This comparison has a narrower answer than most, and the narrowness is the useful part. For a large share of researchers the correct choice is simply FamilySearch, because it is free and holds a great deal of what MyHeritage holds. For a specific and identifiable group, MyHeritage is worth real money.
The short answer. Use FamilySearch as the default, since it costs nothing and its global coverage is unmatched. Pay MyHeritage if your research is in continental Europe, especially central and eastern Europe, or in Israel, where its indexed collections and its name-matching across language and alphabet boundaries are genuinely better. If you do pay, buy Complete, not Premium: Premium contains no historical records at all.
The difference is usually indexing, not possession
This is the most misunderstood thing about the two, and understanding it will save you money.
FamilySearch has spent decades microfilming parish registers and civil records across Europe. In many cases both platforms are working from the same original books. The question is not who has the record; it is whether you can find it by typing a name.
A browse-only FamilySearch collection means the images exist and you page through them by eye, knowing the parish and the approximate year. An indexed MyHeritage collection means you type a surname and get hits. When the record you need is in a browse-only series and you do not know the exact parish, that difference is the difference between finding your ancestor and not.
Two things are narrowing this gap. FamilySearch's full-text search now reads handwriting across nearly two billion images and makes previously unindexed collections searchable, and it is expanding beyond its initial English, Spanish and Portuguese coverage. That will progressively erode the indexing advantage, language by language. Check the current coverage for your language before assuming you need to pay.
Where MyHeritage is genuinely stronger
Central and eastern Europe. Poland, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, the former Habsburg and Russian imperial territories. MyHeritage has invested here in a way the anglophone-focused platforms have not.
Israel and Jewish genealogy. Significant holdings and, more importantly, matching that copes with the reality of Jewish records: the same person recorded in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, Polish and German, under names that are not transliterations of each other so much as different names. If you have ever tried to link a Chaim to a Herman to an Efim and known all three were one man, you know why this matters.
Name matching across alphabets. MyHeritage's search handles spelling variation and transliteration more tolerantly than most, which is the central practical problem in European research.
Its own family trees. A very large body of user-submitted trees, which are leads rather than evidence, and should be treated with the scepticism any unsourced tree deserves.
Against that, FamilySearch's reach into countries with no commercial digitisation market remains unmatched, and it continues to expand into regions the paid platforms ignore entirely.
Buy the right plan or do not bother
Worth repeating because it is the most common billing mistake in this corner of the market.
MyHeritage separates family site plans from the Data plan. Premium and PremiumPlus are site plans: they raise your tree size cap and enable Smart Matches. They contain no historical records. The Data plan is the records subscription, and on its own it leaves your tree capped at 250 people, the same as the free tier. Complete is the bundle of both, and Omni adds newspaper access on top.
If you subscribe to Premium expecting to search European parish records, you have bought a tree host and you will be annoyed.
We are not quoting prices. Published figures conflict across sources, promotional discounting is aggressive and seasonal, and the renewal rate is usually well above the first-year rate. Get the numbers from MyHeritage directly, in your currency, and note the renewal date when you subscribe.
Side by side
| MyHeritage | FamilySearch | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Subscription, plan structure splits tree from records | Free |
| Tree model | Your own private family site | One shared tree, anyone edits |
| Continental Europe | Strong, well indexed | Extensive holdings, indexing uneven |
| Israel and Jewish records | Strong | Present but less indexed |
| Global reach beyond Europe | Moderate | Unmatched, including under-served countries |
| Full-text handwriting search | On its collections | Nearly two billion images, expanding by language |
| DNA | Yes, accepts uploads from other tests | None |
| Access restrictions | Paywall | Some images only at Family History Centres |
How to decide without guessing
Search FamilySearch first, thoroughly. Include its full-text search, not just the name index. Most people have not tried it and it reaches inside documents that were never indexed.
Identify whether your gap is possession or indexing. If FamilySearch has the parish as browse-only images and you know the parish and approximate year, you can work through it for free. If you do not know the parish, an indexed search is worth paying for.
Check your local Family History Centre. Restricted images are often viewable there at no cost, which sometimes removes the reason to subscribe.
If you subscribe, buy Complete and use it hard for three months. Concentrated effort on one platform beats a year of occasional logins, and you can cancel.
Treat other people's trees as leads. On both platforms. An unsourced tree is a hypothesis wearing a confident face.
One disclosure, and what neither solves
We make KleioBase. It is not a records platform, it is not in this comparison, and nothing above was shaped to lead here.
The shared gap is worth naming because it hits European research hardest. Both platforms give you an image and, at best, an index entry, and their matching points at their own collections rather than at your evidence. European research produces a particular mess: one ancestor recorded in Latin, Kurrent, Cyrillic and Hebrew under names that are not transliterations of one another, across documents from four sources. Deciding how many people that actually is, and which record disagrees with which, is analysis neither platform performs on your own material. We cover the script side for German records, but the analysis is the harder half and it is a different problem from the one this page is about.
Where to start
Take your hardest European line and spend an evening on FamilySearch alone, using both the name index and the full-text search, and note precisely what you could not find and why.
If the answer is "the records are there but browse-only and I do not know the parish", a MyHeritage Complete trial aimed at that one line is a rational purchase. If the answer is "the records do not appear to exist digitally at all", no subscription fixes that, and your next step is the archive that holds the originals rather than another platform.
Frequently asked questions
- Is MyHeritage worth paying for when FamilySearch is free?
- It depends almost entirely on geography. For continental Europe, particularly central and eastern Europe, and for Israel, MyHeritage often holds indexed collections that FamilySearch has only as unindexed images or not at all. Outside those regions the case is much weaker.
- Which MyHeritage plan includes historical records?
- The Data plan, or the Complete plan which bundles Data with PremiumPlus. Premium and PremiumPlus on their own are family-site plans governing tree size and Smart Matches, and do not include the record collection.
- Does FamilySearch have European records?
- Extensively, and often the same underlying parish registers. The difference is frequently indexing rather than possession: FamilySearch may hold the images browse-only while MyHeritage has them searchable by name. Its full-text search is closing that gap but does not yet cover every language.
- Can I keep my tree private on MyHeritage?
- Yes. MyHeritage gives you your own family site that you control, unlike FamilySearch's single shared tree that any registered user can edit. For researchers who dislike the collaborative model, that alone is a reason to prefer it.
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