Inquiry. You reach out and briefly describe your project — the family, the question, and what you already know.
Research plan. For a $350 assessment fee, we:
conduct preliminary research to see what records exist for your subject
what conditions (e.g., record loss, restricted access, language, distance) might limit what can be found.
We then prepare a formal research plan setting out:
what we would pursue
how
roughly how long it should take
potential or anticipated obstacles
what it would cost.
Your decision.
If the records simply aren't there, we tell you at this stage and you owe nothing beyond the $350.
If you choose to proceed, you approve the plan and sign our research agreement (available here).
Investigation & delivery. We carry out the research and produce your chosen product.
RatesRate$80 per hour.Plan$350 assessment fee — non-refundable, billed once, before the project and separate from the hourly work.Discounts are available for JewishGen members.
Projects generally run 30 – 40 hours.
Time is split evenly between (a) investigation and (b) analysis & writing
Example: a 30-hour commission is roughly 15 hours of research and 15 hours of composition / narrative reconstruction.
We generally divide projects by line rather than by whole family
a single family holds many lines, and taking them all on at once makes a project unwieldy and, in practice, endless.
a standard single-line project runs between $2,400 – $3,600.
What to expect
Genealogy done well is not for the digitally impatient: it is time-intensive and depends on thorough corroboration, not a single search result.
We aim to meet the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) — the benchmark professionals use to establish credible conclusions.
A family-history project can take as long as six months; we aim to complete ours in eight to twelve weeks (although some cases can prove nettlesome).
At $80 an hour, our rate is better than all the major firms and many boutique specialists.
professional genealogists commonly charge from $65 to $120 an hour
specialized or high-demand researchers can run well above $200 an hour.1
1 Rates per the International Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists (ICAPGen) and 2026 industry hiring guides. See: icapgen.org/what-will-it-cost