How much does it cost to hire a genealogist?

Most professional genealogists charge between $50 and $200 an hour, and the larger firms sell that time in blocks: 20 hours for $2,000 at Price Genealogy, 25 hours for $3,200 at Legacy Tree Genealogists, as of October 2026. I don't bill by the hour. My prices are set by how far back you want to go: $300 for a Discovery assessment, from $900 for both sides of your family back to about 1900, from $2,500 into the 1800s, from $5,500 for one or two lines into the 1700s, and $9,500 for both sides back to the 1600s. The full list is on the pricing page.

Those are the numbers. The rest of this post is about what they buy, because an hour of research and an answer are not the same thing.

What do genealogists charge per hour?

ICAPGen, the International Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists, tests researchers by region and accredits the ones who pass. Its cost guide says many professionals charge between $50 and $200 an hour. The rate moves with the researcher's experience and credentials, the part of the world they specialize in, and how hard your question is.

Legacy Tree's own article on cost, written in July 2023, cites a wider spread from the Association of Professional Genealogists: from around $30 or $40 an hour to well over $200.

Two other costs ride along with the hourly rate. Most genealogists ask for a retainer on a large project, which is money paid up front that the first hours are worked against. And some charge separately for pulling documents, because the archives themselves charge for copies, and for travel.

The honest problem with an hourly rate is that it tells you nothing until you know how many hours. That is why ICAPGen also gives project ranges: a basic tree or a specific line, $500 to $5,000; a comprehensive family history, $5,000 to $25,000.

What do the big firms charge for a project?

Firms sell blocks of hours, and the block prices are public. These were on each company's own site when I checked in October 2026.

Legacy Tree Genealogists:

• BASIC25: 25 hours, $3,200, which they price out at $128 an hour.
• STANDARD50: 50 hours, $6,000, or $120 an hour.
• PREMIUM100: 100 hours, $11,500, or $115 an hour.

Each can be split into three monthly payments, and they say most projects finish in four to six months. A goal, in their terms, is research on one family line in one geographic location, so count your goals before you count hours. Their 2023 article put the floor at $108 an hour; the lowest figure on their pricing page today is $115.

Price Genealogy:

• 5 hours, $700.
• 20 hours, $2,000, or $100 an hour. The same package with DNA analysis is $2,600.
• 40 hours, $3,800.
• 60 hours, $5,600.
• 80 hours, $7,400.

They quote a turnaround of about three months.

Notice what both lists sell: hours and a report. Neither promises you will reach a particular year. A 20-hour block on an easy American line might net the three or four generations ICAPGen calls a simple project. The same 20 hours on a line that crosses into Mexico before civil registration, the government's own birth, marriage and death books, or that runs into a burned courthouse, might produce a careful report explaining why nothing was found. That report is honest work. It is also $2,000.

Why do I price by the target instead of by the hour?

Because you are paying for an answer, not for my time. If I bill by the hour, a fast result costs you less proof and a slow one costs you more money, and neither is your fault. So each of my packages fixes the target and the price before any work starts. The deep packages, the 1700s and 1600s, are billed in four equal parts: at the start, when a line reaches 1800, when it reaches 1700, and on delivery. If a line hits a true wall, billing stops at the last milestone reached and you keep everything found. In the first week I check whether your lines can realistically reach the target; if one can't, you choose another line or take a refund minus the assessment fee.

Here is what that looks like on a real file. In File 001, the open case on Padre Ballí's birth year, the burial entry that corrected a death date printed in every history book was unindexed. It turned up only by reading the Matamoros parish register page by page. The Matamoros archive later answered an inquiry of mine: the original 1828 will went missing from the city's holdings decades ago. That inquiry cost time and produced no will. On an hourly contract, you pay for both the page-by-page read and the dead end, whether or not anything comes of them. On a target, that risk sits with me. I would rather carry it than bill you for it.

I will be fair to the other side. Hourly billing is the right model for an open-ended question, such as "find whatever you can about my great-grandmother," where there is no depth to aim at. And a package can cost more than the hours would have if a line turns out to be easy. I accept that trade because the opposite case, the slow line, is far more common.

What does one package cost, start to finish?

