A RootsMagic alternative that runs in your browser

If you want record hints from Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage and Findmypast while you work, or to keep a tree in step with an Ancestry tree, stay with RootsMagic: Roots does neither. If you want a tree that stays on your device, with sources cited fact by fact, charts and books to print, and GEDCOM in and out, on any computer with a current browser and nothing to install, Roots does that as part of OBSCURA Pro.

To see what is in a GEDCOM file before choosing anything, GEDCOM opens one free in the browser: everybody in it, their families, and the dates that cannot be right.

What RootsMagic is

RootsMagic is a family tree program installed on Windows 10 and 11 or macOS 12 and later; the current version is RootsMagic 11, which runs natively on Apple silicon. The tree is a file on your computer, as it is in Roots. WebHints mark people who may have records at Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage or Findmypast; TreeShare moves people, events, notes, citations and pictures between RootsMagic and your trees on Ancestry; and it reads from and shares with FamilySearch Family Tree. There is a free edition, RootsMagic Essentials, with a smaller set of features. Prices change, so none are given here; RootsMagic’s own site is the place to check.

It is a mature program with a large community of users and many years of refinement behind it. Nothing on this page argues otherwise.

Side by side

RootsMagic’s entries are from its own pages on RootsMagic 11, WebHints, TreeShare and installing it, checked on 6 October 2026.

What Roots does

• The tree as genealogists keep it. People with every name they were known by, facts from baptism to burial and any event you name, children marked as born to, adopted, fostered or a stepchild of each parent, and dates as they are written: “abt 1850”, “bef 1901”, 1712/13, or Julian.
• Eight ways to look. Pedigree, descendants, hourglass, fan chart, family group sheet, the person’s page, a timeline, and the relationship between any two people.
• Sources, fact by fact. Citations with the page and the quality of the evidence, pictures of the records attached, and a list of every fact that still has no source.
• Research tools. Checks across the tree for a child born after a parent died, an event after a death or a person who is their own ancestor; possible duplicates found by name and sound, merged field by field with Undo; a research log and a to-do list for each person.
• Charts and books. Vector PDF charts from A3 to A0, ARCH E or a 36-inch roll, or tiled on A4 with trim marks; a book in the Register or NGSQ numbering, with sources as endnotes and indexes of names and places, as a PDF or a Word file.
• DNA match lists from MyHeritage, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch, set against the Shared cM Project’s published ranges.
• Sharing with the living kept private, as GEDCOM, as one branch for a cousin, or as a website of plain pages that opens from a folder.

What RootsMagic has that Roots does not

• Hints and the record sites. Roots has no link to Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage or Findmypast. You search their records there and enter what you find, citing the record.
• Its own file, read directly. Roots reads RootsMagic’s GEDCOM export, not its project file.
• A free edition, and a price you pay once for each version rather than a subscription.
• A community and a company behind it. RootsMagic has its own forum and its own support; if you already know it, a different program is not worth learning for the sake of it.

What Roots adds

• No installation, and no system requirement beyond a current browser. Roots runs the same on Windows, macOS, ChromeOS and Linux.
• A GEDCOM read and written again keeps every line. Tags Roots does not show are held on the record they came with and written back where they were, so a round trip through Roots does not lose RootsMagic’s or anyone else’s. Old files in ANSEL, Windows-1252 or UTF-16 are read in their own characters.
• Living people kept private before anything is shared, with the list of who was hidden and why.
• One subscription for several jobs. The same Pro plan covers every OBSCURA application, from Write for the family history you write up to Keep for the certificates and papers; /apps lists them.

Moving a tree across

1. In RootsMagic, choose File, Export, and GEDCOM.
2. In Roots, open the file. People, families, events, sources, citations and notes come in, with how each child is related to each parent; what was read, and anything that was not, is listed under What was read from the file.
3. Pictures are not inside a GEDCOM file. Add them to the people in Roots, or bring the tree in as a GEDZIP from a program that writes one.
4. Keep working in Roots, and save the whole project, pictures included, as an .oroots file now and then. Clearing this site’s data in the browser deletes the trees kept in it.

What it costs

Roots on its own is US$2 a month or US$19 a year; all of OBSCURA Pro is US$5 a month or US$48 a year. Each comes with 7 days free first. There is no free version of Roots with features held back: without Pro, its page shows what it does and asks for a plan.

See it before you pay. Roots’ page shows it at work on an invented family of 150 people, and lists what it cannot do.