The following companies are offering reduced cost autosomal DNA tests. These tests can be used to reliably find immediate family and cousins out to 4th or 5th cousins. Less reliably, they can give you ethnic ancestry results.
- MyHeritage DNA - $49 plus free shipping with coupon code Free18 (ends Nov 23)
- 23andMe - $69 per kit, shipping extra, or $129 for the Ancestry + Health version (ends Nov 25)
- AncestryDNA - $49 per kit, plus shipping (ends Nov 26)
- Family Tree DNA - $39 per DNA test, shipping extra (ends Nov 26)
- LivingDNA through Findmypast, $59 plus shipping (ends Nov 26)
- LivingDNA direct - $69 per kit, plus shipping (no posted end date)
I have tested at all of these companies.
I recommend the following testing strategy:
Test at AncestryDNA and 23andMe and then upload the raw data to the others. This is the lowest cost strategy and gets your results into the largest commercial genetic genealogy databases.
An additional upload is to Gedmatch. This will allow people who have tested at only one company to match other people from different companies. Gedmatch has both free and fee services. The free services get you their matching service.
There is a new company Dante Labs, doing whole genome testing for $199.00 (L169.00) for Black Friday Week. This is a 30x coverage of your whole genome and can be used for learning about medical propensities. Not really useful for genealogy.
If you already have a test result, be sure to upload to MyHeritage and Living DNA before 1 December to avoid their new fee schedule.
If you are interested in graphical representation of your relative network, Rootsfinder is another company to join before 1 December.
NOTE: I do not earn any money from your using any of these links.
