Genealogy has become a large digital research field, combining historic records, collaborative family trees, DNA databases, and national archives. The figures below show the scale reported by FamilySearch, MyHeritage, Ancestry, and the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Dates and geography matter: some numbers describe current platform totals, while others are historical milestones or future digitization targets.
Contents
- Online genealogy records
- Family trees and research participation
- DNA genealogy statistics
- FamilySearch scale and reach
- MyHeritage platform statistics
- Ancestry statistics over time
- U.S. archives and census research
Online genealogy records
The largest genealogy services measure their collections in billions of records, names, images, and sources. Those measures are not interchangeable: a single historical record may contain several names, and a digital image is not necessarily an indexed record. Even so, the totals illustrate the volume available to researchers.
FamilySearch Company Facts reports 16.93 billion searchable names in historical records, 5.81 billion digital images published, and 656,467 digital books online. The same source reports 4.03 billion sources in the Family Tree and 1.86 billion people in that tree. These figures describe different parts of the service: historical records, digitized books, and the collaborative tree should not be added together as though they were one collection.
FamilySearch also reports records and images from more than 170 countries and principalities in 2024. Its 2024 Genealogy Highlights says that more than 2.5 billion new searchable records and images were added during that year, and that the total searchable names and images exceeded 20.5 billion. The 2024 total is a later, broader measure than the Company Facts figures, so the reporting period and metric should be kept visible when comparing them.
MyHeritage About reports 38.6 billion historical records and 58 million family trees. Its Help page says the historical-record search engine contains more than 30 billion exclusive records, including the full United Kingdom census series from 1841 through 1901 and hundreds of millions of UK birth, marriage, and death records. “Historical records” and “exclusive records” are different labels from different MyHeritage pages, so they represent reported platform measures rather than a single combined total.
Ancestry reported more than 70 billion records in its 2025 Impact Report press release, described in the report as a 2026 figure. An earlier 2024 NARA collaboration announcement reported more than 60 billion records. In 2015, Ancestry reported more than 16 billion records, while a 2012 announcement reported more than 10 billion historic records and images from more than 40 countries, dating back to 1270 A.D.
Family trees and research participation
Collaborative family trees show how many people and relationships are being assembled by users and organizations. They are not the same as archival evidence: a profile in a tree can be sourced, unsourced, duplicated, or still under review.
FamilySearch Company Facts reports 1.86 billion people in the Family Tree and 4.03 billion sources attached within that environment. MyHeritage About reports 58 million family trees. In its 2012 announcement, Ancestry said users had created more than 34 million family trees containing approximately 4 billion profiles. In 2013, Ancestry reported more than 50 million family trees with more than 5 billion profiles; in 2015, it reported more than 70 million family trees.
These historical Ancestry figures are useful as milestones, but they describe the platform at the dates stated rather than a current count. They also use different units: trees, profiles, people, and sources measure different layers of genealogy work.
Participation extends beyond databases. FamilySearch’s Year in Review 2024 reports that more than 4 million participants attended RootsTech 2024 in person and online. Participants came from 232 countries and territories. In the Relatives at RootsTech experience, more than 500,000 participants viewed 5.9 million ancestral relationships.
FamilySearch Company Facts reports 39.53 million monthly visits, while FamilySearch About reports an average of 400,000 visitors per day in 2020. These are not directly comparable because one is a monthly-visit measure and the other is a dated daily average. FamilySearch’s 2024 Genealogy Highlights separately reports 285 million annual site visits in 2024.
DNA genealogy statistics
DNA genealogy services use several kinds of measures: people in a database, geographic regions covered by an ethnicity estimate, genetic markers or data points read by a test, and the number of DNA kits connected to family-history theories.
MyHeritage About reports a 9.6 million DNA database. Its Wiki says the MyHeritage DNA test explores origins across 2,114 geographic regions. The 2025 MyHeritage Year in Review reports that more than 3.5 million DNA kits had at least one Theory of Family Relativity. A theory is a platform-generated connection between genetic matches and family-tree evidence; it is not the same unit as a person or a database kit.
MyHeritage’s 2025 Year in Review says an upgraded test reads 3 billion data points in whole-genome sequencing mode. The same source compares this with about 700,000 markers used by traditional tests. MyHeritage’s announcement about the upgrade says the whole-genome sequencing process uses 2x coverage. These figures describe test technology and coverage, not the number of genealogical matches.
Ancestry’s DNA page says its test covers more than 3,600 places around the world. That page also reports 68 new and updated regions in Europe, Canada, and the North Atlantic, plus 63 African ethnic groups in a DNA update. Ancestry’s 2025 Impact Report press release reports more than 29 million people in its DNA network in the stated 2026 reporting context. The 2024 NARA collaboration announcement reported more than 25 million people in the DNA network.
