If you have ever taken an AncestryDNA or 23andMe test, gotten your results, and then heard someone mention GEDmatch, you have probably had one of two reactions.
Either you looked it up, got hit with a wall of gray boxes and tiny blue links that looks like it was built decades ago, and closed the tab.
Or you pushed through anyway, uploaded your raw DNA file, and then had no idea what any of the buttons actually did.
Both reactions are completely normal.
GEDmatch is one of the most useful free resources in genetic genealogy, and it is also one of the least polished looking websites you will use for anything important. The site rewards patience. Once you understand what a handful of its tools actually do, it stops feeling like a maze and starts feeling like a serious research tool that professional genealogists rely on every single day.
This guide walks through how to use GEDmatch tools without the guesswork, focused on five free features that will do more for your family history research than almost anything else on the site.
What GEDmatch Actually Is and Why It Is Worth the Learning Curve
GEDmatch is a separate website from the DNA testing companies. It does not run any tests itself.
Instead, you download your raw DNA data file from AncestryDNA, 23andMe, MyHeritage, or FamilyTreeDNA, upload that file to GEDmatch, and the site compares it against everyone else who has done the same thing, regardless of which company they originally tested with.
That last part is the entire reason GEDmatch exists. Each testing company only shows you matches with other customers of that same company. If your closest genetic cousin tested with a different company than you did, you will never see them in your results unless one of you uploads to a shared platform like GEDmatch.
The site has changed ownership a couple of times over the years, and it is worth knowing that it now belongs to a company called Qiagen, after an earlier sale to a forensic firm called Verogen. That history is part of why GEDmatch also has a law enforcement matching option you can opt out of, which is worth reading about separately if you have privacy concerns.
For genealogy purposes though, the free tools remain the main draw, and they are the focus of this guide. GEDmatch sells a Tier1 subscription for about ten dollars a month that unlocks extra filtering and sorting options, but you can accomplish a genuine amount of research using only the free tools covered below.
Getting Your Raw DNA Onto GEDmatch First
Before any of the five tools below will work, you need to get your raw DNA data onto the site.
Every major testing company lets you download your raw data file from your account settings, usually listed under something like DNA settings or manage test results. The file is a plain text file, and you do not need to open it or understand it, just save it somewhere you can find it again.
Once you have that file, create a free GEDmatch account and use the upload tool to submit it. GEDmatch will ask which company the file came from, since the file formats are slightly different between companies.
After you upload, GEDmatch needs some time to process your file before it starts appearing in other people's match lists and before your own tools become fully useful. This can take anywhere from a few hours to closer to a day depending on how busy the site is, so do not worry if your results look empty right after uploading.
Where to Find Your Kit Number
Once processing finishes, GEDmatch assigns you a kit number, something like A123456, and this number is how you identify yourself inside every tool on the site.
You will find your kit number on your dashboard after logging in, usually listed right next to your name. Keep it somewhere handy, since you will be typing it into a lot of these tools.
The Five Free GEDmatch Tools Worth Learning First
GEDmatch has dozens of tools listed on its dashboard, and most beginners never get past the first five before giving up. The five below cover almost everything a family historian actually needs, and each one builds naturally on the last.
One-to-Many, Your List of Everyone You Match
One-to-Many is the tool you will use the most, and it is the natural starting point. Type your kit number into the field, hit submit, and the tool returns a long list of everyone in the GEDmatch database whose DNA overlaps with yours.
Each row includes a name or username, an email address if the person has one listed, their kit number, and two important numbers, the total amount of shared DNA measured in centimorgans, and the size of the largest single shared segment.
The list is sorted with your closest matches at the top, so the further down you scroll, the more distant the relationship becomes.
The free version of this tool is sometimes labeled One-to-Many Limited Version on the dashboard, and it gives you the core match list without some of the extra filtering options that come with a paid Tier1 subscription. For most people just starting out, the limited version tells you everything you need to know, which is simply who you match and roughly how closely.
One-to-One Autosomal, A Closer Look at One Match at a Time
Once something interesting shows up in your One-to-Many list, like a name you recognize or a shared amount of DNA large enough to suggest a close relationship, the One-to-One Autosomal tool lets you compare that specific person against you directly.
