When MyHeritage bought Legacy's maker, Millennia, in August 2017, its announcement made a promise about the next release: "Version 10 will include the optional capability to sync family trees to the MyHeritage website". Legacy 9 had come out that April. Version 10 took until June 2024, and the sync was not in it.
A reader asked about it under the launch post. Geoff Rasmussen of Legacy said you could replace your MyHeritage tree, at the cost of the matches already attached to it, and added: "I personally prefer to manually update my tree at MyHeritage." What version 10 brought instead was a new price. Zero.
Everything that used to cost money is now free.
Legacy used to come in two editions, a free one with features held back and a paid Deluxe that had them all. The version 10 launch post ended that: "everything, and we mean everything in Legacy is now free!" The former Deluxe features listed include unlimited wall charts, Research Guidance, the Chronology and Descendant views, the Publishing Center and hashtags. Asked in the comments whether anything still costs extra, Rasmussen answered that "everything is available for free in Legacy 10."
Version 10 also added things. The FAN Club report gathers the friends, associates and neighbours who shared events or places with an ancestor, which is the method you reach for when the direct records run out. There is a DNA Center for tracking which relatives have tested, a map button that opens a place in Google Maps, and links to BillionGraves. The best-known free alternative is Gramps, which is open source and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.
It is a tool for researchers.
Legacy is at its best when you care where every fact came from. SourceWriter builds citations from templates, and the program warns US users when they enter a county that did not exist yet on the date of the event. Legacy's site counts over 100 charts and reports, from wall charts to full family history books. Hinting searches FamilySearch, Findmypast, GenealogyBank and MyHeritage for your people in the background. The hint is free. Reading the record behind it depends on each site's own access rules, which often means a subscription.
The interface is the weak spot. PCMag's 2015 review of version 8 liked the features and called the interface dated, and the version 10 launch list is all reports and tools, with no redesign on it. Expect to learn where things are rather than find them by instinct.
On a Mac, the route is narrow and unsupported.
Legacy's own Mac and Linux help page is blunt: "currently Legacy is a Windows program." It says Legacy runs on a Mac with an Intel chip and Windows installed through Parallels, VirtualBox, VMware Fusion or Boot Camp, and does not mention Apple Silicon at all. Apple stopped selling Intel Macs in 2023. CrossOver works, but at a bronze rating, which the page explains means some features break: "the maps will not display". And if anything goes wrong, Legacy support "may not be able to help as we do not support Mac."
If you are on a Mac, choose from software built for it. Our guide to genealogy software for Mac covers the field, and the MacFamilyTree review is the place to start if relatives will work on the tree with you.
Names outside Western Europe will not survive the trip.
This is the limit that rules people out. Legacy's help page on fonts says it handles Western European languages only, and "The program does not support Unicode (Eastern European fonts, like Russian, Asian fonts, Hebrew, or any other non-Western European fonts)." The same page says this may change one day. A second help page on non-Western languages names Polish among the unsupported languages, so even a letter like ł falls outside the character set.
That page offers a workaround "some of our users are doing": change Windows' system locale for non-Unicode programs to the language you need. It gets one alphabet working on that PC, not two at once, and the setting does not travel with your file. If your family's records were written in more than one script, the original spellings are evidence, and you want a program that keeps them all. Gramps stores Unicode.
FamilySearch is built in. MyHeritage sync never arrived.
Legacy is certified to share data with the FamilySearch Family Tree, and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints get ordinance tools on top. That connection is also where old versions break. When FamilySearch changed its login system on 1 July 2024, Legacy told users: "To continue using Legacy's FamilySearch tools, you must upgrade to Legacy version 10." Version 9 lost the link that day.
Anything you pull down from FamilySearch is someone else's conclusion, so judge the profile before it goes into your file. Nothing syncs with Ancestry either. Ancestry's tree connection goes to Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic.
Updates have slowed to maintenance.
Legacy's updates page shows the pace. Version 9's last build, 9.0.0.456, came out in February 2024, according to an archived copy of its download page. Version 10 shipped in June 2024, then 10.0.0.208 in April 2025 and 10.0.0.271 in October 2025, each described as "mostly a maintenance release". As of mid-October 2026, nothing newer is listed. The program works and it is free, but anything that talks to an online service, as the FamilySearch login change showed, depends on that service not changing underneath it.
Who should use it.
Use Legacy if you work on a Windows PC, your family's records are in Western European languages, and you want strong citation tools and printed reports without paying for them. It is also the easy upgrade for anyone still on Legacy 9, which lost its FamilySearch link in 2024.
Pick Gramps if you need Unicode or run Linux and the budget is still zero. Pick RootsMagic if you want Ancestry's TreeShare and a native Mac version. Our free genealogy software roundup and the best genealogy software comparison cover the alternatives. Before you move a tree in, open the file in our GEDCOM viewer so you know what went in, and read what a GEDCOM leaves behind for what tends to get lost between programs.
