9 places to find free (and almost free) fonts

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.

9 places to find free fonts

Here are a few places you can find free (and almost free) fonts:

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. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. Creative Market Free Goods of the Week

Creative Market serves up a ton of (typically) affordable, high-quality design assets, including fonts. Plus, every week they share a bundle of assets that seems to always include a free face. (But don’t quote me on that.) While there’s a marked tendency for these typefaces to be of the limited use display variety, they’re still a ton of fun to play with. So sign up, and maybe you’ll find the right font.

6. Behance

Surely you all know — and probably use — Behance as a place to share work and get noticed. But it’s also a fantastic place to find new free fonts, and their creators, with a little creative filtering. You can find great fonts for any design project. Behance has everything from abstract fonts, commercial-use fonts, premium fonts, sans-serif fonts, and more. Just be sure not to hit the back button while you’re browsing, or you’ll lose your filters. Have fun!

7. MyFonts

MyFonts is an amazing resource for finding incredible fonts — at the usual steep rates. You can find different font styles — both for personal and commercial use. But foundries who release on MyFonts often do so with very tempting discounts that make them much more obtainable. Check out the Hot New Fonts page regularly to build up your perfect font library without breaking your bank. (Though I still refer it to as The Most Dangerous Place on the Internet.)

8. DaFont

DaFont is a great place for downloading high-quality fonts. Many of the fonts on DaFont are free for personal use, making them great for any design project.

9. Adobe Fonts

While you can’t download and use Adobe Fonts wherever you want like you can with other foundries, a free Adobe account does give you access to some of the best free fonts to use on your websites and in your Adobe design apps.

How to use custom fonts on your Webflow sites

Webflow offers a variety of fonts out of the box, and you can easily add fonts from Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts.

And, if you’ve found and downloaded a beautiful face from one of the websites above, it’s just as quick and easy to upload and use them in Webflow.

What’d we miss?

Surely there are other awesome places to find beautiful free and affordable fonts. If you know of any, be sure to let us know on Twitter!