Publish an Obituary Online, Free

Where an obituary can be published free

A tribute page is the most complete answer. Here, a free page carries the whole obituary in the story section — no length limit, with their photograph — beside the service details, the RSVP, and the memory wall where people answer it. The page is one link, which is what an obituary mostly needs to do now: reach everyone, wherever they are, and stay reachable.

The funeral home usually posts an obituary on its own website as part of its services — ask; it is ordinarily included. And a plain post on social media reaches people fast, though it sinks in the feed within days and belongs to the platform, not the family. The honest pattern many families use: the funeral home's posting for the record, the tribute page as the lasting, complete version, and a social post that points to it.

What do newspapers charge?

A newspaper obituary is a paid notice, like a classified ad: priced by the line or the column inch, by the number of days it runs, and extra for a photograph. Rates are set by each paper. Legacy.com, which runs the obituary pages for more than 2,800 newspapers, publishes sample prices: $85 to $780 for a short notice and $290 to $1,930 for a long one, depending on the paper. Legacy also sells an online-only obituary with a guest book for a flat $149 — a tribute page here does that job free, with the family rather than a company's staff approving what appears. If a printed notice matters to your family — and for the record in a hometown paper, it often rightly does — call the paper's obituary desk for the rate card, and keep the printed version short. The full obituary, every photograph, and the room for other people's memories can live at the link.

Many papers also accept a short death notice naming the service details at a lower cost than a full obituary. One honest line in it — a tribute page address where the whole story lives — lets a three-line notice carry a whole life.

Publishing it here, step by step

From nothing to published is about ten minutes.

The steps

• Write the obituary, or finish the one you have — the free obituary writer asks a few questions and drafts it from only your words, line by line editable
• Start a free tribute page with their name, their dates, and a photograph
• Place the obituary in the story section, at whatever length it deserves
• Add the service details, so the obituary and the arrangements live at one address
• Choose who can find it: public, unlisted, or password-protected — and whether search engines may list it
• Send the link, and let the memory wall gather what the obituary starts

Making it findable, or keeping it quiet

Both are legitimate. Some families want the obituary findable by anyone who searches the name for decades; a public, discoverable page does that. Others want it reachable only by the people who are sent the link; unlisted or password-protected does that. The choice is the family's, on every plan, and it can be changed later as the family's feeling changes.