Find a free alternative to a paid font
Upload an image of a commercial typeface and get the closest free font you can legally use.
Drop an image of the paid font
The ranked results are always free fonts, licensed for commercial use.
Free and unlimited. No account. Your image is never stored.
Drag to select just the text. Tighter crops are far more accurate.
Which word?Pick the one whose font you want.
Check the letters.
Matching
Comparing letter shapes against 1,900+ fonts…
Results
How this was matched
Your image
Getting an accurate result
- 01
Every ranked match is an open-source font, free for commercial use — that is the default, not a filter you have to apply.
- 02
When a commercial typeface is recognised by name, its closest free stand-ins are suggested directly.
- 03
Free does not mean identical. A good alternative matches the proportions and texture, which is what readers actually notice.
- 04
Check the specific licence before shipping. Most are OFL or Apache, both of which permit commercial use and embedding.
Matching the texture, not the outlines
A good free alternative is not a copy. Copying outlines would be a licence violation, and the fonts here are all independently drawn.
What a good alternative does match is the things a reader actually perceives: the width of the letters, the weight of the strokes, the size of the lowercase relative to the capitals, and how much the stroke thickness varies. Get those right and a paragraph reads with the same colour and rhythm, even though no two letters are identical.
Those are exactly the properties measured for every font in this library, which is why the alternatives are ranked by shape rather than by someone’s opinion.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free version of Helvetica?
Not a legal clone, but several fonts occupy the same space. Inter, Roboto and Arimo are the closest free options — Arimo is metrically compatible with Arial, so it can substitute without reflowing a layout.
What is a free alternative to Proxima Nova?
Montserrat is the usual answer, with Mulish and Nunito Sans as alternatives. All three share the geometric-humanist character that made Proxima Nova popular for web work.
Are these fonts really free for commercial use?
Yes. Every font in the library is open-source, released under the SIL Open Font License or Apache License. Both allow commercial use, embedding in apps and websites, and modification.
Why not just use the paid font?
If you can license it, do. Free alternatives matter when a licence is out of budget, when you need to embed a font in an app where licensing gets expensive, or when a client cannot maintain a licence long-term.