Alternatives to QuickPed: a 2026 field guide for clinical pedigree software

Looking for an alternative to QuickPed? Here's an honest field guide. QuickPed is a free Shiny web app from Magnus Vigeland's group at the University of Oslo, documented in a 2022 BMC Bioinformatics paper. It is excellent at pedigree construction and kinship/inbreeding coefficient calculation, and it has a deservedly good reputation in academic research, forensic genetics, and teaching. For these uses, QuickPed remains one of the strongest tools available and we are not pretending otherwise.

Teams look for alternatives in three situations. First, when QuickPed's single-case web interface is the wrong shape for a scripted pipeline — for example, when calculating kinship coefficients across thousands of family structures for a population-genetics study. Second, when the work expands from pure kinship analytics into clinical features QuickPed does not cover: disease annotation catalogues, cancer risk modelling, clinical reporting, or EHR integration. Third, when institutional procurement requires a vendor with ongoing commercial support rather than academic maintenance.

This page covers three credible alternatives — DrawPed, the pedsuite R package, and Evagene. DrawPed and pedsuite are academic and sibling to QuickPed; Evagene is a research- and education-grade modelling platform that is complementary. Evagene publishes this site; for forensic kinship casework and large-scale population-genetics pipelines QuickPed and pedsuite remain the reference, and we say so plainly.

Short version. For scripted kinship research and forensic casework, pedsuite (QuickPed's underlying R packages). For a simpler free open-source pedigree drawing tool, DrawPed. For pedigree modelling with educational/research relatedness analytics — pairwise kinship, inbreeding, k0/k1/k2 Jacquard identity, gene-dropping simulation — plus scriptable REST/MCP access, Evagene.

Why teams look for alternatives to QuickPed

The first reason is scripting. QuickPed as a Shiny app is optimised for interactive single-case work. Researchers running kinship calculations across large pedigree collections, simulating relatedness distributions, or generating many pedigrees with defined structures will find the web UI an awkward vehicle for that workload. pedsuite, the underlying R package family, is the native programmatic access path and lives beneath QuickPed's interface — many teams use QuickPed for exploratory work and pedsuite for pipelines.

The second reason is scope. QuickPed is a kinship and pedigree construction tool; it does not cover disease annotation catalogues, cancer risk models, clinical reporting, or EHR integration. For research groups expanding into translational or clinical work, a broader platform is needed. The third reason is vendor model: QuickPed is maintained as academic research software. For institutions that require a commercial vendor, support SLAs, and formal contracts, academic maintenance is sometimes insufficient, not because the software is unreliable but because procurement frameworks require specific contractual structures.

Three alternatives worth evaluating

DrawPed

DrawPed (genecascade.org/DrawPed/) is a free open-source web-based pedigree drawing tool released under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 licence. It produces PED-format output — the standard format used by many population-genetics and linkage-analysis tools — and is commonly used for research and teaching.

Where DrawPed fits as a QuickPed alternative: users who need a lightweight, permanent, free, open-source pedigree drawing tool and do not need QuickPed's kinship analytics. Because it is open source under CC BY-SA 4.0, it can be deployed by institutions that need to host software under their own control. Where it falls short: DrawPed is a drawing tool, not a kinship analytics tool. It does not compute coefficients, simulate relatedness, or handle clinical annotation. For QuickPed users whose use is centred on kinship, DrawPed is not the answer; for those who use QuickPed primarily for its drawing UI, DrawPed is a lighter peer.

pedsuite (R package family)

pedsuite is the family of R packages from the same Oslo group that underpins QuickPed. It includes packages for pedigree construction, kinship coefficient calculation, identity-by-descent analysis, relatedness testing, pedigree simulation, and forensic kinship casework. For researchers comfortable with R, pedsuite gives direct scriptable access to the same algorithms QuickPed wraps in a Shiny interface.

