Build a family tree in your browser, in minutes.

A real online family tree maker, not a paper form.

I built this tool because every other free family tree maker I tried either locked the export behind a signup, capped the number of people, or refused to draw a chart that did not fit the 1950s nuclear-family pattern. Real families have remarriages, blended children, adoptions and same-sex partnerships. The data model here was built around that from day one, not patched on top of an org-chart layout.

Open the page, build your tree, save a PNG. Nothing is uploaded anywhere. The tree auto-saves to your browser between visits. Premium adds clean SVG, A3 PDF and JSON exports for one lifetime payment, and the same code unlocks every other ClicknFile free tool you open today and any new one I release.

What you can do with it, in three minutes.

• Add people one by one in the side panel, or paste a whole table from Excel or Google Sheets and let the importer build the tree for you.
• Connect two people in a Union (married, partnered, separated, divorced or unknown), then add their children. A child has two parents joined by a Union, not a single parent.
• Mark a child as adopted to render them with a dashed connector, the standard pedigree convention.
• Switch between descendants, ancestors and hourglass layouts to look at the same family from a different angle.
• Try one of the five visual themes: Classic, Cards, Minimal, Heritage and Tree.
• Use the search box to fade non-matching nodes so a single branch jumps out of a 100-person tree.
• Enable living-person privacy with one click so you can share the chart publicly without exposing personal data on living relatives.
• Export to PNG free. Premium unlocks SVG, A3 PDF and JSON.

Three layout modes for three different questions.

Each layout answers a different question about your family. Switch with one click in the toolbar.

Descendants

The starting person is at the top. Their children, grandchildren and so on stack downward, generation by generation. Useful when you want to show every line that came out of a single ancestor, for example "everyone descended from my great-grandmother". This is the closest layout to a corporate org chart, with the difference that each generation can branch through multiple Unions.

Ancestors

The starting person is at the bottom. Their two parents sit above, their four grandparents above that, and so on. This is the classic pedigree chart that genealogists use to trace a single line back through history. The chart doubles in width with every generation, so it stays compact for five or six generations and starts to need a large paper format beyond that.

Hourglass

The starting person sits at the centre. Ancestors stack upward, descendants stack downward. The chart looks like an hourglass with the proband at the pinch. Visually striking, often the best export for printing, and the default for first-time visitors because it shows the whole story without a second click.

Five visual themes, one click to switch.

Pick the theme that matches what you want to do with the chart. Every theme reads the same underlying tree, so switching never loses data.

Common use cases.

Your tree stays in your browser.

This is not a marketing line. The tool runs entirely as static HTML and JavaScript in your browser. Every change you make is auto-saved to your browser local storage. Nothing is uploaded to any server, including photos which are stored as base64 inside the same local store.

The only network calls the tool ever makes are: the PayPal Smart Buttons SDK when you open the premium modal, the validate-code endpoint when you paste an 8-character premium code, and a small analytics ping (GoatCounter, no cookies, no personal data) on page load. None of these calls send your tree.

The living-person privacy mode adds another layer for users who plan to publish the tree publicly. When enabled, every person without a death date renders as "Living · sex" only, and dates, places and photos are hidden from the export. The data is still in your browser, the privacy mode only affects what the chart shows.

If you want a permanent backup that survives a browser cache wipe, use the premium JSON export. It writes a full copy of the tree to a single file on your disk, with every person, every union, every photo, every setting. The safest habit is to download a JSON copy after a significant editing session and store it alongside the rest of your important family documents.

Pick the right layout for what you are about to show.

The three layouts answer different questions and produce visually different charts even from the same underlying tree. A quick rule of thumb:

• If the chart is about a single person and their offspring across many generations (a school project on a grandparent, a family reunion poster), pick Descendants. The root sits at the top and the chart grows downward, the way most people instinctively read a family tree.
• If the chart traces a line backward through history (an inheritance question, a genealogy research note, a citizenship application that requires proof of ancestry), pick Ancestors. The proband sits at the bottom and the chart fans upward.
• If the chart is the centerpiece of a gift or a wall print, pick Hourglass. It is the most visually balanced of the three because the proband sits at the pinch, with equal weight above and below.

Switching layouts is non-destructive. The tool re-computes positions from the same Person and Union data, so you can flip back and forth to see which layout fits before exporting. None of your edits are lost.

How it compares to the other options.

If you only need a chart for one project and you do not want to install software or upload your data, ClicknFile's free PNG export is the fastest path. Here is how it stacks up against the alternatives I tested while building this.

The big online platforms are stronger if your goal is research, DNA matching or cross-referencing historical records. They are heavier if you just want a clean chart you own forever. The Excel templates ship as a downloadable file you control, but they need workarounds for non-traditional family structures. ClicknFile sits between those two: quick to use, no signup, modern-family aware, with a real export and a one-time payment for the premium formats.

A note on the underlying technology.

This tool is one static HTML file with inline CSS and one JavaScript module. No framework, no build step, no node_modules at runtime. The layout engine is a custom tidy-tree variant that treats each Union as a virtual joining node, which is what makes the two-parents-per-child convention work without forcing the data into the single-parent shape that pure d3-hierarchy assumes. The PNG export rasterizes the same SVG you see on screen, so the chart you download is pixel-equivalent to what you see in the browser. The PDF export lazy-loads jsPDF the first time you need it, so the page stays small for visitors who only want the free PNG.

I run ClicknFile as a one-person studio. If something does not work the way you expect, or if you have a feature request that would help your specific family tree, I read every message that comes through the contact page.

Frequently asked questions.