# KleioBase vs Goldie May: Two Halves of Research Intelligence

Goldie May tracks the search: where you looked, what you cited. KleioBase reasons over what you found: who these people are, what contradicts what, what is missing. Same shelf, opposite halves.

Claims about Goldie May last verified 2026-09-28.


A research log answers the question "where have I already looked?" An evidence archive answers the question "what do these documents actually say, and about whom?" Those are both real questions, they are both underserved by the main genealogy platforms, and they are not the same question.

**The short answer.** Both of these are research-intelligence tools for the same person: the serious genealogist who already pays for a records subscription and wants something smarter on top. They split the work cleanly. Goldie May is intelligence about the *search* - where you looked, what you cited, which locality resources to try next. KleioBase is intelligence about the *archive* - who these people actually are across every source, which profiles are the same person, which evidence contradicts which, what is missing. Neither replaces the other and the pairing is coherent.

## Reading a document is an input, not the product

Worth stating plainly, because the shape of this comparison hides it: KleioBase is not a transcription tool. Transcription is one of two ways to get data in. The other is a GEDCOM import, and a researcher who imports a tree and never uploads a single scan still gets the whole product - duplicate detection across the tree, conflicting dates surfaced as conflicts rather than silently overwritten, missing generations flagged as gaps, a tree health score, and a companion that can be questioned about the whole archive in plain language.

That is the product. The reading step exists so that documents can join the same analysis, not because text is the deliverable.

## What Goldie May actually does

Goldie May is software-as-a-service delivered as a browser add-on for Chrome, Edge and other Chromium browsers, and for Firefox, with your data held online rather than locally.

Its research log will record any page on the internet, with particular support for FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, Findmypast, Find a Grave, BillionGraves and Google. Citations are generated automatically for FamilySearch and Ancestry records. There is a timeline view, locality research that links out to catalogues at FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, Findmypast and WorldCat, and country-specific research hints covering roughly twenty-five countries. Project logs export to CSV with URL, title, date and fields, though screenshots are not included in the export.

The thing it is best at is the thing genealogists are worst at: recording the searches that found nothing. That is [negative evidence](/what-is/negative-evidence), it is methodologically essential, and almost nobody logs it by hand with any consistency because it feels like recording a failure. A tool that captures it passively as you browse is solving a real discipline problem.

A few constraints worth knowing before you commit. It requires a FamilySearch login, and full functionality assumes you are working from a FamilySearch tree. There is no mobile support, on iPhone, iPad or Android. Safari is under consideration rather than committed. There is no family tree of its own and no import path from desktop software such as RootsMagic or Family Tree Maker, beyond a workaround if your desktop program syncs to a private Ancestry tree. There is also no free trial; the suggested approach is to pay for a month and cancel immediately to stop renewal.

On pricing, we are deliberately not quoting a figure. Goldie May describes itself as freemium with free features that stay free, names a Pro tier, and offers a student discount, but the numbers circulating in third-party reviews are several years old and we could not confirm current rates at the time of checking. Get them from Goldie May directly.

## The two tools sit on opposite sides of the moment you find something

This is the cleanest way to see why there is so little overlap.

Goldie May lives in the browser, during the search. It watches where you go, notes what you checked, and builds the citation at the moment you find a record. Its output is a log: a record of process.

KleioBase starts after that. It works on what you ended up with, from any source, and turns the whole collection into one analysed body of evidence: people reconciled across sources, contradictions raised as contradictions, gaps named as gaps, the lot questionable in plain language. Its output is a set of findings about your family, not a record of your process.

You can want both. Most serious researchers probably should want both.

## Side by side

| | Goldie May | KleioBase |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Core job | Logging searches and generating citations | Reading records and linking people |
| Delivery | Browser extension | Web application |
| Transcription | No | Yes |
| Translation | No | Yes |
| Logs searches that found nothing | Yes, passively as you browse | Yes, entered by hand on the person as [negative evidence](/docs/negative-evidence) |
| Citations from repository records | Automatic for FamilySearch and Ancestry | Provenance recorded per record you add |
| Works with documents from outside the web | Not its purpose | Yes, this is the primary input |
| Cross-document person linking | No | Yes, with duplicate detection |
| FamilySearch account required | Yes | No |
| Mobile | No | Yes |

## When Goldie May is the better answer

**You lose track of where you have searched.** This is its core competence and it is a genuine methodological gap in most people's practice.

**You work primarily inside FamilySearch.** The integration is deep and the tool assumes that workflow.

**You need citations generated as you browse.** Automatic citation from FamilySearch and Ancestry records at the moment of discovery saves real time and real errors.

**You are doing locality research.** The catalogue links and country hints are a curated shortcut through resources that are otherwise scattered.

**Your records are already legible to you.** If everything you work with is indexed, in English, and readable, the reading problem we solve does not exist for you and you should not pay us to solve it.

## What KleioBase does instead, and what it does not

We are a tool in this space, so read this as disclosure.

KleioBase assumes the hard part is the documents. You add a record, from anywhere, in any of a wide range of languages and scripts, and it is transcribed in the original language, translated to English, and parsed into people, dates, places and relationships. Those people are matched against your existing archive, so the same ancestor across five documents becomes one profile with five sources rather than five disconnected files. Duplicates are flagged, gaps in a line surface as gaps, and the whole archive can be questioned in plain language. For professionals, [workspaces](/docs/workspaces) keep each client's research separate.

Now the honest limits.

**No passive search logging.** We do not watch your browser. You can record a search that returned nothing as [negative evidence](/docs/negative-evidence) on the person, but you write that entry yourself. If you want that discipline automated, we are not the answer and Goldie May is.

**No automatic citation from repository pages.** We record the provenance of records you add. We do not generate a formatted citation at the moment you find something on Ancestry.

**No built-in locality guides, and no record collection.** There is no curated catalogue of repositories per parish inside the product, and no corpus of record images. The Research Companion can search the public web for where a missing record is likely kept and link you to what it finds, but it cannot sign in to a subscription site and search it for you, so the retrieval is still yours to do.

## Where to start this week

Look at your last month of research and ask which failure is costing you more.

If you re-searched a collection you had already exhausted, or could not reconstruct for a client report which repositories you had covered, the gap is process and a research log fixes it.

If you have documents you have not opened in months because reading them is a whole evening's work, or you are not confident that two profiles in your tree are really two people, the gap is evidence and a log will not close it.

Most researchers, honestly, have both gaps. The two tools cost different money and solve different halves, and neither vendor benefits from pretending otherwise.

Canonical: https://kleiobase.com/compare/kleiobase-vs-goldie-may