ScotlandsPeople

What is ScotlandsPeople?

ScotlandsPeople is a website that can be accessed from public libraries and at home. It is a partnership between the National Records of Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon enabled by DC Thomson Family History. You can search statutory records of births (1855-1913), deaths (1855-1963) and marriages (1855-1938), old parish records (1538-1854), census records (1841-1911), wills and testaments in Scotland (1513-1925) and valuation rolls (1865-1925).

How much does it cost?

You can search the  indexes free of charge and use pay-per-view to view and download digital images of the records you find. The indexes cover birth, death and marriage registers, census returns, church registers, valuation rolls and legal records (like wills and testaments and coats of arms).

Credits cost £0.25 each and are available in batches of 30 (£7.50) or 40 (£10) from the buy credits page. The number of credits and costs of digital images for the different record types are as follows:

  • Statutory registers of births (older than 100 years), marriages (older than 75 years) and deaths (older than 50 years) cost 6 credits (£1.50)
  • Census returns and church registers of births and baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials and other events cost 6 credits (£1.50)
  • Valuation rolls cost 2 credits (£0.50)
  • Wills and testaments (including soldiers' and airmen's wills) cost 10 credits (£2.50) - this is the cost of the entire document, which is usually two or three pages, but can be more than 100 pages long
  • Military Service Appeals Tribunal records cost 20 credits (£5.00) - this is the cost of the entire document which is usually about three or four pages long but can be much longer.

Getting started

To buy credits you will need to register your name and email address on the ScotlandsPeople website to set up an account. Please view the link below for more information:

https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/our-charges