9 places to find free (and almost free) fonts

When you’re kicking off a new website project, one of your most important decisions is what fonts to use. And while internet offers a host of typographic options via Google Fonts and Typekit integrations, sometimes you might want something a little different.

For those moments, here are a few of my favorite places to find free (and low-cost) fonts that, despite their low price tags, offer both beauty and flexibility. I’ll kick the list off with places that let you download desktop and web fonts, then round it out with some cloud-based options.

1. Lost Type Co-op

Lost Type’s “collaborative digital type foundry” plays host to a wide variety of gorgeous, expressive fonts with a variety of price points (from free for “personal use” on up).

Like many of the smaller foundries, Lost Type offers a bunch of ornate, all-caps display fonts. But it balances that out with several more robust and flexible families that can stand up to editorial and UI use, including (my personal faves) Mission Gothic and Klinik.

2. Atipo

This Spanish “graphic and type design studio” isn’t the most prolific of foundries out there, but what they lack in volume, they more than make up in quality.

To date, each font they’ve produced has a very different feel and intended use, from the Art Deco Cassannet to the super-friendly Bariol to the editorially refined Calendas. Best of all, all their non-bespoke fonts are free (for a weight or two) or pay what you want.

Thanks, Atipo!

3. Fontfabric

This independent type foundry boasts an impressive collection of free fonts suited for big, bold display use — and many include Cyrillic versions.

While it’ll probably never become your go-to for flexible body fonts, it’s worth bookmarking for those times when a project demands a impactful (or playful) hero section.

That said, the folks at Fontfabric seem to use free releases as a way to gauge demand, and often turn the more popular faces into full-fledged families you might find worth grabbing. (Especially during their introductory sales.)

That fact also demands a caveat: When browsing the site, read carefully—their “free” fonts often don’t remain that way after release.

4. The League of Moveable Type

Back when I was first discovering the joys of typography, I was a bit demoralized by the bank-busting prices. Until I discovered the League of Moveable Type, whose superheroic name seemed perfectly fitting.

(To be clear, I now know that the prices foundries charge for their work are 100% justifiable. I was just broke back then.)

While the League seems to be losing a bit of steam of late, the first open-source foundry boasts several lovely typefaces you can download for free, from the punchy League Gothic to the delicate Raleway.

5. Font Squirrel

Okay, so if you’re looking for an all-in-one, end-all-be-all for your free font hunt, Font Squirrel’s your jam. As they describe themselves:

“Free fonts have met their match. We know how hard it is to find quality freeware that is licensed for commercial work. We've done the hard work, hand-selecting these typefaces and presenting them in an easy-to-use format.”

And I, for one, can’t thank them enough for doing that hard work for me. Their curated collection boasts a ton of beautiful fonts, many featuring far more than 1 or 2 styles you’ll usually get in a free font. They’ve also got robust filters, tags, and categories to help you quickly find just what you want. Finally, their Generator tools helps you get desktop fonts ready for web usage, and their Matcherator is handy for identifying fonts from images.