FamilySearch scale and reach
FamilySearch’s published figures cover access, translation, partnerships, and physical research locations as well as digital collections. Company Facts reports 6,528 FamilySearch Centers and 39.53 million monthly visits. A separate FamilySearch page describing its role as host and sponsor of RootsTech 2024 says its free offerings are supported by more than 5,000 local FamilySearch centers and that its website is translated into more than 40 languages.
FamilySearch About reports work with more than 10,000 organizations and collaborations spanning more than 100 countries. The same page reports that the organization crossed 1 billion indexed records in 2013. It crossed 1 billion historical record images in 2014 and began searchable records with the 1880 U.S. census in 2002.
The organization’s collection history also includes older technology. FamilySearch Digital Records Access Replacing Microfilm reports that FamilySearch has used microfilm since 1938 and that its collections include records from over 200 countries. These historical milestones describe how access developed; they do not establish that every current collection has the same geographic coverage or format.
One country-specific expansion illustrates the pace of digitization. FamilySearch says 114 million new U.S. records were added in 2022. The number is a U.S. addition for that year, not a worldwide total and not a count of unique people.
MyHeritage platform statistics
MyHeritage reports support for 50 languages, 520 employees in Israel, North America, and Europe, and 58 million family trees. The company was founded in 2003, and its website went live in 2005 in six languages. MyHeritage released Smart Matches in 2007, a feature milestone connected with finding similarities between family trees.
Its reported collection milestones include reaching 10 billion historical records in 2019 and surpassing 1 million annual subscribers. The older subscriber figure is a historical company milestone, not a current subscriber estimate. Current or later platform totals should therefore be read with their source date and label rather than treated as a continuous, independently measured series.
The scale of the service is also reflected in the combination of records, trees, languages, and DNA. The reported 38.6 billion historical records, 58 million family trees, 9.6 million DNA database, and 50-language support each describe a separate dimension of the platform. They are useful for understanding reach, but they should not be summed.
Ancestry statistics over time
Ancestry’s reported milestones show how its published platform measures changed over time.
| Reporting period | Reported measure | Source label |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 2 million active paid subscribers | Ancestry.com Reaches Two Million Subscriber Mark |
| 2013 | Approximately 2.7 million paying subscribers | Ancestry.com and FamilySearch to Make a Billion Global Records Available Online |
| 2015 | More than 2 million paying subscribers | Ancestry Launches Largest Online Collection of Wills and Probate Records in United States |
| 2024 | Over 3 million subscribers | Ancestry NARA archive collaboration press release |
| 2026 reporting context | Over 3.8 million subscribers | Ancestry 2025 Impact Report press release |
The record totals also rose across the reported milestones: more than 10 billion historic records and images in 2012, more than 16 billion records in 2015, more than 60 billion records in 2024, and more than 70 billion records in the 2026 reporting context. The figures come from company announcements at different times and use the labels published with those announcements.
Ancestry’s 2013 announcement reported approximately 2.7 million paying subscribers and more than 5 billion profiles across more than 50 million user-created family trees. The 2012 announcement reported approximately 4 billion profiles in more than 34 million trees. Those profile totals are historical user-generated measures, not counts of people proven to be unique.
U.S. archives and census research
NARA provides an important reference point for U.S. genealogy. NARA says census schedules are available from 1790 to 1950, and that most of those schedules have now been digitized by partner organizations. Individual census records from 1790 to 1950 are maintained by NARA rather than the Census Bureau.
Access changes for more recent census years. NARA’s U.S. Census Search Census Records guidance says records from the 1960 to 2020 censuses can only be obtained by the person named or their heir after filing Form BC-600 or BC-600SP. This restriction means the broad historical census window should not be read as unrestricted online access to every year.
The federal census includes more than population counts. NARA’s Census Reference Reports identify special nonpopulation schedules covering agriculture, manufacturing, mortality, and social statistics. These schedules can provide different kinds of context for family-history research, depending on the place and year.
NARA’s Genealogy Research guidance says passenger lists began in 1820 for U.S. immigration records used in genealogy research. For future digitization, NARA has committed to digitize 500 million pages of records by September 30, 2026. NARA also says federal population census schedules have been digitized by several partners. The 500-million-page figure is a target, not a completed total, and the September 30, 2026 date identifies the measurement horizon.
Together, these archive statistics explain why genealogy research often combines several source types: census schedules, passenger lists, special schedules, digitized images, indexed names, family-tree profiles, and DNA matches. Each category has a different unit, date, and access rule, so careful researchers should retain the source label and measurement period alongside every number.