MyHeritage
MyHeritage is a consumer genealogy platform combining online family trees, billions of historical records, cheek-swab DNA testing and AI photo tools that colorize, enhance, animate and narrate old family pictures. A free tier sits alongside paid annual subscriptions.
What is MyHeritage?
MyHeritage is a consumer platform for family history research, published by MyHeritage Ltd., an Israeli company founded in 2003 by Gilad Japhet and based in Or Yehuda. The public website went live in 2005 in six languages and is offered today in around fifty. The company reports 520 employees across Israel, North America and Europe.
Four building blocks sit side by side. The first is an online family tree that anyone can start from a handful of fields, or import as a GEDCOM file, and then share with relatives. The second is a searchable archive: the About page claims 38.6 billion historical records covering civil registration, censuses, immigration, newspapers and other members' trees. The third is a cheek-swab DNA test returning an ethnicity estimate across 2,114 geographic regions, together with DNA Matches to relatives you did not know you had. The fourth is a set of AI tools applied to old photographs.
Matching technology ties the first three together. Smart Matches compare your tree with other members' trees, Record Matches compare it with the archive, and Instant Discoveries can attach a whole branch in a single click; results arrive by email without further effort.
The AI catalogue is unusually wide. Deep Nostalgia animates the faces in a still portrait, LiveMemory turns a photograph into a short video clip, MyHeritage In Color restores colour, Photo Enhancer sharpens, PhotoDater estimates when a picture was taken, and AI Time Machine generates themed portraits. On the text side, DeepStory has an ancestor narrate their own life, AI Biographer drafts a biography, AI Record Finder searches the archive through a chat interface, Scribe AI transcribes and analyses handwritten or printed documents, gravestones and coats of arms, and a chat assistant called GAIA guides the research. The privacy policy names the third parties behind these features, including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Bedrock and Nanoble.
Access runs through the web, iOS and Android apps, and Family Tree Builder, a desktop program. A free Basic plan coexists with seven paid subscription families, all billed annually.
What it does
- Build and share an online family tree, or import an existing GEDCOM file
- Search billions of historical records: civil registration, censuses, immigration files, newspapers
- Receive automatic Smart Matches and Record Matches by email as soon as the tree exists
- Take a cheek-swab DNA test and get an ethnicity estimate across 2,114 geographic regions
- Find previously unknown living relatives through DNA Matches
- Colorize, restore, sharpen, date and animate old family photographs
- Transcribe and analyse handwritten documents, gravestones and coats of arms with Scribe AI
When to use MyHeritage / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if MyHeritage is the right fit.
When to use MyHeritage
- Beginners who want to start a family tree from a handful of names, without any technical skill
- People searching for unknown living relatives through DNA matching or tree-to-tree matching
- Owners of old family photographs who want them colorized, sharpened, dated or animated
- Researchers working with handwritten or printed historical documents, gravestones and coats of arms
- Anyone digging through civil registration, censuses, immigration files or historical newspapers
When not to use MyHeritage
- Police forces and forensic investigators: any law-enforcement use of the DNA services is strictly prohibited without a court order
- Residents of countries excluded from the DNA services, among them Israel, Russia, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, North Korea, Lebanon and Syria
- Children below the minimum age: 13 in general, 14 in Spain, Israel, Canada and South Korea, 16 in California and several US states, 18 for anything involving DNA
- Anyone looking for medical diagnosis: DNA Trait reports are explicitly informational and entertainment-oriented, not diagnostic
- Businesses and developers: the licence covers personal, non-commercial and human use only, and no public API is documented
How to use MyHeritage
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Sign up free from the home page, by email or with an Apple account
- Enter a few details — sex, year of birth, parents' first names — to start the tree
- Or import a GEDCOM file exported from another genealogy program
- Add names, dates, photos and stories, then invite relatives to the family site
