The best free fonts: 50 quality type options for creatives
Typography can make or break a design, so our list of the best free fonts is here to help.
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.
The best free serif fonts
01. Giveny
- Free for personal use
- Download Giveny from Behance
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
- Download Carena from Behance
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)
- Download Harmony from Behance
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.
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04. Editorial New
- Free for personal use (commercial licences available from $30)
- Download Editorial New from Pangram and Pangram on Behance
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
- Get Young Serif from NoirBlancRouge
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
- Get Cormorant from Google Fonts
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
- Get Alegreya from Google Fonts
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
- Get Restora from pixelsurplus.com
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
- Get Emberly from Rajesh Rajput on Gumroad
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
- Get Rude from pixelsurplus.com
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
- Get Saint George from Behance
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
- Get Colus from fontfabric.com
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
- Get Amagro from Font Squirrel
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
- Get Poly from Font Squirrel
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
- Get Playfair Display from Font Squirrel
Designed by Claus Eggers Sørensen, 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
- Get Lora from Font Squirrel
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
- Get Butler from Fabian De Smet
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
- Get Crimson Text from Font Squirrel
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
- Get Aleo from Graphic Pear
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
- Get Libre Baskerville from Google Fonts
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
- Get Slabo from Google Fonts
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
- Get Merriweather from Google Fonts
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
- Get Woodland from Pangram Pangram
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
- Get Melisande Sharp
This hand-drawn serif by Brittney Murphy offers a great way to add a sense of playfulness to your 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
- Get Grenze
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
- Download Aquiver on Behance
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
- Get Newake from Behance
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
- Get Obrazec from Behance
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
- Get Archive Grotesk from Behance
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
- Get Animosa from Behance
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
- Get Red Hat from GitHub
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
- Get Alcubierre from webdesignerdepot.com
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
- Download Big John / Slim Joe from Dropbox
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
- Get Titillium from Cufon Fonts
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
- Get Chivo from Google Fonts
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
- Get Comfortaa from Google Fonts
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
- Get Noto Sans from Google Fonts
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
- Get HK Grotesk from 1001 Fonts
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
- Get Aileron from tipotype.com
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
- Get Ubuntu from ubuntu.com
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
- Get Clear Sans from Font Squirrel
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
- Get Source Sans Pro from Font Squirrel
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.
- Get Misto Font from Google Drive
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
- Get The Quick South St Font from Cufon Fonts
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
- Get Miratrix from Online Fonts
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.
- Get Soulcraft from Behance
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
- Get Stanley from Behance
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
- Get Gilbert from typewithpride.com
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
- Get Le Super Serif from Behance
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
- Get Borsok from pixelsurplus.com
Borsok is a bold but smooth display font with multilingual support. Its attention-grabbing, rounded shapes 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.
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Tom May is an award-winning journalist and editor specialising in design, photography and technology. Author of the Amazon #1 bestseller Great TED Talks: Creativity, published by Pavilion Books, Tom was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine. Today, he is a regular contributor to Creative Bloq and its sister sites Digital Camera World, T3.com and Tech Radar. He also writes for Creative Boom and works on content marketing projects.
- Abi Le GuilcherEcommerce Writer
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