How to download your raw DNA data from 23andMe
Most people who take a consumer DNA test look at the results in the company’s app and never realise there is a file underneath it. That file is yours, it is a plain text document, and it contains far more than the app shows you.
Here is how to get it.
How do I download my raw DNA data from 23andMe?
Sign in to 23andMe on a desktop browser, open Settings from the profile menu, scroll to 23andMe Data and select View. Under Download Raw Data, submit a request and confirm your password. The file arrives by email as a ZIP of roughly 6–8 MB, usually within an hour.
The full sequence, step by step:
- Sign in to your 23andMe account on a desktop browser. The download is not available in the mobile app.
- Open the profile menu in the top right and choose Settings.
- Scroll to the bottom to 23andMe Data and select View.
- Find the Download Raw Data section and choose Submit request.
- You will be asked to confirm your password and answer a security question. This is a good sign — it is genetic data, and it should not be one click away.
- The file is prepared in the background. It usually arrives by email within an hour, occasionally up to 24 hours.
- The email contains a download link, which gives you the ZIP file.
Keep the ZIP as it is. You do not need to unzip it to use it, and leaving it compressed makes it easier to move around.
What is in a 23andMe raw data file?
A plain text file: a few header lines followed by several hundred thousand rows, one per marker. Each row has four tab-separated columns — rsid, chromosome, position and genotype. The genotype is the two letters you carry at that position, one inherited from each parent.
Unzip it out of curiosity and the rows look like this:
# rsid chromosome position genotype
rs4477212 1 82154 AA
rs3094315 1 752566 AG
rs3131972 1 752721 GGThe four columns are worth understanding:
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
rsid | The catalogue number for this position in the genome. rs3094315 refers to the same spot in every human being, so it is how research papers and databases refer to it. |
chromosome | Which of the 23 chromosome pairs it sits on. |
position | Where along that chromosome, counted in base pairs. |
genotype | The two letters you actually have at that position, one inherited from each parent. |
A -- in the genotype column means the reading failed for that marker. Every consumer file has some, and it is normal.
How much of my genome does a 23andMe file actually cover?
Around 600,000 to 700,000 positions, out of roughly 3.2 billion base pairs — about 0.02% of your genome. The chip samples positions known to vary between people and to have been studied. Anything not on the chip is simply absent from the file, which is not the same as absent from you.
This is not a flaw in the file. The positions were chosen precisely because they are informative. But the consequence matters:
Your file cannot tell you about a variant it does not contain a marker for. If a particular mutation is not one of the positions on the chip, the file has nothing to say about it — and that is not the same as the mutation being absent.
This is the single most important thing to understand before reading anything into your raw data. It is especially true for genes like BRCA1 and BRCA2, where consumer chips typically cover only a handful of the thousands of known variants. A file that shows nothing there is not an all-clear, and anyone with a family history that worries them should be talking to a clinician rather than reading a text file.
What can I do with my 23andMe raw data?
Three things, mainly: upload it to genealogy services to find relatives in other databases, run it through interpretation tools that read published research against your markers, and simply keep it. The format is standard and widely supported, and the research literature grows, so an old file becomes more informative over time.
That last point is the one people underrate. The file does not go stale — it is a fixed record of your genotype, and what changes is how much has been published about the positions in it. If you want to see the shape of that, what we look at lists the six categories a file like this supports and the markers each one rests on.
Is it safe to share my raw DNA file?
Treat it like a passport scan. The file identifies you more precisely than a fingerprint, cannot be changed, and describes your siblings, parents and children as well as you. Before sending it anywhere, check whether the service sells or shares data, and whether deletion is something you can actually verify.
Those three questions — sold, shared, deletable — separate services more sharply than any feature list does, and the answers are usually in the privacy policy rather than the marketing page.
If you upload it here, it is encrypted with a key belonging to that file alone, we never sell or share it, and the deletion link in your email destroys the key permanently. That is the standard worth holding any service to, including this one.