How it works
No technical skills needed. Three steps to readable text.
Upload a photo
Take a photo with your phone or upload a scan. No special equipment needed — smartphone photos work fine.
AI reads the handwriting
Transkribus recognises the text automatically. Choose from 300+ pre-trained models for different scripts, languages, and time periods.
Read, search, and export
Copy the text, search for names and places, or download as PDF or Word. Share with your family or keep a digital backup.
What Transkribus can do for you
Everything you need to turn old family documents into something you can read, search, and share.
Read any handwriting
German Kurrent, French cursive, Latin, Sütterlin, and 100+ more languages. 300+ pre-trained AI models.
Search by name or place
Full-text search across all your documents. Smart Search handles old spelling variants.
Tag people & places
Mark persons, places, and dates. Build a personal index of your family history.
Export as PDF or Word
Download readable PDFs with text overlay, Word files, or plain text. Ready to print or share.
Share with family
Send transcriptions to relatives or work on documents together.
Safe digital backup
Keep a secure digital copy of fragile originals. Everything stored in your account.
The scripts your ancestors wrote in
German Kurrent, Latin, Sütterlin, and 100+ more
Guides for every record type
Each guide covers the scripts, abbreviations, and layouts specific to that document type — and shows how Transkribus handles them.
Church Records
Parish registers, baptism and burial records in Kurrent, Latin, and Sütterlin.
Census Records
Handwritten census schedules with table detection and CSV export.
Vital Records
Birth, death, and marriage certificates from civil registries across Europe.
Military Records
Service records, pension files, muster rolls, and draft cards.
Wills & Probate
Testaments, estate records, and inventories in Secretary Hand and Latin.
Immigration Records
Ship manifests, Ellis Island lists, and naturalisation papers.
Land Deeds
Property records, colonial grants, and metes-and-bounds descriptions.
Searchable PDFs
Turn handwritten photos into PDFs you can Ctrl+F through.
From the blog
Stories, guides, and tips from genealogists and archivists using Transkribus.
How the 'Material Culture of Wills' project transcribed 25,000 wills
A University of Exeter and National Archives project used Transkribus to process early modern English wills (1540–1790), combining AI transcription with crowdsourced proofreading.
4 AI models for reading old Norwegian handwriting
Norwegian AI models for family records, church registers, parish records, and personal letters — covering centuries of Scandinavian genealogy documents.
Struggling to read Fraktur, Kurrent, or Sütterlin? AI could help.
The 3 German historical scripts most commonly found in church archives and family documents — and the AI models that read them.
3 archives that unlocked their collections with Transkribus
How the Swedish National Archives, Archivverbund Bautzen, and the National Archives of the Netherlands digitised millions of pages.
Start reading your family's documents today
Join 500,000+ people who use Transkribus to discover their family history.
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