AncestryDNA genetic genealogy testing kit, for personal ancestry tracing, made by Ancestry.com LLC, 2022.

AncestryDNA is a direct-to-consumer genetic testing service that launched in 2012. It uses customers DNA to provide information about the geographic origins of their ancestors, and can even reveal and connect living relatives. Genetic genealogy kits like this became big business from the 2010s, with millions of kits sold each year.

Customers interested in learning what their DNA can reveal about their geographical origins, purchase this kit (around £70 in 2022), and use the contents of the kit to provide a saliva sample and send it in prepaid packaging for analysis to a lab. They receive results in around 6-8 weeks.

'Ancestry’ is estimated by comparing markers in an individual's DNA with those of other peoples genomes held within the company’s reference database. This technique is called autosomal testing. It reveals geographically where most people with similar DNA are from.

Some people have called into question the accuracy of such ancestry estimates, the privacy and use of genetic information stored by companies, and the limited diversity within some companies' genome databases.