Logo: © MyHeritage Ltd. Used for editorial purposes. Logo sourced from myheritage.com/press.
MyHeritage Family Tree Builder (FTB) occupies an unusual position in the genealogy software landscape. Unlike Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic, or Legacy Family Tree — standalone desktop applications with their own business models — Family Tree Builder is a free download that functions as the desktop arm of the broader MyHeritage platform. It is best understood not as a standalone product but as one component of a connected ecosystem that spans desktop software, a web platform, a mobile app, and a DNA testing service. For researchers already invested in MyHeritage, it is a powerful and convenient tool. For those new to the platform, it is one of the most accessible entry points in genealogy software. With over five million downloads to its name, it has clearly found a substantial audience.
Origins: A Barn, a Passion, and a Global Platform
MyHeritage was founded in 2003 by Gilad Japhet[1], an Israeli entrepreneur who had developed a passion for genealogy at the age of thirteen while working on a school project. Twenty years later, he took a six-month sabbatical from his career to work on his own family tree — and found himself frustrated with the software available at the time. Rather than simply enduring the limitations, he began building his own genealogy application. Working initially from his living room in the moshav of Bnei Atarot, Israel, Japhet assembled a small team and moved operations to a nearby barn, where the company began to take shape.
The original product was Family Tree Builder itself — a desktop application that the team translated into six languages and made available as a free download in 2005. The vision from the beginning was global: genealogy as a collaborative, multilingual, internationally connected pursuit, rather than the English-language-centric, records-focused approach that dominated the American market. Family Tree Builder was the tool that would get researchers started; MyHeritage’s online platform would connect them to each other and to historical records around the world.
The strategy worked. By 2007, MyHeritage had 150,000 family trees in its system and 180 million person profiles[2] — remarkable numbers for a company just four years old. The platform’s multilingual approach and international reach set it apart from American competitors who were still primarily focused on English-language records and users.
Growth Through Acquisition
MyHeritage’s development was accelerated by a series of strategic acquisitions that expanded its user base and record holdings. In December 2006, the company acquired Pearl Street Software — creator of the family tree application Family Tree Legends — along with GenCircles, a family tree submission site with over 160 million profiles and 400 million public records. These acquisitions gave MyHeritage an immediate and substantial presence in the English-language genealogy market.
In 2012, MyHeritage acquired Geni.com[3], a Los Angeles-based genealogy platform that operated on a one-world-tree model — a significant addition given Geni’s strong international user community. The acquisition brought millions of additional profiles and a complementary approach to collaborative genealogy into the MyHeritage ecosystem.
MyHeritage also acquired the Legacy Family Tree Webinars platform, which was at the time the largest genealogy education resource of its kind in the industry, with thousands of recorded sessions on research techniques, software use, and DNA analysis. That webinar library continues to operate today and is available at no cost for many sessions, with a subscription unlocking the full archive.
In 2017, MyHeritage acquired the German genealogy company OSN Group[4] and the Dutch genealogy platform Zooof, further strengthening its European presence — particularly relevant for researchers with Central and Northern European ancestry, which includes many Dillman researchers.
The company launched its DNA testing service, MyHeritage DNA, in 2016, and has since built a database of millions of DNA kits. The 2025 transition to whole genome sequencing (WGS), covered in our recent WGS article, made MyHeritage the first major consumer genealogy company to offer WGS as its standard test — a significant technological milestone.
🌐 What Makes Family Tree Builder Different
The defining characteristic of Family Tree Builder is its seamless integration with the MyHeritage online platform. Unlike purely standalone desktop programs, FTB is designed to work in concert with your MyHeritage family site — synchronizing your desktop tree with your online tree automatically whenever you connect to the internet. Changes made on the desktop flow online; discoveries made through MyHeritage’s web tools appear in the desktop application. The boundary between the desktop and the cloud is intentionally thin.
This integration is a meaningful practical advantage for researchers who want the organizational depth of a desktop application combined with the accessibility of an online tree — viewable on any device, shareable with family members, and connected to MyHeritage’s matching technologies. For researchers who work across multiple computers or want to share their tree with non-researcher family members without giving them access to the desktop software, this connectivity is genuinely useful.
It also sets up a fundamental difference from how most other desktop genealogy programs work: FTB’s most powerful features — SmartMatch, Record Matching, Instant Discoveries, and the All-in-One chart — are tied to a MyHeritage subscription rather than being fully available as standalone desktop capabilities. The software is free; the ecosystem it connects to is where the subscription model applies.
