The family tree builder
Build the line, add relatives, correct dates and places as you learn them. Editing your tree is free and it is not gated behind anything — there is no point at which the tree you built stops opening.
TreeKeeper · the free tier
Free, and not the kind that expires.
Build your family tree, bring your relatives in, and check your line against every citizenship-by-descent program we cover. No card, no trial clock, no expiry. You pay only when you ask us to prepare a document order, and the government keeps charging its own fee either way.
The tree is yours. We do not take it back if you never buy anything.
What you get for nothing.
Four things, and none of them is a preview. The free tier exists because you cannot sensibly decide whether to run a citizenship case until you know whether your line reaches one at all — and that answer costs us very little to give you.
Invite relatives, and edit together
Your cousin joins on TreeKeeper without a card and works on the same tree. Family Room entry is free and permanent: no countdown, no roster deadline, no relative locked out because they decided slowly.
An eligibility check across every program we cover
Answer for your own line and see which programs it reaches, on the same questions a member answers. Free means the whole answer, not a teaser with the verdict withheld.
Your document requirement list
The documents that particular program wants for that particular line, named before you spend anything. Knowing the list is what lets you decide whether to buy it from us at all.
Tree editing is never gated. There is no version of this product where you open your own family tree and find it read-only until you pay.
The membership costs less than the fifth document ordered through VitalChek.
The number that matters is not what we charge against ourselves — it is what you would pay a commercial records service for one document, with nobody to call. So here is theirs against ours, on one basket, checked on the same day.
$100 ÷ $23 = 4.35
VitalChek publishes $53 all-in for that certificate. $30 of it is New York’s own fee, which you pay to New York whoever prepares the request — including when it is us — so it cancels and $23 is what VitalChek itself takes. Divide the membership by that and it has paid for itself on the fifth document. Against the other four it is sooner — the second, and in one case the first.
| Where you order | Advertised | Published all-in | Of that, theirs | Membership pays for itself at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VitalChek | Advertised$45 | Published all-in$53 | Of that, theirs$23 | Membership pays for itself atdocument 5 |
| Vital Records Online | Advertised$29 | Published all-in$59 | Of that, theirs$29 | Membership pays for itself atdocument 4 |
| GOV+ | Advertised$67 | Published all-in$97 | Of that, theirs$67 | Membership pays for itself atdocument 2 |
| Vital Forms Direct | Advertised$49 | Published all-in$109 | Of that, theirs$79 | Membership pays for itself atdocument 2 |
| USVitalRecords.org | Advertised$125 | Published all-in$178 | Of that, theirs$125 | Membership pays for itself atdocument 1 |
| TreeKeeper | Advertised$15 | Published all-in$45 | Of that, theirs$15 | Membership pays for itself atour free tier, cheaper than all five |
| Heritage Passport | Advertised$0 | Published all-in$30 | Of that, theirs$0 | Membership pays for itself atpreparation waived, not discounted |
VitalChek is the cheapest of the five and it is not a form-filler: it is the contracted online channel for many issuing agencies, and in some states the only online route there is. We wrote the headline against it on purpose. The strongest argument is not any single price anyway — a service fee is charged per request, and a citizenship case pulls records from every office that ever registered your family. The Cooke case in our own files needs seven certificates from three offices: seven service fees, not one. At $67 a request that is $469 before a single government fee. On a membership it is $0.
And the same arithmetic between our own two tiers.
On TreeKeeper we charge $15 to prepare a records order — still less than any of the five above. A membership is $100 per person, once, and waives it. So $100 ÷ $15 = 6.67: below 7 documents you are better off staying free, and we are not going to pretend otherwise to move you onto a membership.
| Documents | Pay per document | Membership | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pay per document$15 | Membership$100 | CheaperTreeKeeper |
| 2 | Pay per document$30 | Membership$100 | CheaperTreeKeeper |
| 3 | Pay per document$45 | Membership$100 | CheaperTreeKeeper |
| 4 | Pay per document$60 | Membership$100 | CheaperTreeKeeper |
| 5 | Pay per document$75 | Membership$100 | CheaperTreeKeeper |
| 6 | Pay per document$90 | Membership$100 | CheaperTreeKeeper |
| 7 | Pay per document$105 | Membership$100 | CheaperMembership |
| 8 | Pay per document$120 | Membership$100 | CheaperMembership |
| 9 | Pay per document$135 | Membership$100 | CheaperMembership |
Stay on TreeKeeper if
You need one or two records, you already know which ancestor anchors the claim, and you are comfortable filing yourself. Under 7 documents you are genuinely better off here, and we are not going to pretend otherwise to move you onto a membership.
Take the membership if
You are assembling a real case. Most lines that reach a program need more than 6 documents, and the membership is where the case work lives: the confirmed tree, the mapped requirements, tracked ordering, prefilled materials, and storage. The break-even is the arithmetic; the case work is the actual reason.
Three honest caveats. First, every competitor figure is what that company publishes, read on 2026-08-06 — we did not buy from any of them, so their checkout ladders are unmeasured and the real total can only be higher than the one shown. Second, it is one basket in one state: fees and priority tiers move state by state, and we are not extending these numbers past the certificate we actually priced. Third, the membership is $100 per person: a family of four pays four times, and the break-even is per person too.
The part that is not ours to price.
Government application fees, vital-record fees, postage, translations, apostilles, and any outside professional you hire are not included in any price we charge, on any tier. They are paid by you, to the body that charges them, and they never pass through us.
- U.S. jurisdictions covered
- 52
- Typical published fee for one record
- $17
- Published range, cheapest to dearest
- $5–$35
- Our markup on any of it
- $0
Derived from 145 sourced birth, death, and marriage rows across 52 U.S. jurisdictions. Published fees are floors, not captured checkout totals; a jurisdiction can add a processing or shipping charge at the end. Every figure is attributed and date-stamped in the fee tables, and one that ages out of its verification window disappears rather than getting rounded forward.
Run your own numbers.
This is the same calculator that sits on our pricing page: government fees, record costs, ordering channels, processing times, and our share, shown separately and sourced. Set it to your family and see whether the free tier or the membership is the cheaper answer for you specifically.
Configure your case
Free, no signup. Every sourced figure stays connected to the office or channel that published it.
1 · Which country is your claim in?
What TreeKeeper does not do.
A free tier that hid its limits would waste your time. This is the list that arrives with a membership and does not arrive without one.
- The full eligibility and viability assessment on your case
- Your citizenship tree, built and confirmed by us rather than by you
- Every document requirement mapped to your specific line
- Vital-record ordering prepared and tracked, with the preparation fee waived
- Case Readiness, from start to file-ready
- Prefilled application materials
- Secure document storage
- Your Heritage Passport
A membership is $100 per person, one time, for the life of the case. It goes to $250 for new members once the founding group fills. If you buy and change your mind, you have 14 days — or until your Kickoff Call begins, whichever comes first. See the refund policy for how the window closes.
Start with the tree. Decide about the rest later.
Nothing on TreeKeeper expires, and nothing here needs a card. Build the line, see which programs it reaches, and come back to the arithmetic when you know how many documents your case actually needs.