Historic newspapers
Chronicling America (Library of Congress)
loc.gov/collections/chronicling-americaWhat to search here: nearly 24 million digitized newspaper pages from the 1700s through 1963, free from the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Search a name in quotes plus a town — obituaries, weddings, and wonderfully nosy local columns await.
Your state's digital newspaper project
search "[your state] digital newspapers"What to search here: most states run a free newspaper archive beyond Chronicling America — New York, Texas, California, and Colorado all have large ones. Your state library's site will point the way.
Fulton History
fultonhistory.comWhat to search here: a legendary one-man archive of tens of millions of newspaper pages (strongest for New York). The interface is old-fashioned — persevere, the content is worth it.
Heritage & lineage records
Freedmen's Bureau Search Portal (Smithsonian NMAAHC)
nmaahc.si.edu • freeWhat to search here: about 1.7 million pages of Freedmen's Bureau records, 1865–1872, searchable by name at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. They often name formerly enslaved people and their families right after emancipation — a key free source for African American ancestors.
DAR Genealogical Research System
services.dar.org • freeWhat to search here: the Daughters of the American Revolution's free database of Revolutionary War patriots, plus descendant lines its members have already documented. If one of your lines reaches back to the 1770s, check here before redoing that work.
JewishGen
jewishgen.org • free with free registrationWhat to search here: free databases for Jewish family history around the world, including Holocaust records and JOWBR, the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry of Jewish cemeteries — a natural next stop after FamilySearch.
Land, books & everything else
BLM General Land Office Records
glorecords.blm.govWhat to search here: free images of federal land patents — the documents that gave your homesteading ancestors their land, searchable by name and state. Covers the 30 "public land" states — not the original 13 states, Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Texas, or Hawaii.
USGenWeb
usgenweb.orgWhat to search here: volunteer-run free pages for every U.S. county — cemetery transcriptions, local records, and lookups you won't find anywhere else. Old-school and priceless.
Internet Archive
archive.orgWhat to search here: digitized county histories, city directories, and yearbooks. Try your surname plus the county name — 19th-century local histories loved to profile families.
Google Books
books.google.comWhat to search here: the same trick with a different index — published genealogies and town histories, many fully readable free.
Digital Public Library of America
dp.laWhat to search here: one search box across more than 50 million photographs, letters, maps, and local documents from about 6,000 U.S. libraries, museums, and archives (maintained by Cleveland Public Library since July 2026).
Cyndi's List
cyndislist.comWhat to search here: a categorized directory of more than 318,000 genealogy links, maintained since 1996. When you need something oddly specific — Czech church records, Quaker meetings — start here.
Sites that only look free
- "Free search" that hides the results. The site says it found 14 records for your name — then asks you to subscribe before you can see one. Free to search isn't free to see.
- People-search sites dressed up as family trees. Some genealogy-sounding sites are really background-check services selling addresses, phone numbers, and relatives of living people. That isn't historical research, the details can be wrong — and if you find your own listing, look for an opt-out page.
- Free trials that turn into a bill. The big subscription sites offer 14-day trials that ask for a credit card and turn automatically into the paid plan you picked — sometimes a six-month or yearly one. If you try one, choose the monthly option and cancel at least two days before it ends.
- "Free" in exchange for your data. Before uploading a family tree or DNA file anywhere, read who can see it and whether the company may share or sell it. Keep living relatives private.
Free databases move and sometimes vanish. If a link on this page lets you down, please tell us — we check this list by hand and we'll fix it and find the free replacement.
Print the Starter Kit before you dive in
A tree chart, family group sheet, interview questions, and a research log to track which of these databases you've already searched — free, in large friendly type.
Download the Free Kit (PDF)Preview all 8 pages • Fillable version (type on your computer)
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free genealogy site?
FamilySearch. It's run by a nonprofit, holds billions of searchable historical records — censuses, births, marriages, deaths, immigration, military — and gives you a free family tree; you just need a free account to search records. Add the National Archives' 1950 census site, Find a Grave, and Chronicling America for a complete free toolkit.
Is any genealogy site completely free?
Yes. FamilySearch has no paid tier at all — you just need a free account to search records, though a small share of images can be viewed only at a FamilySearch Center or affiliate library. The 1950 census site, Chronicling America, and the BLM land records are free with no account at all.
Is FamilySearch as good as Ancestry?
For a beginner, FamilySearch is more than enough to start — and it's free, with huge record coverage: U.S. censuses, vital records, and immigration and military collections. Ancestry has some collections you won't find elsewhere, automatic record hints, and private trees, but viewing most of its records requires a paid subscription. Our guide to genealogy without paying for Ancestry shows how far the free sites can take you.
Can I use Ancestry for free?
Partly. Building a tree on Ancestry is free, but viewing most of its records requires a subscription. The free way in is Ancestry Library Edition: many public libraries offer it on their computers — most of the record collections (not every one), usable inside the building with your library card.
What's the best free genealogy site for the UK or Canada?
Start with FamilySearch, which covers both countries. For Britain, the volunteer projects FreeBMD (England and Wales birth, marriage and death indexes) and FreeCEN (census transcriptions) are free. For Canada, Library and Archives Canada offers free databases, including censuses. If your family came from Ireland, try irishgenealogy.ie, a free government site.
Sources
- Why do I have to sign in to view historical records? — FamilySearch
- The NEW Arrival Records Collection — Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island Foundation
- Search Census Records Online and Other Resources — National Archives
- World War I Draft Registration Cards — National Archives
- Request Military Service Records — National Archives
- Accessing Land Entry Records — National Archives
Facts checked against these sources on October 9, 2026.
Guides to use with this list: Start your family tree for free • Find ship passenger lists • Genealogy without the Ancestry bill • Sort a box of old family photos • Find naturalization records free