NewspaperArchive vs. GenealogyBank
Your ancestor didn’t live in a big city. Neither should your archive.
Most family history happens in small towns — the kind of places that had one weekly newspaper, one church, one general store. We built our archive around exactly those papers.
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16,500+ Titles · 3.3 Billion Articles · 1607–Present · All 50 States · 48 Countries
Why this comparison matters
More titles. Deeper roots. Smaller towns.
When researchers compare newspaper archive services, the conversation almost always focuses on big-city dailies and famous mastheads. That’s the wrong conversation for most genealogists.
The people you’re looking for — your great-great-grandmother, the farmer two counties over, the immigrant who settled a Midwest prairie town — appeared in local weeklies serving towns of 5,000 people. Those papers ran birth announcements, marriage notices, land disputes, church socials, and the kind of obituaries that told a whole life story in three paragraphs.
NewspaperArchive was built around that reality. Our collection of 16,500+ titles reflects a deliberate focus on the papers that large competitors overlooked: the county seat weekly, the rural daily, the immigrant community gazette. GenealogyBank offers a legitimate archive — but compare coverage state by state, particularly across the rural Midwest and South, and the difference becomes impossible to ignore.
At a glance
On price: NewspaperArchive costs roughly $3 more per month. Across 3.3 billion searchable articles, that’s pennies per discovery — and zero if you never find what you need because the paper isn’t there.
State-by-state coverage
Where the gap becomes a canyon
Title counts by state reveal where small-town coverage actually lives. In the states where American family history is most deeply rooted, the difference is not marginal.
Title counts current as of 2025. Coverage is ongoing and titles are added regularly.
Real titles. Real gaps.
Papers GenealogyBank simply doesn’t have
These aren’t edge cases. They’re the exact kind of small-town newspapers where most American ancestors actually appeared. NewspaperArchive has them. GenealogyBank does not.
28 Titles
Monmouth Daily Atlas, Monmouth Evening Gazette, Monmouth College Ravelings & more
5 Titles
Rhinelander Daily News, Rhinelander New North & more
17 Titles
Coshocton Tribune, Coshocton Age & more
4 Titles
Altoona Mirror, Altoona Tribune, Evening Mirror & more
15 Titles
Biddeford Journal, Biddeford Daily Journal & more
10 Titles
Greensburg Daily News, Greensburg Standard & more
Historical depth
83 more years of American history
NewspaperArchive’s coverage begins in 1607 — before the Mayflower, before the colonies, at the very dawn of the English-speaking press in the Americas. GenealogyBank begins in 1690.
On price
Every discovery costs pennies. Every miss costs everything.
NewspaperArchive is $22.99/month — roughly $3 more than GenealogyBank. Spread across 3.3 billion searchable articles, that difference vanishes. What doesn’t vanish is the gap in coverage: the small-town paper that isn’t in a competing archive, the 1881 Minnesota dispatch, the 1874 Georgia county weekly. Those records exist once. If they’re not where you’re searching, you don’t find them.
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Side by side
What you get, compared directly
Start searching today
The paper that holds your answer is already here.
Search 3.3 billion articles, 108 million obituaries, and 16,500+ titles — including the small-town papers that nowhere else has. Seven days, full access, no limits.
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