Is there an official file size limit for FamilySearch GEDCOM uploads?

Yes — FamilySearch's own help documentation caps GEDCOM uploads at 100 MB. That's the one hard, published number. Everything else (individual count, structure) is a soft recommendation or an observed pattern, not a documented rule.

Will FamilySearch tell me why my upload failed?

Usually not in useful detail. Most failures surface as a generic error, an indefinite 'processing' state, or — most confusingly — a completed upload that silently dropped records without any error at all.

What's the fastest fix if my file is too large?

Split it. Extracting a smaller subset — direct ancestors only, or one branch of the tree at a time — resolves the large majority of upload failures reported in FamilySearch's own community forum.

Why Does My GEDCOM Upload to FamilySearch Keep Failing?

FamilySearch GEDCOM uploads fail for a handful of recurring reasons — file size, individual count, and encoding. Here's how to tell which one is yours.

GEDCOM Fix Editorial TeamUpdated August 26, 20263 min read

If you've tried to upload a GEDCOM file to FamilySearch and watched it fail, stall, or come back looking wrong, you're not imagining it. This is one of the most consistently reported problems on FamilySearch's own community forum, and it happens for a small number of specific, identifiable reasons — not because your file is "broken" in some vague sense.

The three failure patterns

Based on FamilySearch's own documentation and hundreds of community-reported cases, uploads fail in three distinct ways:

Outright rejection. The file simply won't upload, usually tied to size. FamilySearch's help documentation states a hard cap of 100 MB for GEDCOM uploads. One user's report of a 107 MB file that wouldn't upload lines up exactly with that limit — a few megabytes over, and the upload fails outright.

Indefinite hangs. The upload accepts the file, then sits at "processing" with no resolution. This isn't rare, and it isn't limited to huge files — one user reported a file just 31.6 MB stuck for four days, completing only "half way." There's no published expected duration, so a hang can't be distinguished from a slow success just by watching the spinner.

Silent data loss. This is the most dangerous pattern, because nothing looks wrong. The upload "completes," but individuals are missing or garbled with no error message. One user uploading a file with over 2,500 individuals ended up seeing only themselves and one other family member afterward. Another user's roughly 1,000-person file completed, but with the message "some records were not uploaded correctly" — vague enough to be nearly useless on its own. See Common GEDCOM Upload Error Messages, Explained for the full set of vague states FamilySearch can leave you in.

Why individual count matters more than FamilySearch admits

FamilySearch doesn't publish a hard limit on the number of individuals in a GEDCOM file. What it does say is that files of around 100 names are easier to manage through its "compare and add" process — the step where the site checks your file's people against what's already in Family Tree.

That number is a manageability recommendation, not a wall. Genealogy software developer Louis Kessler successfully imported a 6,413-person file: the upload itself took under a minute, but the compare step took about 15 minutes and surfaced 42 potential-match conflicts requiring manual review, on top of 1,406 new individuals added one at a time. It worked — but it also confirms that upload success and practical usability are different things once you're past a few hundred people.

At the other end, a user with roughly 94,300 individuals in a single file reported the import becoming effectively unusable. Somewhere between "a few hundred" and "tens of thousands," the process shifts from slow-but-workable to genuinely broken — FamilySearch just doesn't tell you where that line is for your specific file.

What actually fixes this

The community's own workaround, repeated across multiple forum threads, is to split a large GEDCOM into smaller files before uploading — typically by branch or line of the family, so each piece stays well under the 100 MB cap and closer to a few hundred individuals. That's a manual, tedious process if you're doing it by hand in desktop genealogy software; see How to Split a Large Family Tree Before Uploading for how to do it without hand-editing raw GEDCOM.

Before you spend hours guessing, run your file through the Upload Readiness Checker — it parses your GEDCOM locally in your browser (nothing is uploaded anywhere) and tells you specifically whether size, individual count, or structure is the likely cause, with a direct path into splitting the file if that's the fix you need.

If your file predates GEDCOM 7.0 or came from older desktop software, it's also worth confirming your format version isn't contributing to the problem — see GEDCOM 5.5.1 vs. 7.0: What Actually Changed for what's different and why it can matter for uploads.

Do it now

Diagnose your file with the Upload Readiness Checker

Keep reading

GEDCOM 5.5.1 vs. 7.0: What Actually Changed

Common questions

Is there an official file size limit for FamilySearch GEDCOM uploads?: Yes — FamilySearch's own help documentation caps GEDCOM uploads at 100 MB. That's the one hard, published number. Everything else (individual count, structure) is a soft recommendation or an observed pattern, not a documented rule.
Will FamilySearch tell me why my upload failed?: Usually not in useful detail. Most failures surface as a generic error, an indefinite 'processing' state, or — most confusingly — a completed upload that silently dropped records without any error at all.
What's the fastest fix if my file is too large?: Split it. Extracting a smaller subset — direct ancestors only, or one branch of the tree at a time — resolves the large majority of upload failures reported in FamilySearch's own community forum.