Every designer knows that a fantastic typeset can take any project from good to great. With a few minor adjustments, you can add a totally different look and feel to your creatives.
Bonus: Having this enormous assortment of chic new fonts on hand will improve the quality of your designs, and thus improve the look of your online design portfolio overall. Featuring all the freshest fonts on your design site will show potential clients that you’re up-to-date on typeface trends, and have great taste! It will help prove to them that you’re exactly what they need on their next project—and could help you snatch up fantastic freelance design jobs. (Need a little website inspo? Here’s some advice on how to create a great design portfolio.)
Fonts can, however, get expensive—if you don’t know where to look. Fortunately, there are many free font websites offering new typesets for your designs. We’ve gone ahead and compiled a list of 34 of the best free font sites to save you time and money. Let’s see what free fonts are out there!
Creative Market
Offering more than 23,000 free fonts; embellishments for headers, text and display; and a wealth of other useful assets to beef up your designs, this site is fantastic from top to bottom. You can even find some templates for other designs, including business cards, flyers, magazines, CSS and HTML themes, Layer Styles for Photoshop, 3D assets, and much more besides. The design is clean and concise, with clear attention given to the user experience. Its amazing accessibility makes it hands-down one of the best free font website options on this list. It might even give you some inspiration for a cool new design project!
FontSpace
A well-travelled font website offering over 37,000 free fonts, FontSpace has a lot to offer. While the design isn’t the most outstanding in this list, it is exceptionally functional and relatively easy to use, thanks to great categorization and very little script-loading required. You’ll never have trouble finding what you’re seeking on this font site. The real star of the show, of course, are the free fonts themselves. You’d be hard-pressed to not find some great ones waiting for you: the most popular are readily available via the “popular” link right in the header of the page. They have an especially nice collection of script-style fonts, so if that’s what you’re in the mood for, this is the place for you.
FontFreak
While it has a very basic design, FontFreak offers 9,000 free fonts of various sorts that designers can take full advantage of. They also offer over 125,000 fonts that can be purchased in addition to the free fonts offered. It has a search feature—including alphabetized category search—to help locate what you need. Pair a great script font with a killer logo and you could really make your brand stand out!
Behance
Behance has grown a lot from its early days to become a world-class site for creative people like yourself to post or download creative work of just about any sort. You’ll find quite a few free fonts here, too, from strange and eccentric stylized typesets to professionally designed serif and sans-serif options. The site also has a wealth of other content available; the caveat is that you’ll need to hunt a little to find what you want. It’s well worth the journey: you’ll find yourself lost in a wide array of creative works from people all over the world that will both inspire and amaze.
Fontasy.org
An archive that offers 1101 free fonts for PC and Mac, this lesser-known font site has a nice and simple search feature that breaks things down by style, alphabetically, or by individual designer. While it won’t be winning any awards for site design, it can certainly provide you with some useful free fonts that could help improve your posters, infographics and logos.
Font Squirrel
One of the most well-known free font websites in the world, Font Squirrel is super-duper easy to use thanks to a clean design that utilizes bold typography and a very visible search feature on the right side of the page that breaks things down into various categories, styles, and languages to ensure you don’t get lost. You’ll most definitely find free fonts here that you’ll love—might be the key to keeping you engaged and productive with all your design projects on the go!
DaFont
If you’ve looked for free fonts before, you’ve undoubtedly been to (or at least seen) DaFont. Their library of free fonts is almost 40,000 strong and ranges from odd and esoteric options such as runic script to modern, clean sans-serif fonts for websites. There are very few visual distractions, and categories are visible at all times in the header section of this font website, which makes navigation an absolute breeze.
Fontstruct
Perhaps the most unique free font websites in this list, Fontstruct doesn’t merely allow you to download free fonts—it actually lets you create them! You’ll have access to a library of user-made fonts at the drop of a hat through their simple user interface, and, if you’re feeling creative, you can try your hand at making the font of your dreams! Why wait? Get inspired and create your own font!
