Genogram Builder and GenogramAI

Genogram Builder shows its reasoning before the chart changes

The idea is the same in both products. You write what you know about the family, including names, dates, marriages, children and the quality of particular relationships, and the assistant turns the text into a chart. The difference is in what happens between the writing and the chart.

In Genogram Builder the draft arrives as a list of people, lines and conditions, each marked as stated in the notes or inferred from them, and each shown with the sentence that supports it. Items that need a decision, such as a marriage whose end is implied but not stated, are set aside for you to keep, edit or remove. Nothing reaches the chart until you add the draft, and a follow-up sentence such as "Raymond died in 2024" becomes a change with its own card and an undo. The free plan includes five drafts a month, and the count is shown before you begin.

GenogramAI describes its assistant as creating the genogram from a description, with five credits a month on the free plan and no limit on paid plans. Its site does not describe a review step in the same terms, so this page compares the two on that point only as far as each states.

The free plan of Genogram Builder goes further

The two products charge the same at the paid tiers, $12 and $29 a month, so the free plans decide the matter for a student or a practitioner with a small caseload. Genogram Builder holds two genograms of up to 50 people each, exports PDF as well as PNG, and lets anyone draw one genogram without an account. GenogramAI holds two genograms of up to 50 people and exports PNG. Both give five uses of the assistant a month, counted differently.

On the paid plans the differences are in kind rather than in price. GenogramAI Professional reads a family from a photograph and exports GEDCOM, and Clinical adds a Mac application, an encrypted local mode, a clinical mode and a research view. Genogram Builder Pro removes the watermark and the draft limit and adds SVG, and Max adds unlimited genograms, longer notes and sources. GenogramAI also offers a free professional plan to educators who apply, a first year at $29 for students with an academic address, and regional pricing in some countries.

GenogramAI has the larger library, and both draw the standard notation

GenogramAI has by far the larger library of examples, with 182 online templates listed on its site against 34 here, and it offers four printable sheets. The 34 in Genogram Builder are each a fictional family with a case note, grouped by use, and every one opens in the editor on the free plan, so a student can take a complete three-generation case and change it rather than start from a blank page.

Both products draw the standard notation. Genogram Builder keeps to the 59 symbols and connections of McGoldrick, Gerson and Petry and prints a key on every chart so that a reader never has to guess what a line means. GenogramAI follows the same tradition and adds an extended set of its own, which its symbol guide describes.

A chart moves from GenogramAI through GEDCOM, and the other way through a file

A chart drawn in GenogramAI on a paid plan can be exported as GEDCOM and opened in Genogram Builder through Export and then Import a family file. GEDCOM carries people, unions, parents and dates, and Genogram Builder lists anything it could not read before the import rather than dropping it silently. Emotional lines are not part of the GEDCOM standard, so they are redrawn by hand or described in a short note and drafted.

In the other direction, a chart from Genogram Builder exports as PNG, PDF, SVG or JSON. GenogramAI does not state that it reads these, so moving a chart there means redrawing it or describing it to its assistant.