Free Family History Websites

These free genealogy websites will help you save time and money.

  • FreeBMD
    Provides free access to births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales. There are currently over 235,000,000 records and growing. You’ll find records from 1837-1983, but not all available BMDs have been transcribed yet.
  • FamilySearch
    This is the biggest free family history website, by far. The coverage is worldwide, and includes births, marriages, deaths and parish records. There is also the facility to build your family tree online. Although FamilySearch has millions and millions of records, it’s not the most accurate website. You should always try to verify the data you find.
  • FreeCEN
    Provides free England and Wales census records from 1841-1891. There are two more recent censuses from 1901 and 1911 which aren’t available here.
  • FreeREG
    Free parish register website which currently has 4,439,645 marriages, 13,430,998 baptisms and 9,266,754 burials from around the UK
  • GENUKI
    UK & Ireland genealogy website. It’s not search engine where you can find individuals, but rather a portal to records available on other sites. It’s a great free resource which has links to each county and city of the UK and Ireland.
  • Online Parish Clerks – These are volunteer websites that transcribe parish records and put them online. These are some OPC projects from different English counties, and they’re all free of charge.
  • RootsChat
    The best family history and genealogy forum online. Although it’s not possible to search for individual names or records, it’s possible to search for other free resources. It’s also great for asking for help with your research if you can’t find what you’re looking for.
  • Ireland Genealogy Projects
    Here you will find listings of all the Irish counties and many links to free records available in each.
  • FreeCen Scotland
    Some free Scottish census records from 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871.