Current Version: Family Tree Builder 8
Family Tree Builder 8 is the current release, with the latest update (version 8.0.0.8645) issued in January 2025.[5] It is available as a free download for Windows (7 or later) and Mac (OS Monterey or later) from myheritage.com/family-tree-builder. Installation is straightforward, and a startup wizard guides new users through creating or importing a tree from the outset.
A key practical note: while the desktop software itself places no limit on the number of individuals you can add to a local project, syncing that project to your online MyHeritage family site is subject to the size limits of your subscription tier. The free tier allows up to 250 individuals online; the Premium tier extends this to 2,500; and the PremiumPlus and Complete tiers allow unlimited online trees. Researchers working locally on large trees without syncing can add unlimited individuals in the desktop application itself.
Key Features
SmartMatch: One of Family Tree Builder’s signature features, SmartMatch automatically compares individuals in your tree against profiles in millions of other trees contributed by MyHeritage users worldwide. When a potential match is found, you are notified and can review the matched profile, accept or reject the suggested connection, and potentially discover new family information or previously unknown relatives. The comparison is continuous and runs in the background as new trees are added to the MyHeritage network. SmartMatch is a Premium feature; the free tier shows that matches exist but requires a subscription to review and act on them.
Record Matching: Similar in concept to SmartMatch but focused on historical records rather than other users’ trees, Record Matching searches MyHeritage’s database of billions of historical records — census records, vital records, immigration records, newspaper archives, and more — to find potential matches for individuals in your tree. When a record match is found, you can review it and, if accurate, attach it to the individual’s profile. Record Matching requires a data subscription to access MyHeritage’s full record collections.
Instant Discoveries: When SmartMatch finds a strong match between someone in your tree and a profile in another user’s tree that includes a well-documented family branch, Instant Discoveries allows you to add that entire branch to your tree with a single click — automatically generating source citations for the added data. This can dramatically accelerate research in lines that have already been well documented by other MyHeritage users. Instant Discoveries is available with the PremiumPlus and Complete subscription tiers.
Tree Consistency Checker: A built-in quality control tool that scans your tree for logical errors and inconsistencies — individuals born after their parents’ deaths, marriages before birth dates, implausible lifespans, and similar anomalies. The Tree Consistency Checker can also identify more subtle errors, such as a person tagged in a photograph taken before they were born. This level of photo-metadata checking is a distinctive feature not found in most competing applications.
Photo and Media Management: Family Tree Builder provides robust tools for attaching photos, documents, video files, and audio files to individuals and events in your tree. MyHeritage’s photo enhancement tools — including automatic colorization of black-and-white photographs, image sharpening, and a “photo repair” feature for damaged images — are available within the platform and have received widespread attention for their quality. The colorization feature in particular has been widely praised and has brought MyHeritage significant public attention beyond the core genealogy community.
Genealogical Data Communication (GEDCOM) Import and Export: FTB fully supports GEDCOM import and export, making it possible to move data to and from other genealogy applications. This is the primary path for researchers migrating from other software or wanting to share data with tools that do not connect directly to MyHeritage. GEDCOM does not carry media files, so photographs and documents attached to profiles will need to be handled separately.
Charts and Reports: Family Tree Builder includes a range of chart options — pedigree, descendant, hourglass, and All-in-One charts (Premium feature) — as well as reports covering family groups, individual histories, and timelines. The All-in-One chart is a distinctive offering that attempts to show an individual’s complete family network — ancestors, descendants, and collateral lines — in a single visual, which can be impressive for presentations and family reunions though the resulting charts can be very large for deep trees.
Timeline and Timebook: The Timeline feature places an individual’s life events in chronological sequence alongside historical events of the period — providing useful context for understanding an ancestor’s life. Timebook is a related feature (Premium) that assembles a narrative biography of an individual from the facts in their profile. Both are useful tools for researchers who want to move beyond raw data toward storytelling.
Find and Replace: A straightforward but genuinely useful research tool that allows you to search for and correct specific data across your entire tree — correcting a consistently misspelled place name, updating a surname variant, or standardizing date formats throughout a large database.
Interactive Maps: Family Tree Builder provides map-based visualization of where ancestors lived, migrated, and died, with unlimited map access available to Premium subscribers. For researchers tracing migration patterns across generations, this visual layer can reveal patterns that are difficult to perceive from raw data alone.
Mobile Integration: MyHeritage’s mobile app (available for iOS and Android) connects to the same online tree as Family Tree Builder, allowing researchers to add information, view their tree, and respond to match notifications from their phones. Changes made in the app sync back to both the online tree and, on next connection, the desktop application.
