50 best free fonts for designers

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Free fonts, updated for 2017 – all the best free fonts, and none of the dross. We have filtered out the diamonds in the rough from the thousands of free fonts available online that are suitable for you to use in your designs.

This list represents the 50 best free fonts we've found in eight categories. We have many other articles covering specialist font types including handwriting fonts, graffiti fonts, web fonts and more, but we have sectioned our main list under these styles:

1. Serif fonts (this page)
2. Sans-serif fonts
3. Handwriting fonts
4. Vintage and retro fonts
5. Brush fonts
6. Tattoo fonts
7. Graffiti fonts
8. Unusual fonts

You can use the drop-down menu at the top of the page to jump to the section you want. 

Most of the typeface collections listed here can be used in your projects, but please be sure to check the terms. Now join us as we present you with 50 of the best free fonts, which you can download and use today.

Serif fonts

01. Butler

Free font Butler brings a sense of modernism to the serif

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Inspired by both Dala Floda and the Bodoni family, Butler is a free font designed by Fabian De Smet. His aim was to bring a bit of modernism to serif fonts, by working on the curves of classical serif fonts, and adding an extra stencil family.

The Butler family contains 334 characters, seven regular weights and seven stencil weights, and includes text figures, ligatures and fractions. It also suits many different languages with its added glyphs. De Smet suggests it would work well for “posters, very big titles, books and fancy stuff.”

02. Arvo

A superior geometric slab-serif, Arvo is one of our favourite free fonts

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Arvo is a geometric slab-serif font family that’s suitable for both screen and print use. Designed for legibility, it was created by Anton Koovit and published in the Google Font directory as a free open font (OFL). Unlike many slab serifs on Google Fonts, Arvo contains normal, italic, bold and bold italic styles. 

03. Crimson Text

Crimson Text is a free font family inspired by old-time book typefaces

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Here’s a free font family created specifically for book production, inspired by old-time, Garamond-esque book typefaces. Crimson Text is the work of German-born, Toronto-based designer Sebastian Kosch, who says he was influenced by the work of Jan Tschichold, Robert Slimbach and Jonathan Hoefler. 

It’s also favourite free font of Taylor Palmer, a senior UX designer based out of Utah, USA. "Crimson is a sophisticated serif that makes a nice alternative to traditional Garamond-esque typefaces,” he says. “It also has a very expressive italic, which pairs nicely with strong, geometric sans-serifs like Futura or Avenir."

04. Aleo

Aleo is one of those rare free fonts that manages to balance personality with legibility perfectly

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Aleo has semi-rounded details and a sleek structure, giving a sense of personality while maintaining a good level of legibility. This free font family comprises six styles: three weights (light, regular and bold), with corresponding true italics. Released under the SIL Open Font License, it was designed by Alessio Laiso, a designer at IBM Dublin, as the slab serif companion to Lato.

05. Cormorant 

Free font Cormorant was inspired by the Garamond greats

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Cormorant is a display serif typeface inspired by the Garamond heritage. It was hand-drawn and produced by Christian Thalmann, aka Catharsis Fonts, who describes it as containing “scandalously small counters, razor-sharp serifs, dangerously smooth curves, and flamboyantly tall accents”. The font is best used for headlines and poster text at large sizes, both on screen and in print, but is also highly legible at smaller text sizes.

06. Brela

Free font Brela works well in editorial designs, both for headlines and body text

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Brela is a humanistic serif font designed exclusively for editorial design. With a generous x-height, it’s very legible, even at tiny sizes, yet it works equally well in bold, large headlines. This free font was designed by Spanish creative agency Makarska Studio and comes in regular and bold weights.

07. Libre Baskerville

Free font Libre Baskerville is optimised for reading body text on screen

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

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, a type design foundry based in Rosario, Argentina. 

