How to move your family tree off a subscription (and own your data)

Subscription genealogy sites are great for research — billions of records, DNA matches, hints. But the family tree you build there lives on their servers, behind a recurring bill. If you want to actually own your work, here’s how to take it with you.

First, understand what you can take

Most platforms let you export your tree — the people, dates, and relationships — usually as a GEDCOM file (the standard genealogy format) or a spreadsheet. Records and DNA results that the service licenses generally stay with them; that’s their data, not yours. So the goal is to bring home your work: your people and the media you uploaded.

Export your tree

Ancestry: Trees → your tree → settings → Export tree → download the GEDCOM.
MyHeritage / others: look for “Export to GEDCOM” in the tree or account settings.
Separately, download the photos and documents you uploaded — those aren’t always in the GEDCOM.

Bring it into an archive you own

Once it’s exported, you want it somewhere that won’t hold it hostage. The friendliest archives import your people from a plain spreadsheet (CSV) rather than GEDCOM — a file anyone in the family can open and edit in Excel or Google Sheets, no special software needed. If your service only exports GEDCOM, a free GEDCOM-to-CSV converter turns it into that spreadsheet (or you can build it straight from your tree). Either way, names, dates, parents, and spouses import together — and your photos, documents, and stories then live alongside the tree, on your server, not a company’s.

Keep using research tools if you want

Owning your archive doesn’t mean giving up record search or DNA. Many families do both: research on a subscription when they need it, and keep the finished result — the people, photos, voices, and stories — in an archive they own for good.

An archive you actually own

Private Family Archive runs on your own server under a one-time, perpetual license. Import your people in bulk from a simple spreadsheet (a friendly CSV — not fiddly GEDCOM), add unlimited family members for free, and keep everything — tree, photos, documents, voices, recipes — private and exportable forever. No subscription to your own history.

Pay once vs. subscribe →What’s included →