November 21, 2025
Genealogy used to mean frequent trips to libraries, archives, courthouses and cemeteries. All those trips to various repositories certainly were not free, but everyone knew that genealogy could be expensive. Trips to the homeland in Europe or week-long genealogy workshops often required months, or even years, of saving in advance.
Nowadays, genealogy for many folks means frequent visits to online genealogy websites. Many genealogists assume that most of those websites will be free. Some are, but most charge a subscription fee. One exception is Family Search, one of the best general genealogy websites. Anyone can access millions of records from home or from local FamilySearch Centers or the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City.
State historic newspaper sites, state archives and local libraries often maintain useful genealogical databases, as well. Most of these types of websites are free. Many cemetery websites such as Find a Grave are also free.
Eventually, however, genealogists usually find themselves needing to access some of the popular paid websites. Websites such as Ancestry, Find My Past, My Heritage, Fold Three and Newspapers.com all require subscriptions.
Some of these databases are expensive. Ancestry, for example, costs around $300 a year for all-access memberships. My Heritage charges $319 for a similar subscription. In addition to these large genealogical webites, there are specialty websites. Find My Past is very useful for research in the British Isles. The price for a year’s subscription is $179. If you’re doing Swedish research, you may want to subscribe to Arkiv Digital. This website charges approximately $189 per year.
Then there are many smaller websites to consider. Newspapers.com is a digital newspaper platform that runs around $75 for six months. Fold Three focuses on military records, and costs about $80 per year.
All the above databases are ones that I have used extensively over the years. They are worth their subscription fees. I would recommend subscribing to any of them, depending on the focus of your research.
Subscribing to one or two websites is probably doable for most genealogists. The problem is that each of the websites has its strengths and weaknesses. Once you have delved into one website, you’ll be tempted to add different subscriptions. As you can see from the individual costs, this can quickly add up to thousands of dollars a year.
In addition, having subscriptions to multiple websites can become overwhelming. I have had periods where I subscribed to half a dozen websites at the same time. I ended up getting comfortable with one or two and rarely used the others. Now I routinely subscribe to Ancestry and buy short term subscriptions to others as the need arises.
If I were even more motivated to save money on website subscriptions, Ancestry and My Heritage are both available at many local libraries. Both websites as well as most of the other major paid websites are also available at the local FamilySearch Center. Using these locales is not as convenient as having them on my own computer, but they do provide access at no cost.
Genealogy websites can be expensive, but they provide information that would be difficult, if not impossible, for most genealogists to access elsewhere. With some planning, it’s possible for most of us to use them without spending a fortune.
Carol Stetser
Researcher
Larimer County Genealogical Society