"I like to keep my eye on the Libre fonts, like Libre Baskerville,” enthuses Taylor Palmer, a senior UX designer based out of Utah, USA. He also recommends you check out its sister font, Libre Franklin, which is also free. “Libre Franklin hearkens back to strong, traditional typefaces, like Franklin Gothic, that have the declarative nature of something like a newspaper headline but are simple enough to set as paragraph text," he explains.

08. Jura

Free font Jura looks good at both large and small sizes

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

A remarkably elegant font, Jura is characterised by its narrow proportions and distinguishing details, including its rounded, wedge shaped serifs. It looks good at large sizes, but reads well at small ones too. This free font was created by UK-based designer Ed Merritt.

09. Fenix 

Fénix is one of the best free fonts we’ve seen for long passages of small text

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Fénix is a calligraphy-inspired font that works well as both display text and body copy. Featuring strong serifs and rough strokes, it provides a lovely rhythm when reading long passages in small text sizes. It’s the work of Fernando Díaz, a designer at Uruguayan foundry TipoType.

10. Luthier

Luthier is a free font that can be used for both large and small text

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Luthier is a contemporary typeface characterised by sharp serifs and high contrast, which comes in two weights plus italics. Good for both headlines and body text, it would suit designs focused on serious, intellectual topics. This free font was created by Barcelona-based designer Adrià Gómez.

Next page: free sans-serif fonts...

11. Titillium Web

Titillium is a free font that works best at larger sizes

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

While many of the lower-quality free fonts out there are the work of amateurs, Titillium has a far more 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, and they ask all graphic designers who use Titillium in their projects to email them some examples of the typeface family in use, to help them develop it further.

“Titillium has been a favourite font of mine for a few years now,” says Rob Hampson, head of design at The Bot Platform, a new platform for building bots on Messenger. “It’s sharp, contemporary and comes in a wide range of weights. In my opinion, it works best in larger sizes; for example, for titles. That said, with careful consideration, it could be used as a body font.”

12. League Gothic

League Gothic is a new free font inspired by an old favourite

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

League Gothic is a condensed sans-serif inspired by the classic typeface Alternate Gothic #1, originally designed by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders Company in 1903. The League of Movable Type decided to make its own version and, as ever, open source it, with contributions from Micah Rich, Tyler Finck and Dannci.

13. Chivo

Chivo is one of the most eye-catching free fonts around

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

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.

14. Comfortaa

Free font Comfortaa could work well in a logo design

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

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. Part of the Google Font Improvements Project, the latest updates to the family include the addition of a Cyrillic character set and support for Vietnamese. 

David Airey, a graphic designer and occasional writer in Northern Ireland, is among its admirers. “A lot of free fonts need too much work cleaning up the points, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find good options,” he says. “For a recent identity project, I used Comfortaa as the base for a bespoke wordmark. The before and after are really quite different, but Johan’s work gave me a great foundation, and the client loves the result.”

15. Noto Sans

Free font Noto Sans supports more than 800 languages

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Noto Sans is a free font family designed by Google supporting more than 100 writing systems, 800 languages, and hundreds of thousands of characters. Noto fonts are intended to be visually harmonious across multiple languages, with compatible heights and stroke thicknesses. The family include regular, bold, italic and bold italic styles, and is hinted. It is derived from Droid, and like Droid it has a serif sister family, Noto Serif.

16. HK Grotesk Hanken

HK Grotesk is one of our favourite free fonts for casting small text

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

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. It has recently expanded its language support with the addition of Cyrillic characters (Bulgarian, Russian and Serbian).

17. Aileron

One of our favourite hybrid free fonts, Aileron is a relaxed choice for on-screen reading

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

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. 

18. Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a custom-designed free font for screen use

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

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. 

19. Clear Sans

Who knew Intel did free fonts?

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

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 (it has, for instance, been adopted by Mozilla for the ‘Firefox for Android’ browser). 

