DNA test. Ancestry or My Heritage? COMPLETED

[nanny jan]

My sister is thinking about buying this as a gift but which one would be most useful? As far as we know the family is English on both sides.

Advice very welcome! 

[manukarik]

Buy the Ancestry one - huge database - and you can then download your DNA data by going into settings and download data. This will allow you to upload your DNA data to other sites including MyHeritage and MyLiving DNA amongst others.

There's a 25% off offer on just now (£59 + postage) - just be aware that they will also add hefty postal charges of about £10 if I remember correctly.

[Nic.]

It’s possible to test on Ancestry and upload the raw data to My Heritage. But it’s not possible to test on My Heritage and load their data onto Ancestry.

I hope that helps

[nanny jan]

Thanks both; just what we needed to know. 

[dublin1850]

Either way, post your data to GEDMatch too.

[nanny jan]

Thanks but not too sure they are interested in matches….just want to see if they are as “English” as they think they are!

[Ruskie]

Thanks but not too sure they are interested in matches….just want to see if they are as “English” as they think they are!

In that case you can test with anyone as none of them are that accurate.  If they are only looking for those ethnic percentages they might be disappointed or confused with their results, especially when those percentages change, as they probably will. 

Seriously though, perhaps look at Living DNA - small database, but concentrate more on the UK regions I believe. Others might know more about them and their accuaracy.

[manukarik]

You can upload your Ancestry DNA results to LivingDNA too.

[phil57]

You can upload your Ancestry DNA results to LivingDNA too.

You can, and that's fine for obtaining matches in their database. For ethnicity results, transferred in test results are very basic. My transferred in Ancestry test only resolves my ethnicity to the whole of Europe and says, "DNA upload files do not contain the necessary markers for processing deep ancestry information. To obtain the full story of your ancestors, purchase the Living DNA ancestry test".

The results from my LivingDNA test are much more localised. drilling down in some cases to county levels within the UK for recent ancestry. How accurate ethnicity tests are is open to debate, but if that is what the OP wants, LivingDNA are considered to have the best reference population statistics for the UK. You must test with them directly to take advantage of the results though.

For matching with other tests though, I would go with Ancestry for the reasons already stated, and transfer the Ancestry test to other databases. The only reason that I have a LivingDNA test is that I took it in frustration at my repeated failures to get my Ancestry samples successfully processed, although I did eventually succeed.