78 best free fonts for designers
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High-quality typefaces often come with a hefty price tag, but these days, the best free fonts are surprisingly capable, so you can get something for nothing. In our comprehensive roundup, we've curated the 50 best available today, spanning a wide range of styles and use cases.
From elegant serifs to modern sans-serifs, playful scripts to robust display fonts, each font in this list has been carefully chosen for its quality, versatility, and unique character. So whether you're designing a sleek corporate website, a quirky album cover, or anything in between, you'll find the perfect typeface to elevate your project.
If you're not sure how to use your font once you've got it, see our handy tutorial on how to add fonts in Photoshop. Alternatively, if you'd rather design your own typeface, then have a look at our beginner's guide to font design.
One good resource for fonts, including free fonts, is MyFonts. This library offers a mix of free and paid-for typefaces. Check that out via the link below, or scroll on for our picks of the best free fonts available now.
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The best free serif fonts
01. Giveny
Free for personal use
Described as a "fusion of pure geometry and optical balance", and taking inspiration from traditional serif styles, this stylish font nonetheless has a contemporary feel. It adds touch of everything from posters and invitations to logos and personal blogs.
02. Carena
Free for personal use
This minimalistic, ligature style font is perfect for giving your designs that rustic yet elevated look. Beautifully detailed and ornate, Carena would be a good choice for projects that require a more delicate feel, such as for wedding invitations, editorials and personal projects.
03. Harmony
Free for personal use (commercial licences available from $14)
Harmony is available for download from Behance. This is a stylish modern font that features some gorgeous shapes that make it perfect for a more elegant touch. It is easy to read and professional looking, making it a great option for those looking for a bold statement.
04. Editorial New
Free for personal use (commercial licences available from $30)
Designed by Mathieu Desjardins, Editorial New is a precise narrow serif designed for long-form copy but with enough personality to be used for titles too. It exudes a 1990s editorial feel, but still comes across as rich and contemporary. It comes in seven weights, from ultralight to heavy.
05. Young Serif
Free for personal and commercial use
Young Serif consists of heavy, old-style letterforms that call to mind books of yesteryear. It takes inspiration from fonts like Plantin Infant and ITC Italian Old Style, but adds a few flourishes of its own. For instance, some of the letters have interesting axis tilts, as you seen in the lowercase 'e', above.
06. Cormorant
Free for personal and commercial use
We love the elegantly formal look of this open source display font developed by Christian Thalmann. Most of its glyphs have been drawn from scratch, giving it a gorgeous distinctiveness. For us, it treads a really neat line between expressiveness and formality.
07. Alegreya
Free for personal and commercial use
Crafted by Juan Pablo del Peral expressly for the purposes of book design, this award-winning serif font eminently readable, with a rhythm to it that facilitates the absorption of long texts, and we love it for its fresh, approachable take on a calligraphic style.
08. Restora
Free for personal and commercial use
Designed by Nasir Udin, Restora is a combination of bright, friendly letterforms with an embellishment that feels classic. In its free version it also includes Restora Extra Light and Restora Thin Italic, giving you a good deal of versatility for general editorial text, a book cover or just a simple bit of branding.
09. Emberly
Free for personal and commercial use
One for the fashionistas, Emberly is a free font that evokes a classic magazine feel. It was created by Rajesh Rajput, taking a few cues from the Didone style, and is also available as a variable font. If you're putting together a magazine cover or a poster, Emberly will give it a feel that's both modern and classic.
10. Rude
Free for personal and commercial use
We love Rude – an immediately striking font created by Masha Chuprova. This handcrafted serif is especially good for short, striking headers, slogans and statements. We could see it fitting well into a logo, or making for a good visual pop on an item of clothing, or running across the top of a poster.
11. Free Saint George Stencil Font
Free for personal and commercial use
Fans of the classic font Georgia will appreciate this experimental tribute by Vedran Vaskovic. It's made up of a collection of cheeky, playful stencil shapes that are perfect for adding a little flair to your designs. Apparently, it's inspired by the Christian legend of Saint George the dragon-slayer.
12. Colus
Free for personal use
With an imposing, classical feel, Colus is great for when you want your designs to feel a little more sombre. It's inspired by carved letter inscriptions in wood and stone, and as such, it hearkens back to the classical ages. An excellent choice of free font for making posters that have a little more sophistication to them.
13. Amagro
Free for personal and commercial use
For making a big impact (no pun intended), check out this all-caps serif typeface from Fabio Servolo. Amagro consists of strong, angular serifs that are especially good for making imposing headlines, but it's also got some nice touches like a stylish ampersand, and easy-to-read numerals.
14. Poly
Free for personal and commercial use
Writing on the web? Poly is a good choice of free font – it's a medium-contrast serif designed specifically to offer better legibility than other web serifs, even when used at small point sizes. The trick is its vertical emphasis – with short ascenders and a high x-height, it offers tremendous clarity.
