Free family tree check

Your family tree rests on memory. We find the records.

Upload your tree from MyHeritage, Ancestry or Geni. In a minute you’ll see what holds up and what doesn’t, where each line stops, and which archives hold the books of your ancestors’ towns.

  • six checks, each one explained
  • your file is never stored
  • no sign-up, no card

Check my tree

One minute. The report appears right here.
How to download your tree file — step by step, with pictures. No file? Tell us what you know.
Read in memorydiscarded when the report is ready
Nothing publishedyour tree stays yours
No accountemail only if you want a copy

Where did each family line live?

Exports often just say “Ukraine” or “Russia”. Add a town or shtetl for each surname and we’ll recalculate the report.

Keep this report

We’ll email you a private link that works for 30 days — open it to read, print or save as a PDF. Living people are not named in the saved copy, and you can delete it at any time.

The next step

Your first dossier in 7 days

We take the lines that stop in your tree and go into the books themselves: read the pages, find your people, and bring back the scans.

  • Your direct lines traced back as far as the online records go
  • A card for every ancestor — on your lines and everyone we find along the way
  • Scans of the original records on each card, with the archive reference
  • Biographies written from the sources, every statement cited
  • A PDF book of the search: what we found, where we looked, what came up empty
  • A private family-tree site and a short list of questions for your relatives
$499 · one payment
See a sample dossier →
Fewer than 10 documents — full refund. A document is a record with an image of the original that names a person from your tree or a newly found ancestor, comes with its archive reference, and wasn’t in the tree you uploaded.
Why check first

A tree is a list of claims. The check shows which ones stand.

Most family trees are built from what parents and grandparents remembered, plus hints copied from other people’s trees. That’s a good start — and exactly why it’s worth looking at before any research begins.

You see what is actually known

How many dates and places have a document behind them, and how many are someone’s recollection. For most trees the honest number of documents is zero — and that’s fine to know.

Mistakes surface before they cost time

A swapped husband and wife, a town spelled two ways, a father who doesn’t fit the patronymic. Each one sends a search into the wrong book.

You learn if there is anything to find

We look up your ancestors’ towns in the catalogs and tell you which records survive and which are online. If your places aren’t covered, the check says so — before you pay.

What we check

Six questions we ask of every tree

The same six a researcher asks before opening the first archive book. The report answers each one for your tree and says why it matters.

1

Evidence

Is each date and place backed by a document, or does it rest on memory?

You get: facts with a source, out of all facts in the tree.
2

Consistency

Death before birth, a parent under 15, a child born after the father’s death, husband and wife swapped, a patronymic that doesn’t match the father.

You get: every contradiction, by name.
3

Places

Records are kept by town and year. Is each place precise enough to pick an archive — and is one town hiding under two spellings?

You get: places that need a town, and spellings to merge.
4

Direct lines

How many of your 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents and 16 great-great-grandparents are in the tree — and where each line stops.

You get: should be, is, and likely findable — per generation.
5

Hidden clues

A patronymic already carries the father’s first name. Where the father is missing, the tree often knows him without saying so.

You get: names of the next generation, recovered.
6

Surviving records

Which metrical books, censuses and community lists survive for your towns, for which years, in which archive — and whether they can be read online.

You get: for each family line, where its records most likely are.

The catalog behind check 6 is public: browse it on zeydele.com and look your town up yourself.

How to upload

Three steps, about five minutes

You need one file — a GEDCOM (.ged). Every genealogy site and program can export it for free, and your tree stays exactly where it is.

Download your tree file

On your tree’s site, find “Export to GEDCOM”. We have picture guides for each one:

MyHeritageAncestryGeniFamilySearchPrograms

Drop it at the top of this page

A .ged file or the .zip it came in — up to 6 MB. A zip is unpacked in your browser; only the tree itself is sent.

Read the report

It appears on this page in under a minute. Add towns the export missed and recalculate. Email yourself a copy if you want to keep it.

What happens to your file
  • It is read on the server, in memory, for the seconds the check takes — and then discarded. It is not written to disk or to a database.
  • We log only counts: how many people, how many lines stop, how many towns were recognized. No names, no dates.
  • Nothing is published, added to any public tree or shared with anyone.
  • We ask for an email only if you want the report sent to you. Then we keep the finished report — not your file — for 30 days, with living people unnamed. Privacy
The service

A dossier on your family, built from the records

The check tells you where the records are. The dossier is us going there: opening the books of your ancestors’ towns online, reading them page by page, and bringing back the records of your family, each with its scan.

Step one

First dossier

$499 · one payment
Delivered in 7 days
  • Your direct lines traced back as far as the online records go
  • A card for every ancestor — on your lines and everyone we find along the way
  • Scans of the original records on each card, with the archive reference
  • Biographies written from the sources, every statement cited
  • A PDF book of the search: what we found, where we looked, what came up empty
  • A private family-tree site and questions for your relatives
See a sample dossier →
Step two · only after the dossier

Deep search

$249 / month
Paid once for 3 months — $747 in total. No auto-renewal.
  • Side lines — brothers, sisters, cousins — and through them further up
  • Newly digitized books and indexes checked every month for every surname in the tree
  • Your family’s answers written into the tree
  • “What’s new” on the site and by email each month, a new edition of the book each quarter
Offered when your dossier is delivered. Nothing to decide now.