Where pedsuite fits as a QuickPed alternative: researchers running pipelines, running simulations at scale, combining pedigree analytics with other statistical workflows in R, or contributing their own algorithms. It is the natural step beyond QuickPed for any R-competent research team. Where it falls short: it is an R package, not a product with a UI. Non-programmer clinicians and counsellors will find it unreachable. Where QuickPed is a point-and-click web tool usable by any researcher, pedsuite requires R fluency.

Evagene

Evagene is a research- and education-grade, browser-based pedigree-modelling platform with an unusually programmable surface — an academic, research, and educational tool, not a medical device. It covers gesture-driven pedigree drawing with NSGC/ISCN standard notation, a 230+ disease catalogue cross-referenced to ICD-10, OMIM, MONDO, Orphanet, and Disease Ontology (DOID) — five ontology systems, CURIE-searchable — 21 built-in published risk models presented as illustrative and for teaching (BRCAPRO, MMRpro, and PancPRO among them), Mendelian inheritance calculators for AD, AR, and XR conditions, a curated Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) catalogue for attaching observed or excluded phenotype features (with onset and severity) and surfacing candidate associated genes as educational reference data (candidate associations only, not ranked likelihood or diagnosis), batch screening, a karyogram viewer, the Related Concepts educational correlation graph (1,100+ curated associations; reference data, not risk analysis), and consanguinity detection via Wright's coefficient.

Most relevant to QuickPed users, Evagene now includes a gated educational/research relatedness and identity-by-descent (IBD) module: full pairwise kinship coefficients, per-individual inbreeding coefficients, Jacquard condensed identity with expected genome-wide IBD sharing (k0/k1/k2), and a gene-dropping relatedness simulation. These are framed for teaching and research, not forensic casework. They sit alongside the platform's scriptable surface: a scoped, rate-limited REST API to read, create, and modify pedigrees and run analyses programmatically; HMAC-SHA256 webhooks for event notifications; an MCP server exposing 27 tools to Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and other MCP-compatible AI agents — so researchers can build pedigree-analysis workflows with an AI assistant as the orchestrator — the "Evagene Pedigree Builder" ChatGPT Custom GPT that turns natural-language family history into a pedigree, and a guided Family History Questionnaire that runs intake through to a pedigree. AI-assisted draft summaries for educational / research review use bring-your-own-key (BYOK) LLMs for Anthropic Claude and OpenAI GPT, keeping model traffic under your own account. Data exchange covers GEDCOM 5.5.1, the CanRisk/BOADICEA pedigree file, and GA4GH Phenopackets v2 (import and export). See the Evagene platform overview.

Where Evagene still differs from QuickPed: its relatedness module is positioned as educational and research-grade, not as the forensic kinship casework engine that QuickPed and pedsuite are built and validated for. For forensic relatedness testing and large-scale population-genetics simulation pipelines, QuickPed and pedsuite remain the reference. For researchers and educators who want pairwise kinship, inbreeding, Jacquard k0/k1/k2 identity, and gene-dropping simulation alongside risk-model teaching tools and programmatic pedigree access, Evagene is now a much closer fit on the relatedness axis than it was. Evagene Alpha is free via waiting list.

Feature comparison matrix

Compiled from publicly available project pages and academic publications as of June 2026. "—" means not publicly advertised.

How to choose

Scripted kinship research at scale. pedsuite — the native R packages give flexible programmatic access to the same algorithms.

Lightweight free open-source pedigree drawing. DrawPed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Pedigree modelling with educational relatedness analytics and API access. Evagene — combines risk-model teaching tools, an educational/research IBD module (pairwise kinship, inbreeding, Jacquard k0/k1/k2, gene-dropping simulation), and a scriptable REST/MCP surface that many research workflows find useful.

Forensic kinship casework on single pedigrees. Stay with QuickPed. It is built and validated for that work; Evagene's relatedness module is positioned for education and research, not forensic casework.

Frequently asked questions

Further reading

• Clinical genetics pedigree tools: a field guide
• Pedigree drawing software
• Mendelian inheritance calculator
• Hereditary cancer risk assessment
• GEDCOM pedigree software
• The Evagene platform layer (API, MCP, webhooks)