Comparison

Kinly vs Heirloom Tree

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Kinly

Create and explore your family history with a private, user-friendly app. Easily add relatives, connect generations, and visualize your lineage. Preserve your family's story with features like genograms and GEDCOM support, all while keeping your data secure on your device.

Highlights
  • Build family trees and genograms
  • Private data storage on device/iCloud
  • GEDCOM import, view, and edit
  • Connect generations and relationships
  • Family timeline and event reminders
  • Share privately with family
Features
Read full description

Build a beautiful family tree on your iPhone — private, simple, and free to start. Add relatives, connect generations, and preserve your family's story. Kinly is the family tree maker for people who want to document their family history without the complexity, ads, or forced subscriptions of big genealogy platforms. Draw a family tree, build a genogram, and import, view or edit your GEDCOM files — all while your data stays on your device and syncs privately across your family through iCloud. WHY FAMILIES CHOOSE KINLY • Private by design — your tree lives on your device and your own iCloud, not on someone else's servers • No forced subscription — start free, then choose a yearly plan or a one-time purchase if you ever want more • Beautifully simple — designed for everyone, no genealogy expertise required • Share with family — sync your tree privately so relatives can view it together EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO TELL YOUR FAMILY STORY • Add family members with photos, birth and death years, places, and notes • Connect relationships — parents, children, and spouses — with smart rules that prevent mistakes • Explore an interactive family tree canvas and pan across generations • See pedigree and descendant charts that make your lineage clear at a glance • Build a genogram to map relationships across your whole family • See a family timeline of births, marriages, and life events • Get gentle birthday and anniversary reminders for the people who matter • GEDCOM import, viewer, editor and export — bring your tree in from another app and back it up so it stays truly yours • Light and dark appearance, so your tree reads comfortably day or night HOW IT WORKS 1. Add yourself and your closest relatives 2. Connect them as parents, children, or spouses 3. Watch your family tree and timeline come to life WHO IT'S FOR Whether you're recording 2 generations or 5, starting your family record for the first time, or preserving stories for your kids, Kinly makes it easy to begin today — and keep it forever. KINLY PRO Kinly is free for a tree of up to 10 people, and anything you have already added stays unlocked. Kinly Pro adds unlimited members, GEDCOM import and export, birthday and anniversary reminders, and Stories — available as a yearly subscription or a one-time purchase, whichever you prefer. Start building your family tree now. Your story is worth keeping. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Heirloom Tree

Features
Read full description

Dedicated to the Lin family, and to every family — with wishes of health and peace. Heirloom Tree is a completely free family record app. No subscriptions. No in-app purchases. No ads. No accounts. Your family's story, written down well enough to pass on. Every family has a root system. This app is for the families who want to keep theirs. ■Why we built this The oldest storytellers in every family don't live forever. The names, the villages, the photos, the small details — if no one writes them down, they're gone. We made Heirloom Tree so every child can carry their family tree in their pocket: ancestors, origins, the generation poem, the faces of grandparents, where the family came from. This is our gift to the Lin family, and to every family. ■What it does ◆ Print your family tree as a PDF (lead feature) • One tap turns your whole tree into a print-ready PDF: genogram + generational register. • A4, A3, portrait or landscape. Pages split automatically — no one gets sliced in half. • Print it for Lunar New Year, bind it for the family altar, mail it to relatives overseas. A real family book, starting from you. ◆ Family tree (genogram) • Standard notation: square □ for male, circle ○ for female. Generations stack clearly, birth order left to right. • Parents, spouses, children — every relationship visible. The deceased belong on the tree too. • A double frame marks "me." From your own perspective, a concentric view shows how everyone relates to you. • Children who died young, pregnancies that didn't carry, relatives lost to time — they all keep a small place on the tree. Every life belongs to the family. ◆ Kinship calculator (Chinese-style cousin terms, plus English) • Type a path — "my dad's cousin's daughter" — and get the answer: second cousin. (The English cousin system is included; the full Chinese 親屬稱謂 grid is a Chinese heritage feature.) • Useful for figuring out what to call relatives at weddings, funerals, and family gatherings. ◆ Generation Poem (昭穆, Chinese heritage feature) • Enter your family's generational poem. The app tags each member with their generation and their generational character. • See a cousin's name and immediately know which generation they're from. • Overseas Chinese families who use the English interface still need this — it stays front and centre. ◆ Surname origins (first release: Lin 林) • Built-in reading content: the origin of 林 as a surname, the Xi He 西河 hall, Lin families in Fujian, Mazu (Lin Mo-niang) 媽祖, and migration from China to Taiwan. • More surnames (Chen, Huang, Zhang, Wang…) will be added in a future version. • For other locales, a short "What is a surname origin?" explainer is included alongside the Lin content. ◆ Remembrance dates (anniversaries of passing) • Local notifications for anniversaries of passing, Memorial Day-style commemorations. • Lunar calendar support for Chinese-heritage families — grandparents' dates will not be missed. ◆ Your data, fully yours • JSON backup and GEDCOM export — standard formats that work with other genealogy software. • No cloud lock-in. No account. No phone tether. ■Where it's going The current version is a quiet, complete, single-device family tree tool. A future version will add cloud sync and shared family editing. After that, relative matching to help you find long-lost branches of your family. But no matter which version ships next, free, no ads, your data is yours — these three things will never change. Dedicated to the Lin family, and to every family — with wishes of health and peace. Write down your roots. Pass the story on.

Screenshots

Kinly4 screens
Heirloom Tree4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Heirloom Tree at none against Kinly's 2. Heirloom Tree also leads on update cadence (every 3 days vs every 3 weeks). On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Kinly sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per year. Heirloom Tree asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Kinly ships an update every 3 weeks, Heirloom Tree every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 15, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
Kinly versus Heirloom Tree: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterKinlyHeirloom Tree
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.5 (2 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings2 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksEvery 3 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details — not scored
Size19 MB9 MB
Age rating4+4+
Developer培 李PEICHEN LIN

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Kinly

Subscriptions1
  • Kinly Pro$9.991 Year
One-time1
  • Kinly Pro Lifetime$24.99
None

Heirloom Tree

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Kinly free?
Kinly is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Heirloom Tree free?
Heirloom Tree is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Kinly or Heirloom Tree have ads?
Neither Kinly nor Heirloom Tree shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Kinly or Heirloom Tree?
Kinly ships an update every 3 weeks, and Heirloom Tree every 3 days. Most recently, Kinly was updated on October 25, 2026 and Heirloom Tree on October 15, 2026.

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