[cturtle]

Because the 1950 census has just been released, those records are still being indexed and are not searchable yet [0]. I’m not sure if they release records as they are indexed, so it’s possible that it is partially searchable now.

But yes, the service is completely free provided you register an account. After that all the previous census records (and many many more) are searchable. Anyone is welcome to help index!

[0]: https://www.familysearch.org/1950census/

[umvi]

Are they being indexed manually? Seems like you could invest in OCR + ML to automate most of it

[sseagull]

I think Ancestry does. I believe there is a lot of innovation happening there, but that is just a feeling.

However, it can be a tough problem. Census takers' handwriting can be pretty bad.

(I often say doing genealogy will cure people's love of cursive. Terrible, quickly-written printing is usually still fairly legible, while cursive can be a series of hopeless squiggles)