Most family tree makers on the market fall into two camps. Either they're subscription platforms that treat your tree as a hook for records-database billing, or they're free apps with a decade-old interface that punish you every time you try to attach a source. We built ours because neither camp was serving the researchers who write to this desk.
What the builder actually does
At its core the tool is a graph editor for people. You add a person, you connect them to parents, spouses, and children, and you attach the records that prove those connections. It renders as a classic pedigree (ancestor-facing) or as a descendant chart (family-facing) and exports as SVG, PDF, or GEDCOM.
- Unlimited people, generations, and events per tree.
- Source-first data entry: every fact has a citation field.
- Living-person privacy flag hides sensitive fields on export.
- GEDCOM 5.5.1 import and export for round-trip with any tool.
- Automatic Ahnentafel (Sosa-Stradonitz) numbering on the pedigree.
- Print-ready ancestor fan up to 12 generations.
- Local-first storage — your tree does not leave your browser until you export.
How researchers use it
A typical first session runs about 20 minutes. You start with yourself, add your parents, add each grandparent, and pause to attach whatever records you already have — a birth certificate PDF, a screenshot from the 1950 census, a photo of an old passenger manifest. From there most readers work backwards one generation at a time, using the linked archive guides on this site to pull the next set of documents.
The habit we recommend, and the one every long-term researcher eventually adopts, is to enter the source before the person. Open the record, transcribe it into a citation, then add the individuals it names. Trees built the other way — names first, sources 'later' — are the ones that collapse three years in when nobody can remember where a middle name came from.
Comparison: browser tools vs. desktop suites
| Feature | MFTN (browser) | RootsMagic (desktop) | Ancestry web tree |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | $40 one-time | Subscription tie-in |
| GEDCOM export | Yes | Yes | Yes, limited |
| Source-first entry | Yes | Yes | Partial |
| Works offline | Yes (local storage) | Yes | No |
| Records auto-attach | No (by design) | No | Yes (hint system) |
Auto-attaching record hints sounds like a benefit until you inherit a tree full of the wrong John Smith. The tradeoff we've chosen: no automatic hints, faster manual entry, and citations that stay accurate.
Common questions before you start
If your goal is a printed family tree for a reunion, use the pedigree export. If you're doing serious research and expect the tree to grow past 500 people, plan for GEDCOM backups from day one. And if you're inheriting a family binder from a relative — scan the pages before you type anything, because handwritten notes get read differently after you've entered the census data.
When you're ready to search for a specific ancestor, jump into the ancestor search playbook. When you need to understand which record types actually exist for a given decade or state, our genealogy records index is the reference desk.