Genealogy by Country (Continental Europe)

Geneanet, Antenati, Matricula, Digitalarkivet, Genealogy Indexer — French, German, Italian, Scandinavian, Eastern European records.

Continental European archives have digitized aggressively in the past decade; the 2024–2026 wave brought many parish-register + civil-register collections online. For census specifics see Genealogy Census Records; for understanding old-script records see Genealogy Document Scanning & HTR; for translation see Genealogy Translation & Paleography.

France

★ ★ Geneanet — paid (~$60/yr Premium) + free; the French/Belgian default. Free uploads to community trees; Premium unlocks full record search. ~9 billion records across France + neighbors. Recently added DNA matching.
Filae — paid; competitor to Geneanet; Ancestry-owned in France.
★ Archives départementales (free) — every French department's archive online for free, with parish + civil registers (BMS / état civil) digitized. Free, but underused by US researchers because the départemental websites are scattered and French-only.
Gallica (BnF) — free; Bibliothèque nationale; digitized books, periodicals, maps.
Mémoires des Hommes — free; military.
MyHeritage France — paid.
Heredis Online — paid; companion to Heredis desktop.

★ ★ Matricula — free; Catholic parish registers across Germany, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Bosnia, Hungary, Poland, Croatia. Image-rich, growing.
- https://data.matricula-online.eu/
★ Archion — paid (~€20/quarter); Lutheran / Protestant parish registers DACH-wide. Complementary to Matricula's Catholic focus.
★ CompGen / Verein für Computergenealogie — free; the German genealogy community hub. Cemetery transcriptions, address books, GedBas tree-share, GenWiki.
Ancestry.de — paid; integrates German records, especially Hamburg Passenger Lists.
MyHeritage Germany — paid; Eastern + Central Europe strong.
GenTeam.eu — free; Austrian + Central European records aggregator.
Meyers Gazetteer — free; the standard German-empire-era gazetteer; finds tiny villages by historical administrative unit.
Famtools / Stammbaumbau — small German tools.
DigiBib (Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek) — free; cross-archive search.

LDS Family History Library digitized German microfilm — free at FamilySearch.
Bavarian State Library DigiPress — free; newspapers.
State archive digitization sites (Saxony, Württemberg, NRW, Hessen, etc.) — free; spotty.

★ ★ Antenati (Portale Antenati) — free; Italian state archive's parish + civil register portal. Coverage growing rapidly 2020–2026; many provinces fully online. Image-only (no index) for most years; HTR / FamilySearch indexing improving search.
- https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/
★ FamilySearch Italy — free; index + image collections.
Geneanet Italy — paid + free; growing.
Ancestry Italy — paid.
MyHeritage Italy — paid.
Family Search Italian parish records — free; complementary.

★ PARES (Portal de Archivos Españoles) — free; Spanish national archive portal.
FamilySearch Spain / Portugal — free.
MyHeritage Spain / Portugal — paid.
Geneanet Spain / Portugal — paid + free.
Tombo (Portuguese national archive) — free; growing parish + civil records.

★ ★ Digitalarkivet (Norway) — free; the Norwegian state archive; censuses 1769–1910, parish registers, court records, emigration. Among the best free national archives in Europe.
★ Riksarkivet / SVAR (Sweden) — free + paid (Riksarkivet free; advanced ArkivDigital paid ~$30/mo). Swedish parish records, censuses, emigration.
★ Rigsarkivet (Denmark) — free; Danish censuses 1787–1940, parish registers digitized.
★ Kansallisarkisto (Finland) — free; growing.
★ National Archives of Iceland — free; small population, deep records.
MyHeritage Scandinavia — paid.
Ancestry Sweden — paid; complementary indexes.
Ardusi — paid; Norwegian-American emigration.
Scandinavian-Roots / Disgen — community sites.

★ WieWasWie — free + paid; Dutch national genealogy portal aggregating regional archives.
★ Open Archieven — free; aggregator across Dutch + Belgian archives.
CBG Centrum voor Familiegeschiedenis — paid + free (Dutch).
Geneanet Belgium — paid + free; strong.
arch.be (State Archives of Belgium) — free; civil + parish records.
AGR / Algemeen Rijksarchief — free Belgian.

The collapse-of-communism digitization wave dramatically improved access 2010–2026. Polish records lead.

★ ★ Genealogy Indexer (genealogyindexer.org) — free; meta-search across digitized Polish, Galician, Yiddish books, business directories, yizkor books. Critical for Eastern European Jewish + Galician research.
- https://genealogyindexer.org/
★ Geneteka — free; PTG-run; volunteer-indexed Polish parish records.
★ Szukaj w Archiwach (PL) — free; Polish state archives portal.
AGAD (Poland) — free; Galician records.
FamilySearch Poland — free.
MyHeritage Poland / Eastern Europe — paid.
Czechoslovak / Czech / Slovak archives — free at Actapublica + national archives.
ANRH / Romanian National Archives — free; growing.
DAR (Russian / Belarusian / Ukrainian) — partly free, increasingly disrupted by political situation.
National Archives of Hungary — free.
Lithuanian State Historical Archives — free.
JewishGen Eastern Europe databases — free; see Genealogy By Country (Jewish/African/Asian).

GRGenealogy — paid + small free.
Greek Genealogical Society — paid.
FamilySearch Greece — free; partial.
Demotologion (municipal rolls) — accessed via Greek municipalities; mostly offline.

Antenati expansion — many Italian provinces newly online; HTR-based search improving.
Matricula + Archion continue adding parishes.
AI translation of foreign-language records — Claude / GPT-4o reading old German Sütterlin or Polish parish records remarkably well; community workflows pipe scans through vision LLMs.
Polish digitization still leading Eastern Europe; Czech and Hungarian following.
Russian / Ukrainian access — the war disrupts archive operations; some sites unreliable.

France: Geneanet + free archives départementales.
Germany Catholic: Matricula (free).
Germany Lutheran: Archion (paid).
Italy: Antenati (free) + FamilySearch.
Spain / Portugal: PARES + FamilySearch.
Norway: Digitalarkivet — free, deep, the gold standard.
Sweden: ArkivDigital paid for serious; Riksarkivet free for browsing.
Denmark / Iceland / Finland: national archives, all free.
Netherlands / Belgium: WieWasWie / Open Archieven + Geneanet Belgium.
Poland: Geneteka + Genealogy Indexer + Szukaj w Archiwach.
Eastern European Jewish research: see Genealogy By Country (Jewish/African/Asian).