through a paid subscription, but many are free to browse. As of June 2011, the site had nearly 1.7 paying subscribers and 26 million family trees.

Ancestry.com lets users create their own family tree using web software that does not require a download. Users can start a free account if they only want to use Ancestry's family tree template and fill in their relatives manually. For those who are looking to uncover long-lost relatives and see if you really are related to the 3rd Czar of Russia, there is a premium and pricey subscription service that will fill in as many of your relatives as possible, filling out the branches of your family tree.

Since starting as a publishing company in 1983, Ancestry.com has been a leader in the family history market for over 20 years and has helped pioneer the market for online family history research. The foundation of their service is an extensive and unique collection of billions of historical records that have been digitized, indexed, and put online since 1996. Ancestry.com revenues have increased from $140.3 million in 2005 to $300.9 million in 2010, a compound annual growth rate of 16.5%.