A Promethease Alternative You Can Actually Read
Promethease matches every SNP in your file against SNPedia and hands you thousands of entries to sort through. If you want a clear answer to "what is my genetic risk for common conditions?" instead, a polygenic risk report is the better tool.
At a glance
You want an organized report — one score per condition, ranked against a reference population, with the source study behind each one — for 71 conditions and traits at $20–$29.99.
You enjoy researching individual variants yourself and want every SNPedia-annotated SNP in your file listed, including rare single-gene findings.
How Promethease works
Promethease compares every marker in your raw data file against SNPedia, a wiki that summarizes published findings about individual variants. Each match becomes an entry with a "magnitude", a subjective 0–10 score for how interesting the finding is, and a "repute" of good or bad. A typical report from consumer chip data runs to thousands of entries.
That breadth is the appeal. If you want to research specific variants, Promethease shows you what has been written about each one.
The trouble with reading SNPs one at a time
For common diseases, each variant shifts risk by a tiny amount, and what matters is the combined effect of thousands of them. A list of single-variant findings tends to over-weight whichever variants happen to have dramatic-sounding papers, and it can't tell you whether your overall genetic risk for a condition is high or low.
High-magnitude entries also surface rare disease-causing calls, and on chip data many of those are wrong. When a clinical lab re-tested variants people had found in their consumer raw data, 40% were false positives (Tandy-Connor et al., Genetics in Medicine, 2018). This is a common source of alarming results that don't hold up.
What a polygenic score does differently
A polygenic risk score takes weights estimated in a large genome-wide study, applies them to all of the score's variants at once (often thousands or more), and compares your total with a reference population. You get one percentile per condition, and the score's published accuracy can be checked. Genomisaur also imputes your file to about 30 million variants first, so scores aren't limited to the markers on your chip.
The two approaches answer different questions, and some people use both: Promethease to browse individual variants, and a polygenic report to see where they stand on common conditions.
Pricing
Public list prices. Genomisaur Health Reports are $20–$29.99 one-time.
| Option | Price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Genomisaur Health Report | $20–$29.99 one-time | Up to 71 polygenic risk scores plus trait predictions |
| Promethease | Around $12 | SNPedia literature report listing individual variants |
Competitor prices are public list prices from each vendor's site as of 2026 and change often; confirm on the vendor's site before purchasing.
Feature comparison
Side-by-side on the things that actually change what the product does for you.
| Feature | Genomisaur | Promethease | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Approach | Polygenic risk scores — thousands of variants combined per condition | Single-SNP literature lookups | |
| Ease of interpretation | One percentile per condition, with plain-language context | Thousands of entries of varying quality | |
| Rare single-variant findings | Not the focus | Listed when annotated in SNPedia | |
| Imputation | Array files imputed to ~30 million variants | Only the SNPs on your chip | |
| Couples / future children | Yes — two-parent report | No | |
| Price | $20–$29.99 | Around $12 |
What each one does well
Genomisaur
- Clear, organized results — one score per condition
- Every score traceable to a peer-reviewed study
- Array data imputed to ~30 million variants before scoring
- Results in about 20 minutes
Promethease
- Exhaustive listing of annotated variants
- Low price
- Good for people who like to research individual SNPs
Promethease and Genomisaur answer different questions. Promethease tells you "here is everything the literature says about each of your SNPs." Genomisaur tells you "here is where you fall for 71 conditions, combining thousands of variants per condition." Most people looking for health insight want the second; researchers who enjoy digging may want both. See our detailed Promethease vs Genomisaur comparison for more.
Frequently asked questions
Why are polygenic scores better than single-SNP lookups for common diseases?
Common conditions are influenced by thousands of variants with tiny effects. Any single SNP usually moves risk very little, so reading them one at a time can be misleading. Polygenic scores combine them in a statistically validated way.
Can I use the same file I used for Promethease?
Yes. If you uploaded a 23andMe, AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, or tellmeGen file to Promethease, the same file works with Genomisaur. Single-sample WGS VCFs work too.
Is this medical advice?
No. Polygenic risk scores describe genetic predisposition relative to other people; they are not a diagnosis, and lifestyle and family history matter as much or more. Discuss anything concerning with a doctor or genetic counselor. Consumer arrays also miss many rare, high-impact variants, so a normal result does not rule out a hereditary condition. Most published scores, including ours, were developed in European-ancestry data, so results are less precise for people of other ancestries.
Informational, not diagnostic
Consumer genetic reports — ours, Promethease's, and others — are informational. Carrier and polygenic risk results should be discussed with a qualified healthcare provider or genetic counselor before making medical or reproductive decisions.