AncestryDNA Review: The Best Way to Track Your Heritage

Thanks to scientific advances, there’s no shortage of companies keen to look at your DNA and what it can reveal about you. However, few have the prestige of Ancestry, which has taken the sensible step of linking its DNA-testing venture to its 40-year-old genealogy business. You can build your family tree from scratch, or you can take a DNA test and get a head start.

The upshot is that Ancestry will not only give you insights into your family history and heritage, but it will also let you build a family tree, and contact others on the system who may be able to help, based on a genetic match. That’s the idea, anyway, so does it work?

AncestryDNA review: What you need to know

AncestryDNA is only briefly a product you can hold in your hands. As with its rivals, you open up the package, spit in a tube, and then send it to Ancestry’s labs where they analyze it over the course of a few weeks.

Once that’s done, you’ll be sent an email and you can check your results, which will give you a broad view of what your DNA says about your lineage. You’ll also be able to see how many of the millions of Ancestry members who’ve taken the test are related to you and, crucially, how closely they are related.

From there, you can move into the real meat of Ancestry’s work: genealogy. You can build a family tree, and contact other members to collaborate. If you know the person helping you is indeed a blood relative, that’s quite a big deal. Admittedly, some of the best features here are paywalled, but you’re under no obligation to subscribe if you just want the DNA test and simple tree building.

A quick nerdy word on the technology here: AncestryDNA is based on an autosomal test alone. You can read more on this in our guide to the best DNA tests but, briefly, it’s the best way of identifying living relatives, although it does get fuzzier and less accurate after you go back four or five generations. Other services, like 23andMe and LivingDNA, use this test alongside mtDNA and/or Y-DNA tests, which are better at tracking down a single common ancestor from up to 10,000 years ago, but provide less detailed information.

The fact that AncestryDNA only uses autosomal DNA isn’t really a problem for what it’s trying to do, with its focus on genealogy and family tree-building, but other services can offer more, particularly if you choose to export the data. Which brings us to…

AncestryDNA review: Price and competition

AncestryDNA will set you back $99 plus shipping. With that, you can create a free Ancestry account which lets you do basic family tree construction, but if you want the really useful stuff – access to census records, birth and marriage data, and so on – you’ll need to take out a subscription. You can expect to pay between $20 and $60 per month, depending on which regions and other extras you want in your plan, though there are savings to be had on 6-month subscriptions if you’re willing to pay up-front for it. Just watch out for the inevitable price rise that comes with auto-renewal.

MyHeritage (from $89) is a pretty similar offering to Ancestry, right down to its use of just autosomal tests. However, given its comparatively small database and that it includes the option to import your data from elsewhere, there’s little incentive to make this your ‘main’ DNA test .

LivingDNA (from $90) uses autosomal, Y-DNA, and mtDNA testing for better results, at least theoretically. The wider range of tests on offer makes it a good service to export data from, though its limited database means you have a smaller number of likely matches on the site itself.

Then there’s FamilyTreeDNA, which is fairly unique in that it lets you choose which tests you want, with prices starting from $79. This is a service that can offer particularly detailed results, if your budget can stretch that far. With an impressive toolset and a well-informed community, it’s a serious choice for genealogists.

Finally, there’s 23andMe. I’ve left it to last, not because it’s bad – it’s actually really good, featuring autosomal, Y-DNA, and mtDNA tests – but because it offers genetic health testing alongside the standard heritage-related information. This gives you insight into your potential risk of developing certain medical conditions. The ancestry-only package is $119, while the ancestry plus health bundle is $199.

AncestryDNA review: The results

In my experience of postal DNA-test kits, they come in one of two forms: saliva or cheek swab. AncestryDNA is saliva-based, meaning they send you a vial to fill with your spit – something that’s made more difficult than it sounds by requiring you to not eat or drink for at least 30 minutes before providing the sample.

Ancestry promises to deliver results in six to eight weeks, and mine arrived remarkably quickly: sent off the sample on 11 August, received on 17 August, and the results were live on the site on 26 August. I tested this kit in the UK, sending it off from another location might result in a different response time.