15. Playfair Display
Free for personal and commercial use
Designed by Claus Eggers S?rensen, this free display font takes inspiration from the 18th century Enlightenment and the work of John Baskerville. Its high-contrast letterforms have delicate hairlines, reflecting the rise of pointed steel pens, which took over from broad nib quills during the period.
16. Lora
Free for personal and commercial use
Lora was originally designed for type foundry Cyreal in 2011, with a Cyrillic extension added in 2013. Brushed curves contrast with driving serifs for a well-balanced, contemporary feel. Although technically optimised for use on the web, it's one of the best fonts for print projects too. It comes in four styles.
17. Butler
Free for personal and commercial use
Butler was inspired by both Dala Floda and the Bodoni family. Designer Fabian De Smet's aim was to add some modernism by working on the curves of classical serif fonts and adding an extra stencil family. He suggests Butler would work well for “posters, very big titles, books and fancy stuff”.
18. Crimson Text
Free for personal and commercial use
Not many free fonts are created specifically for book production, but here's a great exception, inspired by old-time, Garamond-esque book typefaces. Crimson Text is the work of Sebastian Kosch, who was influenced by the work of Jan Tschichold, Robert Slimbach and Jonathan Hoefler.
19. Aleo
Free for personal and commercial use
Aleo has semi-rounded details and a sleek structure, creating a strong sense of personality while maintaining balance with a good level of legibility. This family of free fonts was designed by Alessio Laiso, a designer at IBM Dublin, as the slab serif companion to Lato.
20. Libre Baskerville
Free for personal and commercial use
Libre Baskerville is a web font optimised for body text (typically 16px). It’s based on the American Type Founder's Baskerville from 1941, but it has a taller x-height, wider counters and a little less contrast, allowing it to work well for reading on screen. This open source project is led by Impallari Type.
21. Slabo
Free for personal and commercial use
Designed by John Hudson, Slabo is a growing collection of size-specific free fonts for the web, fine-tuned precisely for use at those specific pixel sizes. The blocky feel of its ligatures gives a modern twist to the serif font, making Slabo perfect for online designs.
22. Merriweather
Free for personal and commercial use
A hugely popular open-source serif font, Merriweather has its own project on GitHub. It was designed by Sorkin Type to be easy to read on screens. It features a very large x-height, slightly condensed letterforms, a mild diagonal stress, sturdy serifs and open forms.
23. Woodland
Free for personal use
This beautiful curvy serif typeface has six weights, and the bold and ultralight versions are offered for free for personal use. It features strong, squared serifs and wide terminals. Touches like the rounded crossbar in the lowercase E give a soft quirkiness to its personality.
24. Melisande Sharp
Free for personal and commercial use
This hand-drawn serif by Brittney Murphy offers a great way to add a sense of playfulness to yours designs. Its lively character shines through unique features like the pot-bellied 'a' and high-crossbarred 'f'. A good choice for adding the personal touch to projects.
25. Grenze
Free for personal and commercial use
Grenze by Renata Polastri and Omnibus-Type blends Roman and blackletter styles. With nine weights and italics, it offers a lovely balance between visual impact and readability, making it suitable for magazines and other print projects, Grenze is available under the SIL Open Font License for unrestricted use.
The best free sans-serif fonts
26. Aquiver
Free for personal use
Aquiver is an effortlessly cool contemporary font that's perfect for adding a bit of edge to your projects. The hand-drawn sans serif created by Jessica Solomon is perfect for posters and bold creative projects that require a big impact that stands out from the crowd.
27. Newake
Free for personal use
Combining both humanist and geometric elements, Newake is a versatile sans serif that has slightly rounded corners that provide an elegant line to text designs. Created by the Indieground team, Newake is perfect for creating standout titles, logos, editorial, packaging and web design.
28. Obrazec
Free for personal and commercial use
Obrazec is an uncompromising, industrial-style sans serif created by Ilya Zakharov. This sturdy and confident typeface is one of the best free fonts for adding strength and personality to your branding projects, whether you're working on logo design, promotional materials, or advertising.
29. Archive Grotesk
Free for personal and commercial use
Created by Tomas Clarkson, Free Archive Grotesk is a clean and minimalist sans that features uppercase, lowercase and numerals. It’s one of those free fonts that would work well in everything from headlines and magazine page furniture to invitations, calendars, postcards and fashion designs
30. Animosa
Free for personal and commercial use
Animosa is a clean modern sans-serif that comes with a wide range of unique characters. from Created by Stefano Giliberti, this font is available in five weights and includes 93 languages and 508 glyphs. It's one of the best fonts we’ve seen for drawing the reader’s eye to the page, and keeping it there.
31. Red Hat
Free for personal and commercial use
If you're not down with Linux and open source then this name's not going to mean a lot to you; don't worry too much about that, because all we're interested in here the font, designed by Jeremy Mickel. It's inspired by American sans serifs, and comes in two optical sizes and a range of weights.
32. Public Sans
Free for personal and commercial use
Geometric sans serif typeface Alcubierre is the work of designer Matt Ellis. Following in the footsteps of his original free font Ikaros, this clean, minimal typeface works for a variety of uses.