- Let the matching run: Smart Matches and Record Matches arrive by email
- Search the archive by name, or question AI Record Finder in a chat interface
- Upload old photographs to colorize, sharpen, date or animate them
- Order a DNA kit, take the cheek swab and send it back to the laboratory
- Review the ethnicity estimate and the DNA Matches once results come in
- Adjust privacy settings at any time: Smart Matching, DNA Matching, Photo Tagger consent
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Rare functional breadth: tree, archive, DNA and AI photo work inside a single subscription
- Very large record and profile volumes, with exclusive content claimed by the publisher
- Matching keeps working in the background: discoveries arrive by email without further effort
- Unusually firm privacy commitments: no sale or licensing of personal or genetic data, no insurers, no employers, no police use
- Data deletion at any time, permanent and irreversible, DNA and health data included
- Named subprocessors: the privacy policy lists them one by one, third-party AI vendors included
- Very low barrier to entry, an interface in around fifty languages and phone support in seventeen
Cons
- Prices are unreadable without JavaScript: the price list is a client-side application and amounts vary by country and currency
- Seven paid subscription families (Premium, PremiumPlus, Data, Complete, Omni, Photo/Reimagine, OldNews.com Pro) make the offer hard to compare
- Subscriptions renew automatically by default and must be stopped at least one day before the term ends
- The free trial requires payment details and rolls over into a paid annual subscription on its own
- All data sits in United States data centres, DNA samples included, for an Israeli publisher
- No support email address, no published Data Processing Agreement and no dedicated subprocessor page
- Heavy geographic restrictions on DNA services and paid plans, and no documented public API
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan, named Basic, is available. Paid subscriptions are billed annually, and their amounts are published only through a JavaScript-rendered price list that is localised by country and currency, so no universal entry price can be quoted. On the DNA page served to a European visitor on 11 August 2026, the Complete subscription was listed at 299 CHF per year, reduced to 179 CHF for the first year, and the MyHeritage DNA kit at 89 CHF, promoted at 19.90 CHF plus shipping. A free trial is offered, and subscriptions carry a thirty-day money-back guarantee.
- Basic — free family site plan
- Premium — paid subscription
- PremiumPlus — paid subscription
- Data — paid subscription
- record access
- Complete — top paid subscription
- listed at 299 CHF per year
- 179 CHF for the first year on the European display consulted
- renewing annually
- Omni — paid subscription
- Photo/Reimagine — paid subscription
- OldNews.com Pro — paid subscription on the OldNews.com site
- MyHeritage DNA kit — sold separately
- listed at 89 CHF and promoted at 19.90 CHF plus shipping
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how MyHeritage handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR compliance is claimed in so many words: the privacy policy, last updated on 1 June 2026, states that MyHeritage has taken steps to ensure compliance with all applicable privacy laws, including the GDPR. Concrete details back it up. A Data Protection Officer answers at dpo@myheritage.com, alongside a dedicated privacy@myheritage.com address, and Evgeny Inberg is named as the company's legal representative in the European Union — the same person also acts as its Digital Services Act representative. Rights listed for the European Economic Area cover access, objection to legitimate-interest processing, portability, rectification, restriction, withdrawal of consent and erasure, with a right to complain to a supervisory authority in the EEA and the United Kingdom. Transfers outside the EU rely on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.
Who owns the data?
Members keep control of what they upload. MyHeritage states it has never sold or licensed personal, genetic or health data and will never do so without explicit consent, and never passes data to insurers or employers. Content posted on the site, DNA excepted, carries a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence for MyHeritage to host, display, process, transfer and distribute it; DNA samples and results carry a comparable licence limited to what is strictly necessary. Deletion is available at any time and is permanent and irreversible, covering trees, family sites, DNA and health data — although copies already shared with other members, and backup copies, may survive for a limited period.
