Ancestry vs MyHeritage: Which Subscription Fits Your Family?

We do not sell a records subscription and we are not an option in this comparison, which is the only reason it is worth reading here. What follows is an attempt to answer the question properly rather than to steer you.

The short answer. Choose on geography first, because that is where the real difference lives: Ancestry is deeper for the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and Australia, while MyHeritage is stronger across continental Europe and Israel. Then read MyHeritage's plan structure carefully, because its Premium tiers do not include historical records at all - that is the separate Data plan, and Complete is the one that bundles both. Most people who feel cheated by MyHeritage bought Premium and expected records.

The plan structure is where MyHeritage catches people

This deserves to come before coverage, because it costs people money every week.

MyHeritage splits its subscriptions into two different things that sound like one thing:

Family site plans govern your tree. The free tier caps you at 250 people. Premium raises that to 2,500 and adds Smart Matches. PremiumPlus makes the tree unlimited. None of these give you the historical record collection.

The Data plan gives you the search engine and Record Matches across the full historical archive. It is the records subscription. Confusingly, it leaves your tree capped at 250 people, the same as free.

Complete bundles PremiumPlus and Data together, and adds the photo tools such as colourisation and animation. Omni sits above it and adds access to OldNews.com newspapers.

So the plan that behaves the way most people assume a genealogy subscription behaves is Complete, not Premium. If you buy Premium expecting to search records, you will have bought a tree host.

Ancestry's structure is simpler and its gate is geographic rather than functional. Building a tree is free and unlimited. Records sit behind the subscription, and the tier you pick determines which countries you can see: a cheaper domestic tier, a more expensive worldwide tier. In the UK the tiers run along similar lines, with UK-only records at one price and UK plus Ireland at another.

On actual numbers, we are going to be unhelpful on purpose. Published figures for both services move constantly, third-party sources contradict each other, and both companies run promotions steep enough that the list price is close to fictional for a new customer. MyHeritage discounts hard around Black Friday; Ancestry runs regular half-price bundles. Get current figures from each site, in your own currency, and check what the renewal price is rather than the first-year price. The renewal is the real cost.

Coverage is the decision that actually matters

Subscription cost differences are small. Having the records or not having them is total.

Ancestry is generally the deeper archive for North America and the anglophone world. US federal censuses, vital records, military and immigration collections, UK and Irish parish and civil registration, Canadian and Australian records. If your research is in those geographies, this is usually the stronger collection.

MyHeritage advertises a very large record count, with its own help documentation citing more than 30 billion historical records and its marketing material citing higher figures. Treat any single number sceptically, including those, because record counting methodology varies wildly between vendors and nobody audits it. The more useful fact is the shape of the collection: MyHeritage has invested heavily in continental Europe, has meaningful central and eastern European holdings, and is the stronger of the two for Israel. It also holds a large number of user-contributed family trees, which are leads rather than evidence.

The generalisations above break down at parish level, which is the level you actually research at. Both sites publish a searchable card catalogue. Before you pay either of them, search that catalogue for the specific counties, provinces or towns you need and see what exists. Ten minutes there beats any comparison article, this one included.

Smart Matches and Hints are the same idea with different risks

Both platforms automatically suggest records and trees that might match people in your tree. Ancestry calls them Hints, MyHeritage calls them Record Matches and Smart Matches.

Both are genuinely useful and both carry the same hazard: a suggestion is a hypothesis, not a finding. Smart Matches in particular often connect you to another user's tree, and other people's trees propagate errors at speed. A confident-looking match to a tree with no sources attached is worth exactly as much as the sources behind it, which is nothing.

Accepting hints uncritically is the single most common way a family tree becomes quietly wrong, and it is wrong in the worst way: it looks finished.

Side by side

How to choose without overpaying

Start with the card catalogue, not the price. Search both for your specific localities. Whichever has the records you need is the correct answer regardless of cost.

If it is North America or the British Isles, lean Ancestry. If it is central Europe, eastern Europe or Israel, lean MyHeritage.

On MyHeritage, budget for Complete. Anything less and you are buying half the product.

Never pay the renewal rate without checking. Both platforms discount new customers heavily and renew at list. Diary the renewal date the day you subscribe.

Run them one at a time. Subscribe, work that platform hard for a few months, cancel, switch. Parallel subscriptions mostly waste money because you rarely have time to exhaust both at once.

Treat DNA as a separate decision. Both sell tests. Ancestry's database is larger, which matters for finding matches; MyHeritage's kit is usually cheaper and accepts uploads from other services, which can be the better value if you have already tested elsewhere.

One disclosure, and the thing neither of them does

We make KleioBase, so you should know that before reading the next paragraph. It is not a competitor to either platform and nothing above was written to lead here.

The gap both share is analytical rather than archival. Both will hand you matches and hints; neither will tell you that two people in your own tree are the same person, that three of your sources disagree about a birth year, or which generation is missing from a line. Their intelligence points outward at their collections. Nothing in either points inward at the evidence you have already gathered, which is where most long-running research actually gets stuck. Our comparison with Ancestry covers where that boundary sits.

That aside, the decision on this page is between Ancestry and MyHeritage, and for most researchers the answer is determined by a map rather than by a feature list.

Where to start this week

Open both card catalogues in two tabs. Search each for the exact county, province or parish where your brick wall sits. Write down which collections exist on which platform and what years they cover.

If one clearly holds the records and the other does not, you are finished and you have saved yourself a subscription. If both hold something, take the free trial on the cheaper one first and spend it entirely on that one locality. The broader landscape guide covers where the desktop programs and the free options fit around whichever you choose.