Home › Grieving Resources › Grief Support Services › Memorial & Remembrance › Obituaries
Free Online Obituaries: Submit an Obituary or Search by Name
Posting an obituary on Memorial Merits is free, and there is no fee to keep it online. You write the obituary, add photos and the service time and place, and share the link by email or text. Friends can leave a condolence, send flowers, or plant a tree from the obituary page.
You can post a free online obituary on Memorial Merits by creating a free family account, writing the obituary, and adding a photo and the service details. There is no fee to publish it and no fee to keep it online. Once it is live you get one link to share, and friends can leave condolences right on the page.
- What you can add: Photos, video, the service time and place with a map, and a guest book for condolences.
- Sharing: Invitations and updates go out by email or text from the obituary.
- Flowers and trees: Friends can send flowers or plant a memorial tree in the person’s name from the obituary page.
- Your account: The free family account keeps the obituary tied to you, so you can sign back in later.
- Newspaper notices: You can run a short paid notice in the local paper that gives readers the link to the full obituary here.
Collect donations toward funeral costs on a free memorial page.
An Ever Loved memorial page includes the photo, the obituary, the service time and place, an RSVP count for the funeral home, and a livestream link. You can turn on donations on the same page, so people who want to help pay for the funeral can give without you asking each person. The page is free to make and free to keep. Donations go to the bank account you link, minus the card processing fee: a $100 donation arrives as $96.80. GoFundMe charges the same card fee, asks each donor for a tip, and does not include a memorial page.
1 Add their name and a photo.
2 Add the service time and place.
3 Turn donations on, or leave them off.
4 Share the page link.
Recent Obituaries and Tributes
Search by name, or open an obituary to read it, leave a condolence, send flowers, or plant a tree.
How to Submit an Obituary Online
You submit the obituary through one form. If you already wrote the obituary for the funeral home or the newspaper, you can paste it in.
- Open the submission form. Go to submit an obituary.
- Create a free family account. Enter your first name, last name, email address, and a password. You use this account to sign in later.
- Write or paste the obituary. Include the full name, date of birth, date of death, city, surviving family members, and service details.
- Add a photo and the service details. The service time and place appear on the obituary with a map.
- Share the link. Once the obituary is published, share the link by email or text.
How Much Does an Obituary Cost?
Newspapers charge for obituaries the same way they charge for ads. A local paper can start around $100, and a large national paper such as The New York Times can run several thousand dollars. The bill is built from an insertion fee, a charge for every printed line, an extra charge for a photo at many papers, and a processing fee of roughly 3 to 5 percent. Paid obituary websites charge too: Legacy.com’s online listing is $159.
A free online obituary here has no line count, no photo charge, and no renewal. If you want the newspaper as well, the lowest cost way to do it is a short paid notice with the name, dates, and service time, followed by one line pointing readers to the full obituary online. The funeral home may also post the obituary on its website as part of your package, so ask the funeral home before you pay a newspaper. To check the funeral home charges, see our guide to every fee on the funeral home price list, including the charges you can decline.
Where to Post an Obituary
You have three places to put it: the funeral home’s website, the local newspaper, and a free online obituary like this one. The newspaper reaches people who read the local paper. An online obituary can be found in search and shared by text, and people can add condolences and photos to it. No law requires you to publish an obituary anywhere. Probate is different: many states require the estate to publish a separate legal notice to creditors, which is not an obituary and is covered in our probate guide.
How to Write an Obituary
Start with our ten tips for writing an obituary. If you are also writing the eulogy, read the difference between a eulogy and an obituary, then how to write a eulogy.