Created by Daniel Ratighan at Monotype under the direction of Intel, Clear Sans supports a wide range of languages using Latin, Cyrillic and Greek, and includes medium, regular, thin, and light weights with upright, italic, and bold styles.

20. Source Sans Pro

Adobe’s first foray into open source type, Source Sans Pro remains one of the design community’s most popular free fonts

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Released in 2012, Source Sans Pro was the first open source type family for Adobe, and has proved wildly popular. It was envisioned as a classic grotesque typeface with a simple, unassuming design, intended to work well in user interfaces. It was designed by Paul D. Hunt,  who continues to work as a type designer at Adobe, and also designed the complementary free font Source Serif Pro.

Source Sans Pro is one of the favourite free fonts of James Hollingworth, a senior-level digital designer and illustrator based near Bath, UK. “It’s such a solid, reliable font to use in design work,” he enthuses. “Being dyslexic myself, I find it a very easy font to read, and it works brilliantly in user interfaces.” 

Next page: free handwriting fonts...

21. Nickainley

Nickainley is a free font based on vintage-style handwriting

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Nickainley is one of our favourite free handwriting fonts. This Monoline script with a classic, vintage feel, includes uppercase and lowercase characters, as well as numerics and punctuation marks. Offering a variety of possible use cases, including logos, T-shirt designs, letterhead and signage, this free font was created by Indonesian agency Seniors Studio.

22. Pacifico

Pacifico is one of the most laid-back free fonts around

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Pacifico is a fun brush script handwriting font inspired by 1950s American surf culture. This open source font was one of the great contributions to the free software community by the late designer Vernon Adams, who passed away last year.

23. Cute Punk

Cute Punk is a free font based on handwriting, but with a twist

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Cute Punk offers a vibrant, youthful and thoroughly modern take on the handwriting font. Infusing the style with a striking, almost geometric feel, this free font is the work of Flou, a designer and illustrator from Bratislava, Slovakia.

24. Futuracha

One of the oddest free fonts based on handwriting we’ve seen, Futuracha could work well in the right design

• Free for personal use only
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

An idiosyncratic take on the handwriting font, Futuracha is inspired by John Baskerville’s classic typefaces, as well as Futura Book. Created by Holy, this free font family includes numerics, symbol fonts, and Greek and Latin characters. Designed as a display font, Futuracha could work well when used creatively in headlines, logos or typographical illustrations. 

25. Yellowtail

Free font Yellowtail features a classic approach to handwritten, brush lettering

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Yellowtail is an old-school, flat, brush font that evokes classic 1930s typefaces like Gillies Gothic and Kaufmann. Designed by typography institute Astigmatic, its mixture of connecting and non-connecting letterforms gives it a unique look and ensures good legibility. 

Next page: free vintage and retro fonts...

26. Bauru

Bauru is a free font with a lot of soul

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Bauru is based on the kind of lettering that instantly sums up the feeling of a bygone age. One of the best free retro fonts, this could work well in portraying a sense of nostalgia and timeless values within a wide range of branding, posters, advertising or logo design. It was designed by Brazilian art director and illustrator Pier Paolo.

27. LOT 

LOT is one of the fattest, coolest, retro-est free fonts around

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Reminiscent of the stylised block lettering of 1970s and 1980s advertising, posters and magazine design, LOT nonetheless provides a sleek new take on a vintage style with its collection of fat, geometric letterforms. Featuring 78 characters, this free font would work well in posters, logos and headlines. It’s the work of independent type foundry FontFabric.

28. Streetwear

Free font Streetwear effortlessly sums up a retro feel

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Streetwear is a cool, retro-inspired script typeface that gives a big nod to 1960s and 1970s fashion and sport designs. Suitable for logo, poster, branding, packaging and T-shirt design, it’s the work of Indonesian studio Artimasa.

