GEDmatch Alternatives: Where You Can Still Upload Your DNA, and Who Can Search It

You tested with AncestryDNA last winter, downloaded your raw data file, and went looking for more cousins. The guides you found said to upload the file to GEDmatch, FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage: three more ponds to fish in, for free.

Then the uploads started failing. MyHeritage sends you to a page selling its own kit. FamilyTreeDNA rejects the file. And the advice you read was written for a market that no longer exists.

The question is no longer which upload site is best. It is which sites will still take your particular file, what each one charges once it has it, and who else can search the database you have just joined.

The short answer. As of 11 October 2026, GEDmatch is free to join and match, publishes upload guides for every major testing company, and offers four privacy settings that decide whether law enforcement can compare against your kit. FamilyTreeDNA takes AncestryDNA, 23andMe and MyHeritage files free and charges $29 to unlock its chromosome tools, but it refuses AncestryDNA results received from October 2025 onwards and MyHeritage tests processed after October 2025. MyHeritage has not accepted uploads since August 2025. 23andMe says it does not accept uploads at all, and we found no upload route on Ancestry's site. Living DNA takes most files and gives a free continental result for a limited time. Check the date your file was processed before you upload anywhere.

The two biggest databases were never open to uploads

The upload sites exist because the two companies most people test with do not let anyone in from outside.

23andMe says so in writing. An editor's note dated 8 July 2024, on 23andMe's own article about raw DNA data, says it does not support uploading DNA data obtained from other testing services to 23andMe. Its reason is security as much as policy. The same article explains that any database accepting uploads lets someone upload a real or fake profile to learn about the people it matches, and concludes that the simplest defence is not to allow uploads for relative matching at all.

Ancestry offers no route that we could find. We looked on 11 October 2026 through Ancestry's privacy statement, its terms and conditions, its legal FAQ and its privacy centre, and searched for an Ancestry help article on uploads, and found no way to upload a file from another company. There is one oddity worth knowing: Ancestry's privacy statement defines its DNA data to include any file containing your DNA data uploaded from another DNA testing service. So the policy language anticipates uploads, but nothing we could find offers one.

Both companies do let you download your own raw data, and that file is what every site below works from. GEDmatch's own guide walks through it for Ancestry: Settings, then Download DNA Data, then a confirmation email, then a zip file in your downloads folder.

Your file's date now matters as much as its company

This is the change most upload guides have not caught up with.

FamilyTreeDNA's help centre says that AncestryDNA and MyHeritage both changed the testing process they use to analyse DNA in September and October 2025, and that the raw data produced since then is not currently compatible with its system. Its list of accepted files is precise:

The same page refuses whole genome sequencing files and any file that has been altered or reformatted from the version the testing company provided. Its FAQ adds a practical trap: Safari can cut a file short while unzipping it, so download the file in another browser if an accepted file will not upload.

One thing we could not establish. GEDmatch's own upload guide for Ancestry, read on 11 October 2026, says nothing about whether files processed since October 2025 are accepted. We found no statement either way. If you tested recently, try the upload and treat a rejection as information about the file, not about you.

GEDmatch is still free, and its settings decide who can find you

GEDmatch was founded in 2010 by Curtis Rogers and John Olson, and Verogen bought it in 2019. Its privacy policy dated 21 October 2025 says it is operated by Verogen, Inc., a subsidiary of Qiagen N.V. Its why-join page says it is free to join and find matches.

How big it is depends on which GEDmatch page you read. The site's own homepage description says it gives free comparison access to more than 1.5 million profiles. Its page for Ancestry testers says both "more than 2 million DNA profiles" and "more than 1.5 million DNA profiles", a few lines apart. Treat either figure as a claim, not a count.

The setting you choose at upload is the decision that matters. GEDmatch's privacy page lists four options:

• Public, opt-in. Your kit is compared with every other kit, including kits law enforcement submits to identify perpetrators of violent crimes. GEDmatch says its operators encourage everybody to choose this.
• Public, opt-out. You still match everyone, including kits used to identify unidentified human remains, but your kit is not compared with law-enforcement kits for violent crimes.
• Personal research. You see your matches, but your kit does not appear in anyone else's match list, including law enforcement's.
• Private. The kit sits in the database and is processed, but no comparison results are shown until you change the setting.

GEDmatch says it started this opt-in policy in May 2019, after the Golden State Killer case showed how its database could be used, and that you can change the setting at any time. It also says the raw file is deleted once your data has been encoded.

Personal research is the setting most people overlook. It lets you fish without being a fish, which suits someone who wants to look for a birth family without being found first. The cost is that cousins who might have contacted you never see you.

FamilyTreeDNA takes a transfer free and charges for the tools

FamilyTreeDNA's transfer page says you can transfer an autosomal result from AncestryDNA, 23andMe or MyHeritage free. The free transfer gives you a list of matches from its database and its Family Finder Matrix, which compares up to ten of your matches against each other at once. A $29 upgrade unlocks the rest: the Chromosome Browser, Chromosome Painter, myOrigins, ancientOrigins, a raw data download and a Y-DNA haplogroup.