The guarantee: fewer than 10 documents — full refund

A document is a unique record with an image of the original source that names a person from your tree or a newly found ancestor, comes with the reference of where it is kept, and wasn’t in the tree you uploaded. An index line without an image, a duplicate, a translation or a neighbouring frame of the same event doesn’t count. We do the counting and refund without being asked — how refunds work.

Online sources onlyWe don’t write to archives or visit reading rooms for you. When a record exists but isn’t online, we name the archive and the reference so you can order the copy yourself.
We sell the search, not the scansCopies are for your personal use, each with a link to where the original is held.
The first 20 treesWe take orders in small batches and open the next one when the previous is delivered.
The catalog is public

The catalog we check your towns against is the one behind zeydele.com — our free, non-commercial index of Jewish family records. It’s open for anyone to use, with or without us.

The archive catalog702,554 record books for 26,646 places — find your town and see what survives How to find your Jewish ancestors: where to startour free guide to doing the search yourself — what records exist, where they are kept, how to tell your person from a namesake
How the search works

Search, verify, report

AI agents read the archive pages. A separate reviewer checks every find against the scan. You get what was found — and what wasn’t.

01 · SEARCH

We read the books

Metrical books, censuses, family lists, revision lists, cemeteries, Yad Vashem and wartime records — for the towns your ancestors lived in, in the years they lived there.

02 · VERIFY

Is it really them?

A separate reviewer opens the scan and checks name, age, place and relatives. A namesake is not your ancestor. Every fact gets a level: proven, probable, possible.

03 · REPORT

What we found — and didn’t

An empty result is a result too: where we looked, why it was empty, and the next move. Everything we find, you get — nothing is held back for later.

An illustration

One stopped line, start to finish

The family from the example report. They are fictional — the books and their years are real.

The wall

Great-grandfather Chaim, born about 1896 in Zhitomir

Parents unknown. The family remembered only that he and his wife died in 1941.

The source

The Jewish birth books of Zhytomyr

They survive for most years between 1844 and 1920 and are online — but not indexed by name. Someone has to open the 1896 volume and read it.

What it gives

Two parents and a new town

A birth entry names the father, the mother, and the community the father was registered in. Two new people — and the next set of books to open.

Press “See an example report” at the top to run the check on this family.

Important

We do this together.

We do the searching. But half the doors are opened by family memory.

With the dossier you get short questions for your family: what was grandpa’s father called, where was grandma from, who is in this photo. “Don’t know” is an answer too: it tells us where not to look.

One remembered town can turn a stopped line into three generations.

Question 7 · father’s lineWas great-grandfather Chaim born in Zhytomyr itself or in a shtetl nearby? He isn’t in the Zhytomyr books.
Answer on the site · from DadDad remembers grandpa saying they were from Chudnov.
NextJewish birth books of Chudniv (Chudnov) survive and are online. We’ve started reading.
Illustration with the fictional family from the example.
About

Who is behind Alte Heym

I’m Leo Katz. Alte Heym grew out of my own family’s search.

My family tree started the way most do — with what my parents and grandparents remembered. Turning it into records took the Jewish registers of Bukovina, wartime lists, censuses and a lot of pages read one by one. Today it holds about three hundred people and the records behind them.

Along the way I built zeydele.com — a free, non-commercial index of Jewish family records and a catalog of what survives for each town. Alte Heym uses the same catalog and the same method to do for your tree what I did for mine.

Write to me directly: leo@alteheym.com. I read every message.

MethodEvery fact is tied to a record. Every find is checked against the scan by a reviewer who didn’t make it. Namesakes are not ancestors.
HonestyAn empty result is reported as empty: where we looked and why nothing was there.
Your dataYour tree is yours. Nothing is published or added to public trees.
FAQ

What people usually ask

What if you find nothing?

It happens: books burned, the town was recorded under another name, someone changed their surname. If the dossier holds fewer than 10 documents, you get a full refund — and still keep what we found: where we looked, why it was empty, and the next move.

Do you order records from archives?

No. We work only with sources that can be read online. When a record exists but hasn’t been digitized, we tell you which archive holds it and under which reference, so you can order a copy yourself.

Which regions do you cover?

Ukraine (the catalog of Jewish metrical books of every regional archive), Belarus, Russia, Moldova and Bessarabia, Bukovina and Galicia, Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Germany, Austria and Israel — and we keep adding. If your places aren’t covered yet, the free check tells you right away, before you pay.

Where does your catalog of records come from?

For Ukraine — from the union catalog of metrical books of the Ukrainian State Archival Service, via the Duck Inspector project. For other regions — from our own atlas of sources, compiled town by town from archive inventories, FamilySearch and JewishGen. The catalog is public: you can browse it on zeydele.com.

Who does the searching — people or AI?

AI agents do the searching: they read archive book pages and match names and dates. Every find is checked by a separate reviewer against the scan, not a summary. Decisions and hard-to-read pages are handled by a person.

What happens to my data?

The file you upload for the check is not stored. If you order a dossier, your tree is kept private — only you and the people you invite can see it. We never publish anything or edit public trees.

How is this different from MyHeritage or Ancestry?

They suggest matches from other people’s trees and indexes. We go into the archive books themselves — where most of your ancestors simply aren’t indexed — and bring back a scan of the page with an explanation of why it’s your person.

My tree is in Russian / my ancestors’ names are in Yiddish. Is that a problem?

No. We read records in Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, German, Romanian, Hebrew and Yiddish, and match spellings across alphabets: Zhitomir, Житомир and Żytomierz are one town to us.