GenealogyBank

What GenealogyBank does

GenealogyBank is a subscription-based genealogy and family-history research platform operated by NewsBank, Inc., a privately held U.S. corporation headquartered in Denver, Colorado. The service provides consumer-facing online access to an aggregated archive of 16,000+ U.S. newspapers spanning all 50 states and 1690 to the present, 346+ million obituary records (the world's largest online obituary archive), 94-100 million Social Security Death Index records, U.S. Federal Census records from 1790 to 1940, government publications from 1789 to 1994, historical books from 1749 to 1900, and ethnic-specific newspaper collections for African American, Hispanic American, Irish American, and Native American ancestry research. The platform claims 95% of its newspaper content is exclusive and not available through competing services.

Underlying the platform is Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology that converts scanned historical newspaper pages into machine-readable text, combined with a proprietary indexing engine branded ObitGraph that powers obituary search and a unified cross-collection search interface spanning all integrated record types. The system indexes more than 2 billion articles and supports text and image retrieval modalities.

GenealogyBank operates a direct-to-consumer, product-led growth model with self-serve online account creation and annual or monthly subscription plans, supported by phone sales assistance and a content-driven marketing funnel leveraging SEO-optimized collection pages, a blog, a free monthly email newsletter, and earned media coverage in outlets such as CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and CBS News. Pricing is not fully publicly disclosed but features a promotional 44% annual-membership discount. The target customer is individual family-history hobbyists and serious genealogical researchers in the United States, served on a horizontal long-tail basis with no disclosed enterprise or institutional contracts.

Name

GenealogyBank

Legal name

NewsBank, Inc.

Website

https://genealogybank.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2005

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

GenealogyBank is a subscription-based U.S. genealogy platform, operated by NewsBank, Inc., providing consumer access to 2+ billion newspaper articles, 346M+ obituaries, census records, and ethnic-specific archives spanning 1690 to present for individual family-history researchers.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Genealogy and Historical Records Subscription Service

NAICS

Libraries and Archives (51921), Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (5192), Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (519)

akta.pro primary industry

Records Digitization & Archiving (Legacy Files, Retention Support) (BPAAAKAG)

akta.pro secondary industries

Document Databases (HDAEAAAI), Library Collections & Cataloging Services (Acquisitions, Metadata, Circulation) (EDAEAGAE)

Keywords

• Historical newspaper archives
• Genealogy research platform
• Obituary database search
• Census records subscription
• Family history records

Headquarters

HQ city

Naples

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Personnel, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Subscription Access: Annual and monthly subscription plans providing unlimited access to the historical newspaper archives, obituary database, census records, government documents, and historical books collection. The service operates on a subscription recurring model with tiered pricing based on subscription length (annual discounted vs monthly).

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels2 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

GenealogyBank operates a subscription-based online platform providing searchable access to digitized historical U.S. newspapers, obituaries, census records, Social Security Death Index, government documents, and historical books spanning 1690 to present. The service uses OCR technology to digitize and index newspaper content, offering consumers a unified search interface across multiple genealogical record collections for family history research.

Product overview

GenealogyBank is a family history and genealogy research platform offering subscription-based access to multiple integrated historical record collections. The platform operates as a single unified system combining seven core searchable databases: Newspaper Archives (1690-2025), Obituaries (1690-Present), U.S. Census Records (1790-1940), Social Security Death Index (SSDI), Government Publications (1789-1994), Historical Books (1749-1900), and additional specialized collections including Birth Records, Marriage Records, and Passenger Lists. The platform also provides ethnic-specific newspaper collections for African American, Hispanic American, Irish American, and Native American ancestry research. All collections are accessible through a unified search interface where users enter ancestor names to search across billions of digitized records. The underlying technology uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to digitize newspaper pages and text indexing for search functionality, enabling keyword matching across articles and images.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• ObitGraph: Proprietary indexing engine powering the obituary search functionality on GenealogyBank

Products and services

• Newspaper Archives

Quantifiable outcome

• 346M+ obituary records searchable
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers2 records

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability4 records

Feature3 records

Scale indicators7 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• Ancestry: Ancestry is the dominant global genealogy platform offering family trees, DNA testing, and the largest paid genealogy records database. It directly competes with GenealogyBank across obituary, census, and newspaper records, and also owns Newspapers.com and Fold3, both of which overlap with GenealogyBank's core archive offerings.
• FamilySearch: FamilySearch, operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offers free access to billions of genealogical records globally. It is a direct substitute for GenealogyBank's paid subscription, and is explicitly named by GenealogyBank customers as a comparable resource, putting pricing pressure on the paid product.
• Fold3: Fold3, owned by Ancestry, focuses on military records including Revolutionary War, Civil War, and modern conflicts. It overlaps with GenealogyBank's government publications and military records collections and is part of the same bundled competitive ecosystem as Newspapers.com.
• MyHeritage: MyHeritage is a global genealogy platform offering family trees, DNA testing, and a large international records database (including acquired Mocavo). It competes directly with GenealogyBank in subscription genealogy records search and serves a broader international audience than GenealogyBank's U.S.-centric archive.
• FindMyPast: FindMyPast is a subscription genealogy records platform with strong UK and Irish record coverage. It competes with GenealogyBank for paying genealogy subscribers with an international footprint, though its depth in U.S. historical newspapers is narrower than GenealogyBank's.
• Newspapers.com: Newspapers.com, owned by Ancestry, is a subscription-based historical newspaper archive with overlapping coverage to GenealogyBank's core newspaper product. It is the closest single-category competitor to GenealogyBank's newspaper-archive offering and benefits from Ancestry's broader ecosystem cross-sell.

Emerging players

• Geni.com: Geni.com is a collaborative family-tree platform with some record-search features, focused on building a shared World Family Tree. It is comparable as a consumer genealogy subscription but is differentiated by its collaborative tree rather than archive depth.
• WikiTree: WikiTree is a free, community-driven collaborative family-tree platform that competes for casual genealogy users. It is comparable to GenealogyBank's target audience but with a fundamentally different (free, crowdsourced) business model and no records archive of comparable depth.
• American Ancestors: American Ancestors, the New England Historic Genealogical Society's platform, offers subscription access to deep New England and early-American records. It is comparable as a regional subscription genealogy archive but with a narrower geographic focus than GenealogyBank.

Others

• NewsBank: NewsBank, Inc. is the parent company of GenealogyBank and a broader provider of newspaper and information services to libraries and institutions. It is comparable as the operating parent and shared-infrastructure provider, but its institutional B2B focus puts it in an adjacent rather than directly competing category.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/genealogybank
• Facebookfacebook.com/genealogybank
• Pinterestpinterest.com/GenealogyBank
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/genealogybank

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about GenealogyBank