1001FreeFonts
There are a lot more than 1001 free fonts here: they actually offer 10,000 free fonts! The clean and simple design means there are no extra bells and whistles to deal with in your hunt for the best free fonts. The search feature is integrated into the site header, which reduces the time required to find what you need. This font website also has a paid option available: for $19.95 you can download all of their fonts in a single package, saving you the need to download individual fonts and immediately increasing your font library by a rather hefty amount with little effort.
AbstractFonts
With a great minimalist design, AbstractFonts makes sure their users get what they came for. A simple header is about the only design here, with the rest of the site devoted entirely to free fonts. With over 13,000 free fonts available, you’ll assuredly find what you need here. Who knows, you might even find a typeset that will help you design a best-selling book cover!
DeviantArt
While not technically a font site, DeviantArt is one of the biggest creative spaces on the entire web. You can find and use literally millions of free creative assets as well as paid ones. Creators often make free fonts available, and you can find thousands at any given time that are not likely to be found anywhere else on this list. You’ll find other great creative assets unique to the site, from brushes for Photoshop to site templates. Additionally, you can post your own creations and reach a wider audience: the enormous user-base includes famous artists from nearly every major industry.
NeoGrey
A super-clean and simple design here exists solely to display the small selection of amazing high-quality fonts offered by the creator. Every free font here is of exceptional design, and most are vector typefaces suitable for any size you can imagine.
Jeff Schreiber
This designer creates some truly great work on this font site, and is kind enough to make his popular fonts available to the entire world to use for free. Rucksack and Lucien are fairly well-known, and used in numerous sites around the world (and for good reason: they’re awesome). If you need readable, well-designed free fonts to beef up your site or product, this is a great place to find what you need.
SmashingMagazine
A great resource for designers, Smashing Magazine offers some great free fonts curated by fellow designers, so you know they are among the best available. You’ll also find a ton of very useful stuff here, including job postings, webinars, design and development resources, and other goodies useful to your work. The design is simple and well-implemented, and its easy on the eyes. If you haven’t been, you should most definitely give it a look.
Artill
This super-minimal font site provides a simple dropdown, with a list of some amazing free fonts to choose from. The font will be displayed on-screen once you make your selection, and the download link is right there should you opt to snag it. Note, however, that in order to download the fonts, you’ll need to share the page. A small price to pay for these fantastic fonts, and one that makes sense—why shouldn’t the author get credit for their work, right?
TypeDepot
Offering a small collection of original fonts, this free font site has some fantastic options on offer. Moreno, for instance, is a great and readable font available in over 80 languages and numerous weights. Other free fonts on the site are equally stunning and are guaranteed to make your creatives pop.
Free Fonts Project
While it doesn’t contain thousands of free fonts like many others on this list, Free Fonts Project offers a wonderful selection of fonts to level up your designs…and that you won’t find anywhere else, thanks to the way the site operates; every font here has been collaboratively designed through numerous designers. The simple interface is no-nonsense, and you can easily grab each and every one of these 34 high-quality fonts in a few minutes.
GlukFonts
GlukFonts is unlike most other free font websites, in that English is not the primary language displayed. But, with its rather interesting selection of free fonts available, you should not write it off. There’s some professional fonts here you can’t find anywhere else on the net. Definitely worth a look.
Fontfabric
Some really eye-catching free fonts can be found here, such as the bold and super-clean Squad, and the intriguing Slavic-style Slovic font. You won’t find tons of fonts here, but 113 are readily available to you for the super-amazing price of $0. Bookmark this one if you want something new and fresh that others haven’t seen before.
The Northern Block
Among the simplest of the free font websites on this list, The Northern Block provides a list of really nice free fonts. You can scroll through the list manually (it will load as you go) or utilize the intuitive search interface. Sorting is not accomplished by category like other sites; you’ll be provided options based on the type of content you want to create. For example, if you set yourself as a freelancer looking for a font for advertising, it will display all the fonts relevant for that combo. It’s a fresh take on search, and quite a neat way to handle things.
Lost Type
Featuring non-standard fonts of various sorts, the Lost Type Co-Op is one of the most interesting free font websites for those who want a truly stand-out font. It has all you need to hit the ground running with a sharp look to your creative. Want something bold and memorable on a business card? Try the FACTION font! Need something super-light? Tofino Pro is perfect! The design is really nice, with full-color images displaying every font. You won’t find a search feature here, but you also won’t need it, thanks to the great design.
