KleioBase vs Clooz: Two Answers to the Same Question

Of everything on this site, this is the comparison where two products are genuinely trying to do the same thing. Clooz's own tagline is "connecting people through documents." That is an accurate description of what we built, which is not a coincidence so much as evidence that the problem is real and more than one person noticed it.

The short answer. Both exist because a family tree program stores conclusions and nothing stores the evidence underneath them properly. Clooz solves that with structure and discipline: over 230 document templates you fill in yourself, indexed so you can cross-reference names against documents and analyse them in a hierarchical Composite View. KleioBase solves it with automation: the same structured model, populated from a GEDCOM or from documents read for you, with the cross-referencing, contradiction-finding and gap-detection performed rather than enabled. Clooz gives you a better microscope. We try to tell you what we saw through it.

They share a diagnosis almost nobody else makes

Most genealogy software is built around the tree, which is a store of conclusions. Ancestry, MyHeritage, RootsMagic, Gramps: all of them are fundamentally about the shape of the family, with sources attached to the conclusions as citations.

Clooz and KleioBase both start from the observation that this is backwards. The tree is the output. The evidence is the thing, and it is messy: one document mentions nine people, four of whom you cannot place, and a name spelled a way you have not seen before. If you record only your conclusion, you throw away the material that would let you revise it later.

So both products build a layer under the tree where documents and the claims inside them live in their own right. Clooz then exports the resolved people and events to your tree program. We keep the archive and let you export GEDCOM. A shared idea of where evidence belongs, with a very different division of labour: Clooz gives you the index to cross-check by hand, and KleioBase runs the cross-checking itself.

The difference is who does the work

This is the whole comparison, and it cuts both ways.

Clooz is manual and precise. You choose the template matching your document type, from a library of more than 230, and you enter what the document says. Nobody is guessing. Every field in your archive is there because you read the document and typed it. For a researcher who distrusts automation, that is not a cost, it is the point, and it produces an archive with no machine-introduced errors in it at all.

KleioBase is automated and reviewed. Data arrives either from a GEDCOM import or from documents that are read and translated for you, and the extracted people, dates, places and relationships are presented for your confirmation before they enter the archive. Then the analysis runs on its own: people matched across every source, duplicates flagged, conflicting evidence raised as a conflict, missing generations named as gaps.

The honest trade is exactly this. Clooz's entry burden is real and it scales linearly with your document count. Our automation is fast and it is not perfect, which is why nothing enters your archive unconfirmed. Pick the failure mode you would rather manage: hours of typing, or reviewing machine output.

Analysis you perform versus analysis performed for you

Clooz's Composite View lays your indexed information out hierarchically so you can see what you have about a person and reason about it. That is a real analytical aid and it respects the researcher: the tool arranges, you conclude.

Our position is more opinionated, and reasonable people dislike it. We will tell you that two profiles look like the same person, that three sources disagree about a birth year, and that a generation appears to be missing. Those are assertions, they are sometimes wrong, and every one is presented as a prompt to check rather than a fact to accept.

Which you prefer is a genuine question about method, not a feature gap. A researcher trained in professional standards may well want a tool that never volunteers a conclusion.

Side by side

On price we are not quoting a figure for Clooz. Their site directs purchases to a separate shop and lists no tiers on the main pages, so get the current number from them rather than from us. They offer a two-week free trial with full capabilities.

When Clooz is the better answer

You want no machine between you and the evidence. Every fact typed by you, from the document, with no extraction to audit. That is a defensible and rigorous way to work.

You prefer a one-time purchase and local data. Desktop software you own, files on your own disk, nothing that stops working when a subscription lapses.

You already have a tree program you like. Clooz is designed to sit beside RootsMagic or Legacy rather than replace them. We are more of a whole environment, which is a bigger commitment.

Your documents are already legible and in your language. Our reading and translation is worth nothing to you, and you would be paying for it.

You want the analysis to stay yours. If a tool suggesting conclusions feels like a contamination of method, that is a coherent position and Clooz respects it.

What KleioBase does instead, and what it does not

We are a tool in this space, so read this as disclosure rather than neutral assessment.

KleioBase collapses the entry step and then keeps going. Import a GEDCOM and the analysis runs immediately with no documents at all: duplicates across the tree, contradictory dates raised as conflicts, missing generations flagged, a health score for how complete and connected the tree is, and a companion that answers plain-language questions about the whole archive. Add documents and they are read and translated on the way in, joining the same analysis rather than sitting as attachments. Likely duplicates go to a deliberate merge step rather than being merged silently.

Now the honest limits.

Extraction is not perfect and it is a step Clooz does not have. Everything is shown for confirmation, but confirming is still work, and a misread you approve is in your archive.

Your data is hosted, not local. GEDCOM export exists and we do not hold it hostage, but it is not a file on your disk by default.

Subscription, not a purchase. If it lapses you lose access to the environment. Clooz's model does not have that shape.

Fewer document templates. Clooz's 230-plus templates encode a great deal of specific knowledge about what particular document types contain. Our extraction is general rather than template-driven, which is more flexible and less precise about the expected fields of a named record type.

Where to start if you are choosing

Take ten documents you have already fully read and understood, and try to get them into both. Clooz has a two-week trial with full capabilities and we have a free tier.

Time the entry honestly. If ten documents take you an hour in Clooz and you have four hundred, you now know what that decision costs in evenings. If our extraction needs heavy correction on your particular material, you know that too, and it is better to find out on ten documents than on four hundred.

Then ask the question that actually decides it: when you looked at those ten documents laid out, did you want a tool that arranged them, or one that told you what it thought they meant? There is no correct answer, but there is one that matches how you like to work.