The help centre is candid about the trade-off. A transfer may show fewer matches than FamilyTreeDNA's own Family Finder test, mainly among distant matches, because the testing companies cover different parts of the genome.

Law enforcement access is two separate opt-ins. FamilyTreeDNA's privacy statement says law enforcement can see your information only if you have opted in to matching, have also opted in to what it calls Investigative Genetic Genealogy Matching, and match the genetic results uploaded to a law-enforcement account. It also says that opting in extends to searches by its third-party licensees. The switch sits under Privacy & Sharing in your account settings, and it is worth checking before you assume what it is set to.

MyHeritage stopped taking uploads in August 2025

MyHeritage's own blog posts and education articles about uploading now carry the same note at the top: an update from August 2025 saying MyHeritage is not currently accepting DNA uploads. We read it there on 11 October 2026.

That matters because most guides still describe MyHeritage's 2018 policy. From 16 December 2018, uploading was free and DNA matches were free, but tools such as the chromosome browser, shared matches and AutoClusters cost a one-time $29 unlock per kit, unless you held a Premium, PremiumPlus or Complete subscription. Kits uploaded before that date kept every feature free. If you uploaded years ago, your kit may still be there. If you have not, there is currently no way in except MyHeritage's own test, whose page gives a database of 9.6 million.

Living DNA takes almost any file and gives less for it

Living DNA's upload page says it accepts files from AncestryDNA, 23andMe, MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA's Family Finder, among others. Its FAQ says that for a limited time an upload receives a continental ancestry result, with a paid upgrade to the full autosomal results and no option to upgrade to its deep ancestry reports. Matching is through what it calls Family Networks, which you have to opt in to.

For a genealogist the point is the matching, and the site publishes no figure for how many uploads or testers sit in that network. We looked on its upload page and FAQ and found none.

The whole field on one page

Every entry below is what the company says on its own pages, read on 11 October 2026.

How to decide where your file goes

The ranking below is ours, not any company's, so read it as judgement.

Upload to GEDmatch first. It is the free database that publishes upload instructions for every major company, so it is where testers from different companies end up together. Choose the privacy setting before you click upload, not after.

Add FamilyTreeDNA if your file's date allows it. The free transfer is worth having. Pay the $29 only once you have a match whose shared segments you need to see.

Treat Living DNA as an extra, not a substitute. It is the only other current route for a recent file, but it publishes no network size for you to weigh.

Do not wait for MyHeritage. Its note says only that it is not currently accepting uploads, and gives no date for that to change. If a cousin on MyHeritage matters, the only route is its test.

Decide about law enforcement deliberately. It is a real choice with real people on both sides of it, and the defaults are not the same everywhere. Read each site's setting in your own account rather than trusting a guide, including this one.

Whatever you choose, remember that every match is a living person who tested for their own reasons. Our guide to what not to publish about living relatives covers what to do with a match list once you have one.

What KleioBase does with DNA research, and what it does not

Disclosure, since we sell a tool.

KleioBase is an AI research companion that turns scattered historical records into one connected family archive. It does not test DNA, read raw DNA files or match anyone, and nothing on this page is a reason to choose it over the sites above.

Where it fits is the documentary half of DNA research, which is most of the work. A match tells you that you share an ancestor. It does not tell you who. Proving that takes the baptisms, census pages, wills and letters on both sides, and those are what KleioBase is built around. Upload them and the people, dates, places and relationships in each are extracted and linked across every record, so a baptism from a Swedish church book, a household in the 1911 Irish census and the names in an American family Bible become people you can compare, rather than three documents in three folders. You can label anyone with a tag such as "DNA match", and filter for everyone carrying it. The cluster of people around a match is the raw material of FAN club research, the method that turns a vague shared-match list into a hypothesis you can test.

Now the honest limits. Three of them.

It knows nothing about centimorgans. Shared DNA, segments and predicted relationships stay in the testing company's tools. KleioBase holds the documents, not the genetics.

It cannot search any DNA site for you. The Research Companion can search the public web, but not inside GEDmatch, FamilyTreeDNA or anyone else's match list.

A match's tree belongs somewhere separate. If a cousin sends you their GEDCOM, importing it into the same archive as your own research mixes their unproven conclusions with yours. Keep it apart until you have checked it, which is the argument of why two families should never share one archive.

Where to start with the raw file you already have

Find out when your test was processed, because it now decides more than the company does. FamilyTreeDNA's transfer page explains how to identify your file's version from the text file itself.

Download the raw file in Chrome or Firefox rather than Safari, and do not rename or edit it before you upload.

Upload it to GEDmatch, choosing your privacy setting first. If your Ancestry file was processed before October 2025, or your MyHeritage file was processed between March 2019 and October 2025, add the free FamilyTreeDNA transfer as well.

Then write down where you uploaded, when, and under which setting. A year from now, when a match writes to you or a company changes its terms, that note is the only record you will have of what you agreed to.

The people who uploaded early, and chose to be findable, are the reason a stranger's file can still find a grandparent. Every setting on these sites is a decision about whether you will be that person for someone else.