Google Fonts
Because its Google, you already know you’re getting quality. And everything featured is royalty-free! This resource is especially well-suited for web designers and SEO folks looking for good fonts for websites, since you can paste code to enable them on your pages without needing to physically add them to your site assets. It’s versatile, easy to use and reliable and is undoubtedly one of the best free font websites on the planet.
Impallari Type
Pablo Impallari offers several fantastic free fonts to the world. Make no mistake, these are paid-quality fonts with a fresh look not seen anywhere else. He also offers his fonts via Github, as well as on Behance and FontSquirrel.
Ten by Twenty
Ten by Twenty offers some of the best free fonts with a unique look and feel that you can find online. There’s a bit of a catch, though: you pay what you want to get access to them. Yes, even $0 is acceptable, but maybe you could pitch in a buck or two instead, and help to support a fellow creative professional!
The League of Movable Type
Boasting the world’s first original, open-source font-directory, the League has some simply amazing free fonts available for use to anyone with the desire to download them. League Spartan is a wonderful typeset, while Raleway is a super-lightweight font with some unique lettering features. Without a doubt, this is one of the best free font websites out there, as it’s trying something truly new and original. Definitely give it a peek if you want some outstanding, superior quality fonts.
Acid Fonts
Acid Fonts seems to focus on non-standard fonts with unique character sets that are a bit more eccentric than the typical fare elsewhere on this list. If you’re looking for some of the more unusual typesets out there, this is definitely one of the best free font websites for you.
Fawnt
A useful resource for designers, developers, and anyone that appreciates high-quality fonts. Fawnt has many professional fonts available to the intrepid designer. Although the user interface is not too stellar and the search is not as pretty as other free font websites on this list, it is absolutely worth a look just to appreciate some of their original content.
MyFonts
This site has one of the largest selection of professional fonts available anywhere on the net. With over 130,000 free fonts offered, you are more or less guaranteed to find what you need for any project. Numerous creators around the world (even some from elsewhere on this list) have their work hosted here, and, thanks to their wonderful color thumbnails, you’ll be able to see how each font looks in an actual design. The user interface is well-designed and intuitive, which is a nice plus, given the massive amount of high-quality content they provide users from all over the world. Note, however, that not every font on this site is free. If you don’t mind spending a few bucks, they offer a huge number of paid fonts, as well as some amazing font bundles.
FontZone
A library of over 50,000 free fonts waits for you at FontZone, an archive of freely downloadable fonts. Their search is simplistic, and will help streamline your search to the type of font you are most interested in downloading.
UrbanFonts
With a large assortment of free fonts available in numerous categories, this is a good place to look for some new approaches to typeset. It has a bright and cheery design that is highly readable, and a simple and easy-to-understand search feature.
FontBundles.net
While the focus of this site is on selling font bundles, they still offer a rather large variety of amazing free fonts. There isn’t a single font on this list that doesn’t look professionally designed, and each and every one could help elevate your creatives to the next level.
UXFree
A fantastic clean design, great images to show their free fonts in use on actual designs, and not a single low-quality option on offer make this one of the best free font websites on the net. Recommended by user experience designers, it’s guaranteed to meet your needs. The concise and simple user interface makes your search straightforward, too. As an added bonus, you’ll also find graphic assets, templates for various types of designs, themes, Photoshop and Illustrator add-ons, and even video production assets! Bookmark this one, because you’ll want to use it for more than just fonts.
SpeckyBoy
This free font website offers a list of 100 good fonts for websites. Each is displayed with a large image that shows off the font in an actual design, making it a lot easier to select one that meets your needs. They also offer articles and insights to help improve your designs, and a ton of links to other design assets found on the web.
SimplyTheBest
Many free fonts are available here (albeit with the emphasis more on the fonts than the design!). You can’t go wrong with the straightforward lists—accessible via an alphabetized sidebar—and there are quite a few really nice professional fonts on display that could really up your creative game.
Now that you’ve got a whole arsenal of the best free fonts, you’re ready for any and all design challenges. Just don’t forget to update your online design portfolio with any new work featuring all these cool free fonts. It’s going to look great—and your clients are going to love it.
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