29. Paralines Font

Anyone who remembers TV titles of the 1970s and 80s will recognise the style of this retro-futuristic free font

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Featuring idiosyncratic use of parallel lines, Paralines takes inspiration from both decades-old design and modern-day typography. This free font would suit any project aiming to evoke the graphic design of the 1970s and early 1980s. It’s the work of freelance UK designer Lewis Latham. 

30. Hamurz

Free font Hamurz offers a hipster take on retro styles

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Hamurz is a hipster-style retro typeface with rough edges and rounded shapes. Created by Bagus Budiyanto, it offers a multitude of potential uses, such as logos, headings, or designs for T-shirts, badges or letterpress printing.

Next page: free brush fonts...

31. Playlist

Free brush font Playlist is great for illustrated designs and merchandise

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Playlist is a hand-drawn font with dry brush styles that comes in three varieties: Script, Caps, and Ornament. Ideal for illustrated designs, including posters, T-shirts and other merchandise, this is one of our favourite free brush fonts. It’s the work of Indonesian studio Artimasa.

32. Sophia

Free font Sophie offers a decorative take on brush script handwriting

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Sophie is light, friendly and slightly off-kilter, in a fun way. Described as “a hand-lettered brush script with a sweet decorative bonus", the family includes multilingual glyphs, as well as left and right stylistic letter combinations. This free font was designed by Mats-Peter Forss and Emily Spadoni, of Finland and the USA respectively.

33. Reckless

Free font Reckless has an upbeat feel

• Free for personal and commercial use (pay with a tweet)
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Reckless is a handwritten brush font that includes uppercase and extended Latin characters. As shown above, it would work well with a watercolour-effect design, either in print or on the web. It was created by Russian designer Nadi Spasibenko.

34. Kust

Brush fonts don’t have to be twee, as free font Kust shows

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Kust is a handwritten, all-caps font with a distorted, slightly corrupted look. This free font was based on letters drawn on hard paper, with a thick brush using pure black ink, by fashion designer and artist Leva Mezule. It comes courtesy of Wildtype Design, a studio based in Latvia. 

35. Brux

Brux takes an original approach to free brush fonts

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

While most brush-style free fonts are pretty laid-back, stylistically speaking, Brux is quite rigid and formal, almost evoking the feel of a stencil. This gives it a very fresh and original look. The free font includes Swedish, German and Spanish characters and is the work of Stockholm-based art director Marcelo Melo.

Next page: free tattoo fonts...

36. Betty

Free font Betty is inspired by old-school tattoo art

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

None of your hipster stars or tribal tattoos here. Betty is one of those free tattoo fonts that reaches back into the past to a bygone age, when every 'real man' had a sailor’s anchor and ‘I heart Mum’ inked on his bicep. This free font is the work of Athens-based designer Anastasia Dimitriadi.

37. Angilla

Angilla is one of the best free fonts we’ve seen in the tattoo script style

• Free for personal use only
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

This tattoo script font draws on the spirit of calligraphy to create something extremely fresh and stylish. This free font is the work of Swedish designer Måns Grebäck.

38. Serval

Free font Serval offers a scratchy style for tattoo lettering

• Free for personal use only
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Another calligraphic font that’s perfect for tattoo stylings, Serval is a wiry, scratchy beast of a design. This free font is the inspired work of Maelle.K and Thomas Boucherie.

39. MOM

MOM is a font inspired by the old school tattoo lettering of the American tradition

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

MOM is a font inspired by the old-school tattoo lettering of the American tradition, and a tribute to the great tattoo artists of the past. This free font is the creation of Rafa Miguel, an art director based in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

40. Original Gangsta

Original Gangsta is a free font with uncompromising style

• Free for personal use only
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Want a tattoo font that shows no mercy? Original Gangsta is a hard-edged script font that’s both stylish and uncompromising. This free font was created by Gilang Purnama Jaya, a designer from Indonesia.

Next page: free graffiti fonts...