You enter both kit numbers, yours and theirs, and the tool shows you exactly how much DNA you share on each chromosome, along with the start and end points of every shared segment.
This is the tool that turns a vague number like forty five centimorgans into something concrete you can actually use. Seeing the segments laid out by chromosome helps you figure out which side of your family a match likely belongs to, especially once you start comparing the same match against other known relatives.
Admixture, Also Known as the Ethnicity Calculators
Admixture is the closest thing GEDmatch has to the colorful ethnicity pie chart you may already be used to from AncestryDNA or 23andMe, except GEDmatch gives you several different versions built by independent researchers instead of just one.
After uploading your kit, you can run it through calculators with names like Eurogenes, MDLP, Dodecad, HarappaWorld, and puntDNAL, each built from a different research dataset and each better suited to certain backgrounds than others.
If you mostly have European ancestry, Eurogenes is usually a solid starting point. If your background includes South Asian ancestry, HarappaWorld tends to give more useful detail. If you are not sure where to begin, the default option labeled Admixture Proportions with a connection to Oracle gives results that look and feel similar to what your original testing company showed you, which makes it an easy first calculator to try.
It helps to think of these calculators as a second opinion rather than a more accurate answer. None of them are perfect, and the more specific a calculator gets, shown by a higher number after the letter K in its name, the more room there is for small errors. Running your kit through two or three different calculators and comparing the results tends to give a more honest picture than trusting any single one completely.
Are Your Parents Related, Checking for Overlapping Family Lines
This tool has a blunt name, and it does exactly what it says. It checks your own DNA for long stretches where both copies of your chromosomes, the one from your mother and the one from your father, are unusually similar to each other.
That pattern usually shows up when your parents share more recent ancestry than two random strangers would, something genealogists call endogamy or, in stronger cases, consanguinity. Some ethnic and religious communities have historically had a lot of intermarriage within a small population, and this tool can confirm that pattern in your own results.
It is also a valuable tool for adoptees or anyone researching unknown parentage, since it can offer an early clue about whether your birth parents likely came from a tightly connected community, which can shape how you interpret an unusually high number of matches later on.
People Who Match Both, or One of Two Kits, Sorting Matches Onto Family Sides
This tool becomes especially useful once you have a second kit to work with, such as a parent, a sibling, or a known cousin who has also uploaded to GEDmatch.
You enter two kit numbers, and the tool shows you which of your matches show up for both kits and which only show up for one. If you compare your own kit against a kit belonging to your mother, for example, anyone who matches both of you almost certainly connects to you through her side of the family.
This single tool can save you hours of manual sorting, especially early on when you do not yet know which of your matches belong to which branch of your tree. It works even better if you can get a parent or grandparent to upload their own raw DNA file, since their results act as a filter that instantly sorts a big chunk of your match list for you.
A Few Tips Before You Start Clicking Around
The GEDmatch interface has not changed its visual style much over the years, and that catches a lot of new users off guard.
Tables can run wider than your screen, so if columns look cut off, try zooming out in your browser rather than assuming the tool is broken.
Give your upload time to fully process before judging your match list. A kit that looks thin an hour after uploading often looks completely different a day later.
And if you find yourself wanting more advanced filtering, larger match lists, or tools like segment triangulation across many kits at once, that is when the Tier1 subscription becomes worth considering. Most people get real value out of the free tools alone for a long time before that ever becomes necessary.
Turning Match Lists Into Actual Family History
A spreadsheet full of kit numbers and centimorgan totals is not, by itself, a family history. It is raw material.
The real work starts once you take a match that GEDmatch flagged and turn it into an actual person, a name, a relationship, a place in your family tree that finally makes sense. That work happens in old records, in conversations with relatives, and sometimes in nothing more than a name a distant cousin was kind enough to write next to their email address.
Every match on that list is connected to you through an actual person who lived an actual life, with stories of their own that a centimorgan count will never capture. The DNA is just the thread that leads you back to them.
Finding a new branch of your family through GEDmatch is its own kind of reward, but the names and dates you uncover are only half the story. The living relatives you already have, the ones you do not need a DNA kit to find, still hold stories nobody has written down yet.
Memoracy was built for that side of the search, giving people a simple daily prompt to record their own life in their own words, so the next person doing this kind of research has more than a name and a match to go on.
Sign up and start your first story on Memoracy today.
