Read the letters and records your ancestors left behind.
Upload a photo of an old German document. Quillread returns a careful transcription, a clear English translation, and every name, date and place for your family tree — with honest highlights on anything uncertain.
Read your first page free How it works
No subscription. No credit card for your free page.
How it works
Upload a photo
A phone photo or scan of a letter, postcard, diary, church book, certificate or newspaper. Add any family names or places you know.
We read it twice — and check
Two different AI models each transcribe the page separately. Every disagreement gets a third close look, and dates and places are checked against calendars and place records.
Get your report
Transcription, English translation, a table of every person, date and place, a glossary of old terms, and a clean PDF — usually within minutes.
Why families trust it
Honest about uncertainty
Old handwriting is hard for everyone — people and machines. We never hide a guess: uncertain words are highlighted with the other possible readings, and every page gets a confidence grade.
Checked, not just generated
General AI chatbots can produce fluent text that isn't on the page. We compare two separate readings word by word and verify dates (including church-calendar Sundays) and places automatically.
Made for family history
Names, relationships, occupations, dates and places are pulled into a table you can copy straight into your tree, plus research tips for what to look for next.
Private by design
Your documents are never published or used to train AI. Files are deleted automatically after 30 days, or instantly with one click.
Simple pricing
Your first page is free. After that, buy page credits — they never expire. One credit = one page.
Prices in USD; sales tax/VAT added at checkout where required. If we can't read a page, the credit goes straight back to your account.
Questions
What can Quillread read?
German documents from roughly 1600–1960: Kurrent and Sütterlin handwriting, Fraktur print, typed documents, and church registers that mix German and Latin. More languages are coming.
How accurate is it?
Clear pages usually come back with only a handful of highlighted words; faded, damaged or very old pages have more. No reader — human or machine — is perfect on old handwriting, which is why we show exactly which words are uncertain instead of hiding it. Confirm highlighted names against other records before treating them as fact.
What photos work best?
Flat, in focus, evenly lit, the whole page in frame, no flash glare. A phone photo taken near a window works well. One page per image.
Is AI doing the reading?
Yes. Quillread uses several AI models and automatic checks to read and verify each page — that's what makes it fast and affordable. We're open about it, and about its limits.
What happens to my documents?
They're used only to produce your report, never shared or published, never used to train AI, and deleted after 30 days. See our privacy policy.
What if I'm not happy?
Email hello@quillread.com and we'll make it right. Pages that fail to process are refunded automatically.