Free genealogy websites
The free sites that do real work for UK family history: FreeBMD, FreeCEN, FreeREG, FamilySearch, The National Archives' Discovery, GENUKI, Find a Grave and the Irish and Scottish free indexes, with what each is good for.
A surprising amount of British family history can be done without paying anyone. The free sites below are not cut-down versions of the paid ones; several hold records the subscription sites don't, and the volunteer transcriptions are often more accurate. Use them first, and pay only when you've run out of free road.
The core five
| FreeBMD | Volunteer transcription of the GRO birth, marriage and death indexes for England and Wales, 1837 to the 1990s. The best tool for finding a marriage (search both parties, match the page reference) and for listing a couple's children. Sister sites FreeCEN (census transcriptions, best for 1841-1871 and Scotland) and FreeREG (parish register transcriptions, growing every month). |
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| GRO online index | The General Register Office's own index at gro.gov.uk: births 1837-1934 with the mother's maiden name for every year, deaths 1837-1957 with age at death. Free account needed. Order PDFs of entries cheaply from the same site. |
| FamilySearch | The Latter-day Saints' site: indexes to every English and Welsh census 1841-1911, the old IGI parish register extracts plus millions of newer indexed and imaged registers, Scottish OPR indexes, probate indexes, and a huge catalogue of microfilmed records now viewable online (some only at a FamilySearch centre or affiliate library). Free account needed. Ignore the shared tree unless you've checked it. |
| The National Archives: Discovery | The catalogue of TNA and most UK archives. Search a name to find wills (PCC), medal cards, naval and RAF records, naturalisation papers and more, with many documents downloadable for a small fee or free. The research guides are the best plain-English explanation of every record type. |
| GENUKI | Not records but the essential gazetteer: every parish in the British Isles with its history, neighbouring parishes, which record office holds its registers, and links to every online source. Use it to find out where to look before you look. |
Also free and worth knowing
- Find a Grave and BillionGraves: photographed gravestones with transcriptions; patchy but growing. Deceased Online and local council sites cover some cemetery registers.
- Probate: Find a Will (probatesearch.service.gov.uk): the Probate Calendar 1858 to today, free to search. See wills and probate.
- CWGC (cwgc.org): every Commonwealth serviceman and woman who died in the two world wars.
- ScotlandsPeople indexes (images paid) and irishgenealogy.ie and the Irish 1901/1911 census (fully free). See Scottish and Irish ancestry.
- Online Parish Clerks for Cornwall, Lancashire, Kent, Essex, Sussex, Warwickshire and others: volunteer transcriptions by parish.
- UKBMD: links to local register office indexes, some more detailed than the GRO's.
- National Library of Scotland maps (maps.nls.uk): Ordnance Survey maps of all Britain, free, for finding the farm or the street.
- Welsh Newspapers Online (National Library of Wales, free to 1919), and library access to the British Newspaper Archive.
- Family history society free indexes, and the Society of Genealogists catalogue.
Free access to the paid sites
Most public libraries and county record offices provide Ancestry Library Edition and often Findmypast free on their computers, and some let members use them from home. The National Archives at Kew gives free access to its own digitised records on site. FamilySearch centres offer free access to several commercial sites. Before paying a subscription for a few census images, check your library card.
What free sites can't do
They rarely have the 1921 census (Findmypast only), the full original images for every census year, or the hint-matching and tree-building tools that make the paid sites convenient. They also don't do the thinking: a free index is only useful if you know what you're looking for, which is what the record guides are for. When you reach the limit, the comparison of paid sites explains which one to try.