41. Ruthless Dripping One

Ruthless Dripping One is one of the few free fonts in the graffiti space that’s keeping it real

• Free for personal use only
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Most free graffiti fonts are really just stylised cursives that lack the sense of art, style and playfulness that’s so central to the urban street art scene. Ruthless Dripping One by Swedish designer Måns Grebäck bucks the trend with this free font, which combines calligraphy with paint drips to create something more on the money. 

42. Urban Jungle

Distressed free font Urban Jungle conveys the look of street stencilling brilliantly

• Free for personal use only
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Stencils are a big focus of modern day street art, for both practical and aesthetic reasons. Here, Urban Jungle draws on the stencil tradition and adds a distressed texture that instantly evokes the sweat and fury of the street. It’s the work of Canadian typographer Kevin Christopher, aka KC Fonts.

43. Blow Brush

Free font Blow Brush is inspired by hip-hop and urban culture

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

There’s a real energy and boldness to Blow Brush, a handwritten, marker-style font inspired by hip-hop and urban culture. Quirky enough to feel authentic, but formal enough to provide legibility and font functionality, this free font is the work of Petar Acanski, aka Raz, a Serbian multidisciplinary designer and frontend developer. It includes a full set of uppercase characters, numbers, 22 ligatures, a selection of special characters and some variations.

44. Sister Spray

Free font Sister Spray brings together spray paint-style letters, numbers and splodges

• Free for personal use only
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Sister Spray is a beautifully messy, spray paint-style font that includes letters, numbers and a bunch of splatters, splotches and strokes. This free font is the work of French typeface design workshop ImageX.

45. Tag Type

Free font Tag Type delivers just what the name suggests

• Free for personal use and charity use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Tag Type is inspired by graffiti tags that contains upper- and lowercase letters, numerals and punctuation. Both Latin and Cyrillic characters are included in this free font, which is the work of Ukranian designer Andy Panchenko.

Next page: free unusual fonts...

46. Jaapokki

The ‘alternative subtract’ of Jaapokki experiments with removing elements of the font

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Jaapokki is a beautiful sans-serif font featuring clean lines, two alternatives and large set of glyphs that’s great for headlines, posters, logos and more. And Rob Hampson, head of design at The Bot Platform, is particularly attracted to the more unusual elements of this free font family, which was created by Finnish designer Mikko Nuuttila.

“I found Jaapokki around a year ago and instantly fell in love with it,” Hampson explains. “In fact, it’s the font I chose to use on my personal website. It has a range of choices, with some being more experimental than others. For example, ‘alternative subtract’ [shown above] experiments with removing elements of the font. This is definitely one to use at larger sizes.”

47. Carioca Bebas

A fresh, fruity and colourful free font

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Carioca is a fresh, fun and fruity creation, based on a morphological colour and pattern. This delightful free font was developed as part of a three-month experimental type project by Argentinian graphic designers Tano Veron and Yai Salinas.

48. Le Super Serif

Le Super Serif is one of the few experimental free fonts that actually works

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

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.” This free font features 88 ligatures and comes in the weights Regular and Semi-Bold. 

49. Pelmeshka

Free font Pelmeshka offers a new twist on the foode theme

• Free (pay with a tweet) for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE

Most food-themed fonts do what you’d expect; no more, no less. Pelmeshka, though, has gone the extra mile to become something truly unique. Perfect for any design aimed at children, this Bodoni-inspired serif is funny, friendly and oh-so original. This free font is the work of Russian designer Cyril Mikhailov.

50. Tiny Hands

Yes, this free font is dedicated to the eccentric handwriting of Donald Trump

• Free for personal and commercial use
• DOWNLOAD HERE
  

Even though Buzzfeed is aiming to transform into a serious news organisation, it’s still managing to maintain its sense of fun. And here’s a great example: a free font based on US President Donald Trump’s eccentric handwriting style. It was created by typographer Mark Davis, and apart from being a very funny satire, it could actually work well as a cartoon or comic-book font.

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