The people-search and burial industry sells the same underlying records through eight different doors. One service rarely wins outright, because the task decides the tool: a grave search is not a genealogy project, and neither is finding a living person who moved. This table shows what each service actually holds, what the free tier gives you, and where the paid layers start.
The services, side by side
| Service | Best for | Free tier | Paid from | Main record types | US coverage notes | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Find a Grave | Locating a specific grave and its photo | Search, photos, memorials, transcription requests | No payment required for core use (optional membership) | Volunteer memorials, headstone photos, obituary links | Largest cemetery database; strongest in active metro areas | Transcriptions drift; confirm dates against the stone or a death certificate |
| BillionGraves | Cemetery-level searches with exact locations | Search and cemetery browse | Viewing memorial details (check current pricing on the official site) | GPS-tagged headstone photographs | Concentrated where volunteer scanning events happened; thin elsewhere | Smaller raw counts; details sit behind a paywall |
| FamilySearch | Free death dates, census lines, and household records | Broad — most indexed records, Social Security Death Index, 1950 census | A small set of paywalled partner records | Census, vital, military, probate, newspaper indexes | Free nonprofit index; strong national coverage | Plain interface, aggressive matching, some temple-linked collections withheld |
| Ancestry | Deep US record research and family trees | Search results only — you see that a record exists | Subscription (check current pricing on the official site) | Census, vital, military, newspapers, probate | The reference standard for US records | Documents gated behind a subscription; library editions exist at many public libraries |
| MyHeritage | Families with immigrant roots and a burial index of its own | Search with limited documents | Subscription tiers (check current pricing on the official site) | Census, vital, its own grave index, DNA, photo tools | US collections real but thinner than Ancestry’s | Best records sit in Europe-heavy collections; matching overstates certainty |
| PeopleLegacy | A fast chronological report of one person’s record trail | Search results with previews | Full report, one-time or subscription (check current pricing on the official site) | Assembled census, obituary, and public-record hits | Strong where states publish records digitally | Report cites sources it does not show; not a certified document |
| Whitepages | Fastest first hit on a living person | Name, age range, possible location and relatives | Deeper record details (check current pricing on the official site) | Current phone, address, and relative data | Blunt instrument that works for common names with a state | Data ages; relatives are inferred, not proven |
| BeenVerified | A thorough background-style report when one search matters | Nothing usable | Subscription (check current pricing on the official site) | County and court records, phone, property, arrests | Same data pool as every aggregator | Recurring-subscription model; reports can outlive the facts |
Last checked: 2026-09-24. Pricing changes often. Verify the current tier and price on the official site before you pay.
Verdict per task
You want a deceased relative’s death date and family background. Start free at FamilySearch for the Social Security Death Index and census. If the free layer runs out, Ancestry for US depth or MyHeritage for immigrant lines — buy whichever demonstrably holds your names, verified by a free search first.
You want to locate a grave and see the stone. Find a Grave first, BillionGraves for the coordinates, the VA Nationwide Gravesite Locator if the person is a veteran, and the cemetery office for the admin record. No subscription required on the first two for the core search.
You want contact information for a living person. Whitepages free search to identify the person, one weak-link connection through a shared relative or classmate to reach them, and an aggregator report only when that fails and the contact genuinely matters.
You want a neighbor or address history. That is a different toolbox entirely: county property records and the assessor for who owned the house, census and city directories for the residents, and the FBI Crime Data Explorer plus the local police incident map for what has happened nearby. The people-search industry is the wrong layer here.
Why not one “best” service
Because you are never one search away. A grave search starts at a cemetery database, the death record behind it lives at a state vital-records office, and the relative who fills the gaps is often a people-search hit away. The stack is the method: know which layer your question lives on, use the free layer first, and pay only when the layer that holds the answer charges for it.
Read the single-service reviews and head-to-heads in Reviews & Comparisons, and the full service directory with official links on the Services page.