Here is the arithmetic for the two packages people ask about most, taken from the pricing page.

The 1800s package: $2,500

• Deposit to start: 25 percent of $2,500, which is $625.
• Balance on delivery: $1,875.
• What it covers: both sides of your family traced into the 1800s, every person tied to the record that proves them, errors in existing trees found and documented, the case vault and a private family website.
• Not included at that price: official paper copies, which cost the archive's own fee plus $10 handling per document and are ordered only after you approve each one, and the printed family binder, which is an add-on from $150.

The checkout for the 1800s package shows the same split before you commit to anything. Your card is authorized, not charged, until we have both agreed to the written scope. For comparison, $2,500 sits between Price Genealogy's 20-hour package at $2,000 and Legacy Tree's 25-hour BASIC25 at $3,200, as of October 2026. Those buy hours. Mine buys both sides of your family to a stated depth.

The flagship: $9,500

• Four payments of $2,375: at the start, when a line reaches 1800, when it reaches 1700, and on delivery.
• What it covers: your father's surname line and your mother's maiden-name line, each traced about 12 generations, roughly 24 ancestors across 350 years, with every parent-child link proven.
• Everything is included: vault, website, printed binder, physical documents where the archive will release them, your Ancestry tree verified, the DNA tie-in, the written family narrative and the custom-designed website.

The nearest published package is Legacy Tree's PREMIUM100 at $11,500 for 100 research hours. If a line hits a true wall before 1700, the later payments stop and you keep everything found.

Where the $300 assessment fits

Brick walls, meaning a line where the records seem to stop, and every 1600s request start with the Discovery assessment: $300, one payment, a brick-wall check and a written research plan, with the full amount credited toward whichever package you choose. Within two business days of opening a case you get the exact scope and total in writing.

What can you get for less, or for free?

A great deal of the record base is free, and I say that as someone selling research. Padre Ballí's burial entry came from a parish register digitized on FamilySearch. His signature came from a Reynosa marriage register that the UTRGV Digital Library puts online at no charge. Neither had been cited in any published account of his life. It took pages, not privileges.

If you only need one document pulled, ask for exactly that, since some genealogists bill retrieval separately. Inside my 1900 and 1800s packages, a paper copy costs the archive's own fee plus $10 handling. In the 1700s and 1600s packages, paper copies are included wherever the archive will release them.

On the solo-versus-firm question: a single accredited researcher can land anywhere in that $50 to $200 range, so a solo pro can be cheaper per hour than a firm's $100 to $128, or more expensive. The firm's rate buys a team and someone managing your project. The solo rate buys one person's attention, usually in a narrower specialty. Cheaper per hour is not the same as cheaper per answer, so compare what each will deliver for your actual question.

A 2019 post on GenealogyBlog makes the case for hiring: that a professional can save you money over the long run. That is true when the question is well defined and false when it isn't. A thread on r/Genealogy asks whether anyone has hired a professional genealogist to break through a brick wall, and whether it was worth the money; it is worth reading as a set of opinions, not as a price list.

What doesn't the money buy?

A guarantee. ICAPGen puts it in one line:

No researcher can guarantee that your family will be found in the records.

Price Genealogy says the same thing from the other direction: be wary of anyone who offers unusually low prices for complex research or guarantees dramatic results. The one record that would settle Padre Ballí's birth year, his baptism, was likely lost when a flood destroyed Reynosa in 1800. No fee produces a document that no longer exists. What a professional can do is go around the gap, which in that case means burial books, his will, his own signature, and the ordination file that canon law required to carry proof of his age. That is the difference between buying hours and buying a method.

I go into the guarantee question in Can a genealogist guarantee results? and the broader value question in Is it worth hiring a professional genealogist?

The second thing money rarely buys is anything you can check. A PDF report cites records; it seldom shows them. Every package I sell ends with the record itself sitting under the claim it proves, with the archive and page number. You can see a finished file on the deliverables page, and I walk through each item in What do you actually get when you hire a genealogist?

If you'd rather have this done, start with the $300 Discovery assessment; it's credited toward any package. It tells you what is possible before you commit to anything larger. Start with the Discovery assessment.