gedaudit – checks GEDCOM files for contradictions

The check
for your GEDCOM file

gedaudit reads a GEDCOM file and lists what cannot be true or is unlikely: a child born before its mother, a marriage after a death, a father aged 13, a place spelled in three ways. There are 71 rules, and every rule is a question with a yes or no answer. What you do with a finding is up to you.

Version 0.5 (test release) · 14 October 2026 · free · open source (GPL-3.0)

For Windows 10 and 11 (installer), Linux (Debian/Ubuntu package) and macOS (dmg, not yet signed). Java is included. The packages are published under Releases of the gedaudit repository on GitHub. The interface is available in English, German, French, Dutch and Spanish.

The manual (PDF, also in German, French, Dutch and Spanish) is generated from the program’s help and matches it; F1 in the program opens the same text.

The Falkenrath demo tree with 492 persons: 22 findings, 8 of them errors. A click on a finding shows the person below.

Seven groups, 71 questions

Every rule is a question about the data, answered by arithmetic or comparison. Errors are contradictions that cannot be true. Warnings are unusual but possible and deserve a look.

Chronology (15): death before birth, marriage before birth or after death, child before its parents, baptism before birth, burial before death, impossible dates such as 31 April, dates in the future, children out of order, a godparent already dead at the baptism.

Age limits (18): older than 110, mother under 14 or over 55, father under 14 or over 75, married under 15 or over 90, 40 years between the spouses, siblings less than 8 months apart, 30 years between first and last child, more than 16 children, more than 3 marriages, remarried within 2 months, no death recorded after 110 years. Every limit can be changed.

Structure (18): empty persons and families, a person in two families as a child, child and parent at the same time, two husbands or two wives, a marriage between siblings or between parent and child, someone who is their own ancestor, the same couple twice, a person with the same name and date twice, likely duplicates, partner of unknown sex.

Names (4): a surname that is a female first name, placeholders such as “unknown” or “N.N.”, digits in a name, a first name that does not match the sex.

Sources (2): events without a source, persons without any source (off by default, on in the “Sources” preset).

Places (4): the same place in two spellings, places without coordinates, two events on the same day more than 100 km apart, empty parts in a place name.

Form (10): lines that are not GEDCOM, links to persons or families that do not exist, identifiers used twice, dates in an unreadable form, persons without a name, more than one birth or death, family links recorded on one side only, a missing header or a character set that does not match the file, tags outside the 5.5.1 or 7 standard, unknown sex.

The rules are the same as in the plausibility check of wtWin; the full list with limits and presets is on the rule pages there. The Form group needs the file itself and is therefore complete only in gedaudit.

How a check runs

Open a .ged file, or double-click it in the file manager. On the left are the rules in their groups with the number of findings; on the right the findings for the chosen rule, or all of them. A click on a finding shows the person below: events with date, place and sources, parents, partners with marriage, children, and the identifiers from the file, so you find the person again in your own program. If a finding concerns two persons, such as a possible duplicate or child and mother, both are shown side by side.

Presets set all limits at once: balanced, strict, generous, with sources, or church book (18th and 19th century: baptism stands for birth, godparents count, the order of children is just presentation). Every limit and every severity can be changed by hand, and the check recalculates immediately. Missing births and deaths can be estimated from baptism and burial so the age rules apply.

Findings you have looked at and that stay as they are can be ticked off. They disappear from the list and only come back when the data at that spot changes. The tick list is kept on your computer, per file, and can be saved and loaded as a small file, for a second computer or a fellow researcher.

Corrections are made in the program the file came from. Export again and reload in gedaudit; the ticks stay. Print and Save as PDF give you the list with a summary, for working through on paper.

Two files side by side

File › Compare with another file sets a second GEDCOM file against the open one: an older state of your tree, the export from another program, or a fellow researcher’s file. Persons are matched by identifier, otherwise by name, birth year and sex. The result comes in groups: changed, probably the same person, only in one file or the other, unchanged. A click shows the changed fields and both persons side by side. The list of differences can be printed or saved as PDF. Nothing is merged, nothing is written.

gedaudit comparing two versions of the Falkenrath demo tree: 10 changed persons, both person cards side by side

Falkenrath 1.3 against 1.6: ten persons gained a residence and a property, everything else unchanged.

What gedaudit reads

GEDCOM 5.5, 5.5.1 and 7, as exported by Ahnenblatt, Gramps, webtrees, Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic, Legacy, MyHeritage, Ancestry and others.

Character sets are recognised from the file: UTF-8, UTF-16, ANSEL and ANSI. The one found is shown above the findings.

Persons, families, events with date and place (including coordinates), notes, sources with page, godparents and witnesses (ASSO) are read; pictures are not.

The file itself stays unchanged. gedaudit needs no internet connection and no account; nothing leaves your computer.

File structure (View menu, F6): the tag tree per record type with the number of occurrences. Vendor tags and tags outside the standard are highlighted, so you see what one program writes and another will lose.

GEDCOM-L: the addendum to GEDCOM 5.5.1 is understood – godparents and witnesses without a record of their own, GOV identifier, postal code and Maidenhead locator of a place, family status; pointers to location records that lead nowhere are reported.

Windows, Linux and macOS

Windows 10 and 11: setup gedaudit-0.5.x.exe, installs per user without administrator rights. SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher: “More info”, then “Run anyway”.

Linux: gedaudit_0.5-5_amd64.deb for Debian, Ubuntu, Mint and relatives; afterwards under Office in the menu, or gedaudit file.ged in the terminal.

macOS 12 or newer: gedaudit-….dmg for Apple Silicon and Intel, not yet signed: right-click the program, “Open”, confirm once.

Version 0.5 is a test release. Bugs and wishes are welcome by e-mail or as a GitHub issue.

Where are the packages? Under Releases of the gedaudit repository on GitHub. The rule engine is shared with wtWin and lives in the repository app4webtrees, which gedaudit includes as a submodule.

The check
for your GEDCOM file

Seven groups, 71 questions

How a check runs

Two files side by side

What gedaudit reads

The same check inside wtWin

Windows, Linux and macOS