Compared to some DNA tests, the actual results can seem a tad disappointing at first. Especially if, like me, you don’t have a particularly interesting backstory. AncestryDNA presents you with a map, giving you a percentage ethnicity estimate based on your DNA. In my case, it was estimated that I am 80% England, Wales, and Northwestern Europe, 15% Ireland and Scotland, and 5% Germanic Europe.

Clicking each one gives you a potted history of the region but, if you’re into your genealogy as well as your genetics, it’s here that you’ll begin to see the true benefit of the service. As you scroll through the interactive timeline, the family members you add to your family tree begin to appear in the areas they were born in, as well as other DNA matches that the system has found in its millions-strong database. In my case, they were all fourth cousins, but you can see how that would be an exciting way of reading about a region, if your family is there.

This is the real advantage AncestryDNA has over its rivals: it has the most DNA-donating members by far. As of 2021, the company had over 20 million samples in its network and, while that’s only a fraction of the world as a whole, it’s still streets ahead of its rivals. Its nearest competitor, 23andMe, has “more than 15 million customers worldwide”.

What does this mean in practice? Well, it may be anecdotal but, for me, 23andMe found only 1,135 DNA matches, while Ancestry came back with 37,846. Admittedly, most of those are distant fourth cousins, but Ancestry did instantly spot my mother – and label her correctly – when she signed up at Christmas.

The discrepancy in numbers could be down to other factors than just database size – a larger selection of European customers for Ancestry, for example, or less fussy criteria for matching, to name just two possibilities – but the fact remains, if tracking down distant relatives is your goal, it seems Ancestry is the choice for you.

That said, since neither Ancestry or 23andMe allow you to import results from elsewhere, it’s worth considering the quality of the data, particularly if you plan to branch out to other sites. Given 23andMe includes MtDNA and Y-DNA in its testing, it’s probably the stronger ‘base’ DNA test to do if you want to make your spit go as far as possible, figuratively speaking.

AncestryDNA review: Family tree building

I already mentioned that the size of AncestryDNA’s database was its real strength, but that’s actually not the only thing it has to recommend it. The family-tree-building side of things is also excellent. It’s flexible, well-supported, and very easy to set up, letting you build a tree one person at a time, with just their name, date of birth, birthplace, and (if applicable) place of death.

While you do this, the system will be working away in the background, digging for more information. If it spots a match in its database, it will come up with a little green leaf icon labeled ‘hints’, showing you the documents it has unearthed – census records, marriage indexes, and so on. The trouble is that all this juicy extra color is paywalled – and it’s a pretty expensive wall to clear. Access to US records starts at $20/mth for the first six months (or $17/mth if you pay up-front), with international records included at $35/mth (or $25/mth up-front) for the first six-month term. For all records, plus extras like Fold3 and Newspapers.com subscriptions and the ability to add extra accounts to a family plan, it’s $55/mth (this plan is just $40/mth if you pay for six months in advance). Just be aware that your subscription will automatically renew at the higher list price after that introductory offer period is up.

While it’s not cheap, it’s still an impressive package, and you’re able to share your tree with anyone else on the site – and the DNA test will help you find likely candidates. It’s worth remembering though that only a small fraction of the total membership will have paid extra for the test, since most are just there for the tree building.

AncestryDNA review: Verdict

On paper, AncestryDNA simply isn’t as impressive as its main rival, 23andMe. It only provides an autosomal DNA test and it sticks purely to heritage, without looking at medical screening (for better or worse).

Despite this, in practice, AncestryDNA is quite a compelling package if you’re a keen genealogist. Not only are its family-tree-building tools second to none, but the sheer size of its database means that actually tracking down family members to help is far more likely than with its rivals. This makes it great for those focused on family trees or tracking lost relatives.

If you want the most data then it makes more sense to plump for 23andMe, or LivingDNA, and then export that data to other sites to try and widen your net a little. But if you don’t have the time or the inclination for all that, Ancestry is the perfect answer.