There are lots of reasons why you may want to take a DNA test. You may simply want a paternity test. Maybe you’d like to find out how your genes may impact your risk of developing medical conditions or whether you’re a carrier for genetic diseases. Perhaps you’re a genealogy buff and what to discover other people to add to your family tree.
Like thousands and thousands of other people in the UK, Justin & I bought each other DNA kits for each other’s birthday/Christmas as we were interested in finding out if we had any unusual and exciting ancestry.
Helpfully, you can upload your test results to a different site and then pay a fee to unlock further information. For example, I’ve uploaded my Ancestry Raw DNA data to the MyHeritage website and have found people to whom I’m related (such as my mother!). If I want to delve further into their site, I’ll need to pay a one-off fee of £29. I’ve also just uploaded my Ancestry data to FamilyTreeDNA (they also accept data from 23andMe and MyHeritage). After completing the transfer, I got an email telling me that it can take approximately 3-5 business days to release my initial matches.
Ancestry DNA: £79
Ancestry plays host to the world’s largest online collection of family history records. 20 billion records with 15 million+ people DNA tested. Users can access records dating all the way back to the 13th century. Ancestry.co.uk possesses the UK’s largest online collection of family history records with more than two billion searchable records detailing births, marriages, deaths, military service and immigration.
MyHeritage: normally £79, current special offer, £59
To date, MyHeritage boasts 105 million users across 196 countries. They have 3.5 billion profiles and 9.6 billion historical records.
FamilyTreeDNA: from $79 to $649 USD
FamilyTreeDNA was founded in 1999 and claim to have the world’s most comprehensive DNA matching database. They have a number of different kits and bundles depending on whether you want to investigate your maternal or paternal lines and how detailed and far back in time you want to investigate.
shop DNA kits
Some of the links on our blog are affiliate links. We may receive a small commission - at no cost to you - if you click through and make a purchase.
Prices & links correct at time of publication.
