23 free font resources

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There are plenty of places to download typefaces on the web. But budgets don't always stretch to include quality, crafted fonts – so where should you look when you need the best free fonts? 

There's a lot of noise and clutter online. It's easy to end up falling down the rabbit hole of poorly structured sites and low quality fonts. So we've taken it on ourselves to find you the gems in the rough.

Besides the obvious places to download free fonts, we've also unearthed some less known sources – including individual design portfolios and agency sites. So next time you want to download fonts, head here to discover a world of typographical inspiration.

01. FontSpace

It's easy to find what you want among FontSpace's 32,000 fonts

With nearly 32,000 fonts available in TrueType and OpenType flavours, neatly sorted into plenty of categories, FontSpace is a useful go-to for free type. It has over 2,000 designers supplying fonts, and they're clearly labelled so you can be sure whether a font is good for commercial use or not.

02. Font Freak

Get your (Font) Freak on

On top of over 125,000 commercial fonts, Font Freak boasts more than 9,000 free fonts from over 400 different designers, sorted alphabetically for easy downloading and most of them in both PC and Mac versions. And if you can't be bothered with sorting through everything on offer, you can download its entire archive of free fonts for a small fee.

03. Creative Market

Get a free font each week over on Creative Market

An online marketplace for community-generated design assets, Creative Market offers free goods each week, which includes a free font. The design changes each week and is only available for a limited time period – a brilliant way to build up a library of different font styles.

04. Behance

You'll find all manner of free font designs on Behance

The go-to place for designers to show off their work, online portfolio platform Behance is a brilliant place to find free fonts. Whether you want a slab serif, script, tattoo or handwriting font, you're sure to find something that suits here.

05. The Northern Block

The Northern Block offers a number of free font designs

Launched by creative director Jonathan Hill back in 2006, type foundry The Northern Block offers a number of free fonts. From stencil and bold to modern and geometric designs, you're sure to find something suitable for your project here.

06. FontStruct

Find user-generated fonts at FontStruct

FontStruct is a place where the community can design fonts and share them with others for free. This means there are a lot of fonts to search through, and more are added every day. The site's easy to navigate and the best fonts are picked for the FontStruct gallery.

07. 1001 Free Fonts

Misnomer alert! We're certain that 1001 Free Fonts doesn't feature exactly 1001 free fonts; we reckon it's actually a lot more than that – probably something more in the region of 10,001. All of them are handily organised across 64 categories, along with the option to browse by designer.

08. Abstract fonts

This place to download fonts has a clean interface

Abstract Fonts has one of the cleaner interfaces in this arena, and it's very easy to navigate. There's a custom font preview option and it's updated regularly, with about 14,000 fonts for you to choose from.

09. Jeff Schreiber

It's quality, not quantity with Jeff's font creations

Jeff Schreiber is a designer, illustrator and typographer from Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Although he doesn't have too many fonts available on his site, it's all about quality and not quantity here. His 'Razor' creation is brilliant for print and poster work, while his 'Fat Frank' font offers a more playful approach.

10. Neogrey

Be sure to check out Ivan's Multicoloure Vector font

Neogrey is the portfolio of Ivan Filipov. Working as a graphic and web designer, he's created some stunning fonts that he's very generously made available for free download. We particularly love his latest font, a multicoloured vector font.

11. Smashing Magazine

There's some great fonts to choose from on this round-up from Smashing Mag

Smashing Magazine provides a wide range of tutorials, inspiration and helpful advice for creatives on a daily basis. The site also has a great series of articles collating quality free fonts for you to choose from. These guys know what they're talking about, so it's a reliable place to download free fonts.

12. Artill

Artill is minimalism at its best

Created by Lukas Bischoff, a designer based in Germany, Artill is a nice little website that's aimed purely at people wishing to download free fonts. Minimalism at its best, and some great typography to be sampled.

13. Typedepot

Type design studio Typedepot offers both free and paid-for fonts

Typedepot is a nifty little type-design studio website that offers a number of free fonts for visitors to download. There are also great commercial fonts to buy. The project began as a sideline for studio founders Alexander Nedelev and Veronika Slavova, before they realised their true passion for typography and took it on full-time.

Next: More free font resources

14. Free Fonts Project

Many great type designers have contributed to the Freeware Fonts Project

A massive collection of free fonts is being shared by type designers as part of this project curated by Jovanny Lemonad. They’re totally free and everyone can take part in the project. If you like what you download, you could consider making a donation.

15. Glukfonts

Polish designer Gluksza offers some great free design resources

Glukfonts is the site of Polish designer Gluksza, which offers some nicely designed typography. You can download free fonts and other design resources too, including PHP scripts.

16. Fontfabric

Check out the freebie section of independent type foundry Fontfabric

An independent type foundry launched by Bulgarian designer Svetoslav Simov, Fontfabric includes a lot of paid fonts but its freebie section is also a great place to download free fonts.

17. Lost Type

Lost Type offers you the chance to pay whatever you like

Founded by Riley Cran and Tyler Galpin, Lost Type is a type foundry that offers you the chance to pay whatever you like for a font (and yes, it's possible to type in '$0' for a free download).

18. DaFont

DaFont has a massive archive of free fonts to search – including novelty fonts like this

DaFont is a massive archive of freely downloadable fonts. Browse by alphabetical listing, style, author or popularity. A lot of it is on the unprofessional side but you can find some choice stuff here. It's also a good resource if you're looking to download free fonts with a novelty theme, like the Pac-Man font featured above.

19. Font Squirrel

Font Squirrel's free fonts are mostly @font-face compatible

Want to download free fonts for commercial use? Then Font Squirrel is the place to head. The quality of the fonts is high, they're mostly @font-face compatible, plus it's got a very nicely designed website into the bargain.

20. Ten by Twenty

Ed Merritt's site Ten by Twenty offers some excellent free fonts

Ten by Twenty is the impressive creation of Ed Merritt, a designer at UK web design agency Headscape. You can download free fonts from his site, as well as templates, themes and icons, for your web design projects – all of high quality.

21. Google Fonts

Google Web Fonts makes it easy to use web fonts on your site

Google Web Fonts makes it quick and easy for everyone to use web fonts on its site. All of the fonts are open source, so you're free to share and customise them for your own use, or collaborate with the original designer to improve them. And you can use them in every way you want, privately or commercially: in print, on your computer, or in your websites.

22. The League of Movable Type

The League of Movable Type is the first free and open-source type foundry

GitHub project The League of Movable Type is a typographical revolution in the making and anyone looking to download free fonts should make a beeline for it. The very first free and open-source type foundry, it's a hand-selected group of typographers who've created an amazing set of high-quality free fonts for all to download, such as the popular League Gothic.

23. Impallari

There's a lot of detail of how the free fonts at Impallari were made

"I think that typefaces are living beings," says Pablo Impallari, "they continue to evolve over time. Even if the original designer died over 500 years ago, contemporary designers push their ideas forward, keeping up keeping up with the always-shifting way we perceive the alphabet." You can find some incredible fonts at his site, Impallari. There's a lot of detail in updates too, which gives a helpful insight in how they're put together.

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