The Subscription Model Explained
Understanding what Family Tree Builder costs requires separating the software (free) from the platform it connects to (subscription-based). The free tier allows unlimited local tree building on the desktop, with online syncing limited to 250 individuals and basic features only. The key subscription tiers for researchers are:
Premium — Approximately $129/year (introductory pricing often lower) — extends the online tree to 2,500 individuals, unlocks SmartMatch functionality, Tree Consistency Checker, All-in-One charts, Timeline, Timebook, and unlimited interactive maps. Access to other members’ trees and photos is included.
PremiumPlus — Higher pricing — unlimited online tree, all Premium features plus Instant Discoveries and enhanced SmartMatch merge capabilities.
Complete — The highest tier — all PremiumPlus features plus full access to MyHeritage’s historical records database (39.6 billion records as of 2026) and Record Matching. This is the tier required to use MyHeritage as a serious research platform with full record access.
Researchers who maintain their primary tree elsewhere but want access to MyHeritage’s record collections can also purchase a data-only subscription ($189/year) that provides Record Matching and database access without the family site features — useful for researchers using RootsMagic, Legacy, or Family Tree Maker as their desktop application while wanting to fish in MyHeritage’s record pool.
Honest Caveats
The free tier is genuinely limited. The 250-individual online limit makes the free tier inadequate for serious genealogical research with any depth. Researchers who want to use MyHeritage as a primary platform will need a paid subscription. The software itself is free, but the ecosystem is not.
No Ancestry synchronization. Family Tree Builder does not sync with Ancestry.com trees in the way that Family Tree Maker’s FamilySync does. Data can be moved between MyHeritage and Ancestry via GEDCOM export and import, but this is a manual process that requires periodic attention and will not carry media files. For researchers deeply invested in the Ancestry ecosystem, this is a meaningful limitation.
International strength, American record depth. MyHeritage’s record collections are particularly strong for European genealogy — its international focus is a genuine advantage for researchers with Central European, Scandinavian, or Eastern European ancestry. For American records, particularly pre-20th century, Ancestry’s collections remain deeper. Serious American researchers often use both platforms.
Subscription complexity. The multiple subscription tiers — Premium, PremiumPlus, Complete, and data-only — can be confusing, and researchers need to understand precisely which features are included at which tier before committing. Reading the subscription comparison carefully before purchasing is worthwhile.
What This Means for Dillman Researchers
For Dillman Family Association (DFA) members researching lines in Germany, Switzerland, and other parts of Central Europe, MyHeritage’s international record strengths and European user community make it a particularly relevant platform. The SmartMatch system’s ability to connect your tree with other users’ trees worldwide means a higher probability of finding European matches than you would find in a platform primarily oriented toward American records and users.
Family Tree Builder’s free download makes it a low-risk starting point for any DFA member who hasn’t yet explored the MyHeritage ecosystem. Even at the free tier, the desktop application’s organizational tools are fully functional for local research, and the tree can be expanded and unlocked as your research deepens and a subscription becomes worthwhile.
For more information on the DFA’s genetic genealogy efforts — including the MyHeritage DNA testing that complements the Family Tree Builder platform — visit the Dillman DNA Project page.
Download Family Tree Builder free at: myheritage.com/family-tree-builder
MyHeritage Family Tree Builder 8 is a free download for Windows (7 or later) and Mac (OS Monterey or later). The desktop application allows unlimited local tree building; online syncing is subject to subscription tier limits (250 individuals free, 2,500 with Premium, unlimited with PremiumPlus/Complete). Premium subscription from approximately $129/year. Developed and published by MyHeritage Ltd., headquartered in Or Yehuda, Israel.
Sources
- MyHeritage, “About MyHeritage,” myheritage.com/about (accessed May 2026).
- MyHeritage, “Company History,” myheritage.com/about (accessed May 2026).
- MyHeritage Blog, “MyHeritage Acquires Geni.com,” 2012, blog.myheritage.com (accessed May 2026).
- MyHeritage Blog, “MyHeritage Expands European Presence,” 2017, blog.myheritage.com (accessed May 2026).
- MyHeritage, “Family Tree Builder,” myheritage.com/family-tree-builder (accessed May 2026).
AI Disclosure: This article was researched and written with the assistance of Claude, an AI assistant developed by Anthropic. All facts have been reviewed for accuracy, but readers are encouraged to verify information independently, particularly for time-sensitive details such as pricing and software versions.
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