33. Big John / Slim Joe
Free for personal and commercial use
Big John was created by designer Ion Lucin for his personal use. Eventually, he decided to share it on Behance, and then went on to add an ultra-light sister font: Slim Joe. Both are all-caps fonts, and contrast perfectly when combined together. These free fonts are ideal for titles and headlines.
34. Titillium Web
Free for personal and commercial use
Titillium has a highly respectable pedigree, born of a type design project at Italy’s Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino. Each academic year, a dozen students work on the project, developing it further and solving problems. It works best in larger sizes, such as for titles, though it could be used as a body font.
35. Chivo
Free for personal and commercial use
Chivo is a grotesque typeface that’s ideal for headlines, and other page furniture where you want to grab attention. Both confident and elegant, it’s been released in four weights with matching italics. This free font is the work of Héctor Gatti and the Omnibus-Type Team.
36. Comfortaa
Free for personal and commercial use
Comfortaa is a rounded geometric sans-serif type design intended for large sizes. Created by Johan Aakerlund, a design engineer at the Technical University of Denmark, it’s a simple, good looking font that includes large number of different characters and symbols.
37. Noto Sans
Free for personal and commercial use
Noto Sans is a free font family supporting more than 100 writing systems, 800 languages, and hundreds of thousands of characters. It's intended to be visually harmonious across multiple languages, with compatible heights and stroke thicknesses. The family includes regular, bold, italic and bold italic styles.
38. HK Grotesk
Free for personal and commercial use
HK Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface inspired by the classic grotesques, such as Akzidenz Grotesk, Univers, Trade Gothic and Gill Sans. It was designed by Hanken Design Co with the aim of creating a friendly and distinguishable font that’s suitable for small text.
39. Aileron
Free for personal and commercial use
Aileron is a versatile, neo-grotesque sans-serif that’s somewhere between Helvetica and Univers. Created by Sora Sagano, a designer at Tipotype, it aims to provide readers with a high level of visual comfort. It’s available in 16 weights, from ultralight to black.
40. Ubuntu
Free for personal and commercial use
This free font has been specially created to complement the tone of voice of Ubuntu, the Linux operating system for personal computers, tablets and smartphones. Designed by font foundry Dalton Maag, it uses OpenType features and is manually hinted for clarity on desktop and mobile screens.
41. Clear Sans
Free for personal and commercial use
Clear Sans is a versatile font designed by Intel designed with on-screen legibility in mind. Suitable for screen, print, and web, this free font is notable for its minimised characters and slightly narrow proportions, making it a great choice for UI design, from short labels to long passages.
42. Source Sans Pro
Free for personal and commercial use
Released in 2012, Source Sans Pro was the first open source type family for Adobe. It was envisioned as a classic grotesque typeface with a simple, unassuming design, intended to work well in user interfaces. A solid, reliable font that's easy to read, this would be a good choice for user interfaces.
43. Misto Font
Free for personal and commercial use.
Designed by Katerina Korolevtseva, Misto font is a tribute to her hometown of Slavutych in Ukraine. It features sharp contrasts in stroke width, which are inspired by the town’s postmodernist architecture and utopian ideals. This is a multilingual display sans serif, which supports both Latin and Cyrillic.
Unusual fonts
44. The Quick South St Font
Free for personal and non-profit use
Free for personal and non-profit use, this tech decorative font has unusual detailing and would be perfect or brining an individual edge to a range of projects. Donations to the creator are welcome.
45. Miratrix
Free for personal and commercial use
Strongly influenced by Brutalism, Miratrix is a geometric grotesque that’s very far from standard and boring; in fact, it’s one of the most original free fonts we’ve seen in ages. Designed by Andrey Karter, this eye-catching multi-functional font is intended for use in a variety of projects, including web design, logos, brand identity, packaging, posters and headlines.
46. Soulcraft
Free for personal and commercial use.
Soulcraft typeface is a free variable font designed to emulate vernacular lettering. Its creators at Massimo Studio intend creative people to make use in varied ways, so they can “express themselves in a bold, raw and unafraid voice”.
47. Stanley
Free for personal and commercial use
For a truly stylish font, download Stanley. Created by Jérémie Gauthier, this font combines rounded and more geometric forms and the results are striking. In our view, Stanley would work well for luxury branding or packaging.
48. Gilbert
Free for personal and commercial use
Gilbert Baker, who died in 2017, was a LGBTQ activist and artist who's best known for creating the iconic rainbow flag, and he's been commemorated by this striking free display font. A good option for headlines and banner slogans.
49. Le Super Serif
Free for personal and commercial use
Le Super Serif is that rare thing: a typographical experiment that actually works. It’s described by its creator, Dutch designer Thijs Janssen, as “a fashionable uppercase typeface with a little modern Western flavour to it”.
50. Borsok
Free for personal & commercial use
Borsok is a bold but smooth display font with multilingual support. Its attention-grabbing rounded shape makes it perfect for branding, apparel design, product packaging, stylish text, quotes, greeting cards, posters and much more. It includes uppercase & lowercase characters, numerals, punctuation and symbols.
