How to Find an Obituary for Free

By the Public-Libraries.com Editorial Team · Updated October 3, 2026

Where to find an obituary for free

Obituaries and death notices are among the richest genealogy records — they list family members, dates and places. Here’s where to look, free:

Recent obituaries (the last ~25 years)

For someone who died recently, start with the funeral home’s own website — funeral homes post current obituaries for free and usually leave them up for good. Next, try Legacy.com, which partners with newspapers and funeral homes across the country and is free to search, and the local newspaper’s site (some keep obituaries free for a few weeks before archiving them). A fast shortcut that catches all of these at once: search Google for "full name" obituary [city] [year].

Older and historic obituaries

For deaths before roughly 1990, newspaper archives are your friend. Chronicling America, the Library of Congress’s free newspaper site, covers about 1690–1963 with nearly 24 million searchable pages — ideal for 19th- and early-20th-century death notices. FamilySearch has free obituary and death collections, the volunteer USGenWeb Obituary Project transcribes county-level obituaries, and the Obituary Daily Times index on RootsWeb points you to where millions of obituaries were published. Many small-town papers, though, were never digitized — which is where the library comes in.

Free obituaries through your public library

This is the step most people skip. Public libraries pay for obituary and newspaper databases that would cost you a subscription, and give them to cardholders free:

• NewsBank (HeritageHub) — a dedicated obituaries-and-death-notices database covering US papers from 1704 to today, all 50 states. Many libraries offer it free, often from home with your card.
• Newspapers.com Library Edition — 20,000+ newspapers with full-page images and searchable text, free at subscribing libraries (sometimes from home).
• GenealogyBank — available free at some libraries.
• Local obituary index card files and microfilm — many libraries have hand-built indexes and microfilmed runs of their local paper, the only place to find obituaries that never went online. A librarian can search these for you.

Check your library’s online database list or ask at the reference desk. Our state-by-state list of libraries with genealogy collections is a good place to find one near you.

How to confirm someone has died (for free)

If you just need to know whether and when someone died, the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) is free on FamilySearch. It lists people whose deaths were reported to the Social Security Administration — name, birth and death dates, and last residence (FamilySearch hides the SSN for privacy). Coverage is strong from about 1962 to 2014 (it’s most complete for deaths after 1972), but the free public data effectively stops around 2014, so it’s best for older deaths. For more recent ones, check Find A Grave, funeral-home sites, and your state’s death index — DeathIndexes.com lists what each state offers free.

How to search effectively

• Gather the basics first: full name, an approximate death date (within a few years is fine), and the last city or state. Family members’ names help you confirm the right person.
• Try name variants: maiden names, nicknames (Elizabeth → Betty/Liz), and spelling variations.
• Target the right paper: obituaries ran in the local paper of the town where the person lived or died, not a big metro daily.
• Search broad, then narrow: name plus state first, then add a date range once you’ve found the right person.

Why can't I find an obituary for someone?

A few honest reasons: not everyone has a published obituary — they cost money and some families skip them, so a sizable share of deaths aren’t announced in print at all. Many small-town papers aren’t digitized and exist only on library microfilm. Some newspaper archives are paywalled after a few weeks — the obituary exists, but you’ll reach it through a library database rather than the paper’s site. And occasionally there simply isn’t one. If a quick search comes up empty, a library’s local index or a reference librarian is often the way through.

Frequently Asked Questions