Free Alternatives to Ancestry for Building Your Family Tree

Ancestry is a powerful platform, but it is built around a paid subscription — and for a lot of people, that is more than they need. If you mainly want to build, keep, and share a family tree, there are free alternatives that do the job well. Here is how they compare and what each is good for.

First, know what you are paying for

Ancestry bundles two very different things:

1. A family tree builder — where you lay out your relatives.
2. A records subscription — access to billions of scanned historical documents.

The records are the expensive part, and the reason for the monthly fee. The tree builder itself is not unique. If you are not actively digging through records every month, you are paying for a library you rarely visit. That is the gap free alternatives fill.

The main free options

FamilySearch. Run by a non-profit, FamilySearch is completely free and holds billions of records. The catch is its single shared "world tree" model — you are editing a collaborative tree rather than a private one, which some people love and others find frustrating.

Gramps. A free, open-source desktop program. Extremely capable and private, but it is software you install and manage yourself, with a steeper learning curve.

Blaadline. Blaadline is a free, browser-based tree builder focused on the "lay it out and keep it" job. Nothing to install, your trees stay private to your account, and it handles the things generic tools stumble on — multiple spouses and blended families, unlimited generations, and print-ready charts.

How to switch without losing your work

The best part: you are not locked in. Ancestry lets you export your tree as a GEDCOM file, the universal genealogy format, and free tools import it.

To move your tree out of Ancestry:

1. Open your tree settings and choose Export tree.
2. Download the .ged file it generates.
3. Import that file into your new tool — in Blaadline, create a new tree and select the file.

Your people, dates, and relationships come across intact, and you keep building from there.

Which one should you pick?

• Want free records and do not mind a shared tree → FamilySearch
• Want full control offline and enjoy tinkering → Gramps
• Want a simple, private builder that just works in the browser → Blaadline

Many researchers use more than one: FamilySearch for records, and a dedicated builder for a clean private tree they can chart and print. New to all of this? Start with how to make a family tree.