Reuse rights
The licence granted to members is deliberately narrow: the service and the website may be used for personal, non-commercial and human use only, and no commercial use is allowed. The terms explicitly forbid using any content, data or information taken from the site or the service to train, develop, improve or operate an artificial intelligence model, a machine-learning system or a large language model. Breaching the licence can lead to immediate termination of membership, deletion of the account and legal action. Partner programs that consume MyHeritage matching technology — RootsMagic, Family Historian and Coret Genealogie — receive data only to compute matches: it is never displayed publicly, never sold or licensed, and it is deleted automatically once the matches have been calculated.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Personal and genetic information is transferred to, processed in and stored in MyHeritage data centres located in the United States, and DNA samples are stored there as well, at the Gene by Gene laboratory in Texas. Cloud services are provided mainly by Amazon and Google Cloud. Transfers are said to be restricted to countries recognised as offering adequate legal protection, or covered by alternative safeguards, with the European Commission's standard contractual clauses relied on in particular. On the security side, the publisher describes periodic reviews of its practices, commissioned penetration tests, access limited to authorised staff, and security requirements imposed on the laboratories and third parties it works with, along with breach notification where applicable law requires it. The domain itself is fronted by an Imperva anycast address, which describes network infrastructure and says nothing about where data actually lives.
Where MyHeritage works
Country-level availability.
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting MyHeritage.
- Every subscription renews automatically; cancellation must be requested at least one day before the current term ends, from the My Purchases page or by phone
- The free trial requires payment details and converts on its own into a paid annual subscription when it expires
- Displayed prices depend on the country and currency, may change over time, and can attract additional taxes and customs charges
- Smart Matches are enabled by default: other members, including users of MyHeritage partner programs, may receive matches involving living people in your tree — the setting can be turned off
- DNA Matches can reveal unexpected family connections, or contradict relationships already recorded in the tree; this cannot be undone once seen
- Photo Tagger creates facial recognition models, that is biometric data; it is off by default and requires explicit consent, and downloading your DNA results takes them outside MyHeritage protection
- United States customers are bound by a mandatory arbitration clause and a class action waiver, with a thirty-day opt-out window at opt-out@myheritage.com
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low. Signing up takes an email address or an Apple account, and the tree starts from a few fields — sex, year of birth, parents' first names. Anyone arriving from another program can import a GEDCOM file instead. Nothing has to be installed: Family Tree Builder on the desktop and the mobile apps are optional and sync with the online tree. The only physical step is the DNA test, which means ordering a kit, taking a cheek swab and posting it back to the laboratory. No API or technical integration has to be configured.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind MyHeritage
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Can MyHeritage be used for free?
How much does a subscription cost?
Is there a free trial?
Where is my data hosted?
Does MyHeritage sell genetic data?
Can law enforcement use the DNA database?
What is the minimum age?
Can I delete my data?
Which AI features are included?
Which devices are supported?
Should you pick MyHeritage?
MyHeritage is one of the few genealogy services that puts four different products under one roof: an online family tree, an archive of billions of historical records, a consumer DNA test and a workshop of AI tools for old photographs. Founded in 2003 and publishing since 2005, it has the depth that comes with age — matching technology that keeps searching in the background, an interface in around fifty languages, and phone support in seventeen.
What stands out on reading the legal documents is how explicit the privacy commitments are. MyHeritage states plainly that it has never sold or licensed personal, genetic or health data, that it will never hand data to an insurer or an employer, and that law-enforcement use of the DNA services is prohibited without a court order. It names its subprocessors one by one, third-party AI vendors included, and it lets members delete everything, permanently, at any time.
The reservations are practical rather than ethical. Prices are invisible without JavaScript and change with the visitor's country, which makes the seven paid subscription families genuinely hard to compare. Renewal is automatic and the free trial requires payment details before it starts. All data, DNA samples included, sits in United States data centres. There is no support email address, no published Data Processing Agreement, and long lists of countries where the DNA services or the paid plans simply are not sold.
For anyone curious about their own family history, and for archivists, historians, journalists and genealogy professionals who need old documents transcribed and old photographs restored, the platform earns its place. Read the price list from your own country before subscribing, and set the privacy options — Smart Matching, DNA Matching, Photo Tagger — before uploading anything sensitive.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.