Genotyping vs Sequencing Explained: Two Very Different DNA Tests

Two consumer products both labeled “DNA test” can be doing wildly different things under the hood. A $39 holiday-sale AncestryDNA kit and a $300-plus Sequencing.com whole-genome kit both end with you logged into a dashboard, but the data behind those dashboards differ by orders of magnitude. The technologies behind them are not variations on a theme. They are different methods designed to answer different questions.

Here is the comparison, without the marketing language.

What SNP genotyping does

Standard consumer ancestry tests (AncestryDNA, 23andMe, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA’s Family Finder, Living DNA) use genotyping microarrays, almost always made by Illumina. We cover the workflow in detail in How DNA Test Labs Process Samples.

A genotyping chip is a small wafer covered in hundreds of thousands of tiny probes. Each probe is designed to grab a specific position in the genome and report which letter (A, C, G, or T) you carry there. The chip is engineered around a curated list of SNP positions chosen because they are common, informative, or scientifically interesting. We explain SNPs in What SNPs Are and Why They Matter.

A typical consumer chip reads roughly 600,000 to 900,000 SNPs, often called “700K.” That is a tiny fraction of the three billion letters in your genome, but it captures most of the common variation that ancestry inference and relative matching need.

What you get:

• A genotype call at each of those ~700,000 positions.
• Enough common variation to estimate ancestry against reference panels.
• Enough shared-segment information to match relatives.
• Enough coverage to report the specific SNPs the company chooses to interpret for health or traits.

What you do not get:

• Information about positions not on the chip.
• Rare or novel variants.
• Structural changes (large deletions, duplications, repeat expansions).
• Coverage of the whole genome.

What whole-genome sequencing does

Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) is the alternative method offered by Sequencing.com (the active WGS option in 2026 after Nebula Genomics shut down in February 2025) and a few other specialty providers. Whole-exome sequencing (WES) is a related, smaller-scope cousin that reads only the protein-coding regions.

A sequencer fragments your DNA into millions of short pieces, attaches adapters, and reads each fragment hundreds of millions of times across the genome. The output is not pre-selected SNP calls but the actual base sequence of the genome, position by position, with a coverage depth (how many times each base was read) the company specifies.

Coverage depth matters. A 30x whole-genome read, common in research and clinical contexts, reads each base around 30 times. Low-pass options read each base only once or twice, which is cheaper but less reliable for variant calling.

What you get:

• A read of essentially the entire genome rather than 700,000 selected positions.
• The ability to look at rare variants and positions no consumer chip covers.
• A file large enough to support a wide range of third-party analyses.

What you do not necessarily get:

• A more accurate ancestry estimate. Ancestry inference is already saturated by 700K SNPs; adding more positions does not meaningfully change continental ancestry calls.
• A clinical-grade interpretation. Consumer WGS data still needs careful clinical analysis to drive medical decisions.

Cost and tradeoffs

The cost gap is real, even after a decade of falling sequencing prices.

• Genotyping chips: as of early 2026, kit prices range from $39 (sale-priced AncestryDNA) to roughly $99-$99 (MSRP for AncestryDNA and 23andMe Ancestry).
• Whole-genome sequencing: pricing varies by depth and promotion. Verify current Sequencing.com pricing directly; we list pricing as null in our products data because the number moves frequently.

The other tradeoffs:

• Genotyping data is small (a compressed text file you can email yourself). Whole-genome data is gigabytes to hundreds of gigabytes. Storing it and using it requires more setup.
• Genotyping pipelines are mature and battle-tested at consumer scale. Whole-genome consumer pipelines are still less standardized; report quality varies more between providers.
• Interpreting whole-genome data for health purposes is harder, not easier, than interpreting a genotyping result. More data without expertise is more confusion, not more clarity.

Which is right for you

A few honest matches:

• If you want ancestry, matching, and basic health-or-trait reports, genotyping is what you want. AncestryDNA for matching depth, 23andMe for health-plus-ancestry. The 700K chip is the right tool for these questions.
• If you want to keep the broadest possible raw dataset for future analyses (including health analyses that may not yet exist), whole-genome sequencing is the only method that captures everything the chip skips. Sequencing.com is the active option.
• If your goal is a specific clinical answer (“do I carry the BRCA1 variant my mother carries”), neither consumer product is the right tool. A clinical genetic test ordered through a physician or counselor is. The National Society of Genetic Counselors directory helps you find one.

Where this fits

This is the most consequential technical choice in consumer DNA testing. For the full lineup of active tests, see our Guide to DNA Testing. For the WGS-specific deep dive, see What is Whole Genome Sequencing. For how each method’s data is produced, see How DNA Test Labs Process Samples.