Choosing a font is a big decision. Fonts contribute to a brand’s aesthetic, messaging, and influence. Each line of text is an opportunity to shape brand identity and connect with the target audience. 

Purchasing fonts is one way to cement them as part of a brand identity. But not all great fonts are expensive. In fact, many fonts are available online for free. We've compiled the best places to find free and low-cost fonts that offer both flexibility and flair so your designs can stand out without breaking the bank.

Choosing the right font

The right font supports readability, accessibility, and a website’s messaging. 

When looking for a new font, the first step is to check out an online type foundry, which is a platform that collects and distributes fonts. Some foundries design and release their own fonts, while others source them from typographic designers.

The next step is to choose a typeface that fits your needs. A typeface — or a font family — is a set of design features that shape letters and other characters. Common examples are Bodoni, Times New Roman, and Garamond. 

Once you’ve narrowed down a typeface, it’s time to select a font. A font is a particular variation of weight and size of a typeface, such as a bold, light, or italic. Bodoni is a typeface, and Bodoni Bold is a font.

Most fonts come with their own legal terms, so check if the fonts you’re using are permissible for personal and commercial purposes. Always read the licensing to copyright issues. 

12 places to find affordable fonts

Thousands of websites offer fonts at a variety of price points. If you’re new to design, spending a lot on fonts isn’t the best idea. You’ll find that certain fonts don’t work for you or your brand, and they’ll end up lying around in a folder on your laptop. 

We recommend experimenting with free fonts to decide what you need and what you don’t. See which fonts pair well or clash and how they impact the site’s visual experience. When you want to upgrade your existing collection with more exclusive fonts, affordable ones are a great next step.

With so many options available, what site should you turn to for your next project? We’ve put together a list of our favorites. Here are the 12 best places to find free (and almost free) fonts:

1. Lost Type (free and paid)

Lost Type’s “collaborative digital type foundry” hosts many expressive fonts, with free or paid options available.

Like many of the smaller foundries, Lost Type offers a selection of ornate display fonts and balances out the collection with several more robust and flexible families that can stand up to editorial and UI use. Among these are popular fonts like Mission Gothic and Klinic Slab, two favorites of the design community because of their versatility and minimal aesthetic.

2. Fontfabric (free and paid)

This independent type foundry, Fontfabric, boasts an impressive collection of free fonts suited for big, bold display use. Many of their fonts include Cyrillic versions, which are fonts used for Russian and other languages across Eurasia.

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

The folks at Fontfabric use free releases to gauge demand for new fonts and often develop the more popular faces into full-fledged families worth paying for, especially during their introductory sales. Keep checking the website to see if you can catch a great sale.  

3.The League of Moveable Type (free)

Many A-list companies use fonts from The League of Moveable Type, including the Discovery Channel, DC Comics, Instagram, and the World Health Organization.

The League began in 2009 when web browsers became capable of displaying more complicated typefaces — and they claim to be the first open-source foundry for fonts.  

The League of Moveable Type’s website looks like a curated collection of vintage fonts, but many are modern options offered for free by their creators. The company hosts several typefaces you can download at no cost, from the punchy League Gothic to the delicate Raleway.

4. Font Squirrel (free)

If you’re looking for an all-in-one source for free fonts, Font Squirrel is for you. 

Their curated collection boasts a ton of free and beautiful fonts that are licensed for commercial use. Plus, the site has robust filters, tags, and categories to help you target exactly what you’re looking for, no matter the project. Categories include calligraphic, hand-drawn, monospace, and stencil. 

And if you have a font you’ve spotted but can’t tell what it is, Font Squirrel’s Matcherator tool identifies fonts from images, saving you an impossible search for the matching typeface.

5. Creative Market (free and paid)

Creative Market is home to many affordable and high-quality design assets, including fonts. While some products have a high price tag, the platform releases four free assets weekly that often include a font face.

The fonts vary from blackletter to multiple serif styles that are ideal for headings and body text. There’s even a catalog of symbol-based fonts to play around with.

If you have your eye on paid fonts, paying per font quickly becomes expensive. If you’re looking to regularly acquire new fonts for your design library, their membership plans are an economic option. Pricing starts at $9.95 a month for 100 download credits.

6. Behance

Behance is a platform for creators and designers to share work and gain recognition for their designs. It’s also a fantastic place to find new free fonts — just search for “free font” in “Projects”. 

Few platforms are better than Behance for unique typefaces — the site has everything from abstract to sans-serif fonts. One of their best features is access to projects with source files, so you can download the designers’ original files and work with them firsthand to edit or republish (when properly licensed). 

If you’re a web designer, working with one these files allows you to look at each layer in a design software and manipulate it as necessary. For example, if you love the colors of a certain design but don’t like the font, you can open the source file and change the existing font to one that you’re happy with.

7. MyFonts (paid)

MyFonts is a valuable resource for finding distinctive typefaces, but the rates can be steep. However, choosing to sign up for their subscription-based model grants access to an excellent library of different font styles for personal and commercial use.

Browse through the plans to see if one works for you. Keep in mind that foundries releasing on MyFonts often do so with tempting discounts, making their products more affordable.

We love how MyFonts displays fonts in various scenarios – like graphite templates or mockups – to provide insight into how the font would look if you chose it for a similar project.

8. DaFont (free and paid)

DaFont is an excellent place to browse for high-quality fonts, and many are free for personal use. They have a wide selection of standard fonts, but where DaFont really shines is its quirky collection of outside-the-box themes. Some examples are Medieval, Alien, Runes, Elvish, Groovy, and Celtic.

Themes are bunched into handy categories, making it easy to find fonts that align with your messaging. For example, if you want a holiday font, you can choose from the Easter, Halloween, and Christmas categories, among others. DaFonts it’s a one-stop shop with fonts for any situation. 

9. Adobe Fonts (free and paid)

While you can’t download and use Adobe Fonts anywhere, a no-cost Adobe Creative Cloud account grants access to high-quality free fonts to use on your websites and in any Adobe design apps. For example, the fonts can’t be downloaded and applied to a word processing program, but they can be used in Photoshop and Illustrator so long as you have a subscription.

The basic library houses over 1,000 free fonts. For those looking for more options, a monthly (or annual) subscription bumps this up to 20,000 fonts. Adobe subscriptions also provide a license to use all fonts for personal or commercial projects at no additional cost.

10. Google Fonts (free)

Google Fonts is one of the best free font websites and a go-to resource for many designers. In addition to letting you explore font families and test various typefaces in more than 135 languages, the platform offers access to hundreds of fonts, all of which are free to download.

You can learn about each font's creator and the font’s usage patterns. Google allows teams to collaborate and filter font collections, share them, and work on different projects simultaneously.

We’ve compiled a list of the top ten Google Fonts for your website, which also has a few tidbits about Google Fonts’ other amazing features.

11. FontSpace (free)

FontSpace offers fast, customizable font previews and quick downloads. Fonts are carefully curated and uploaded by real people — not an algorithm. A FontSpace moderator reviews each font, looks for problems with its quality, and confirms the font's license.

The collection is impressive, with tens of thousands of free fonts in various styles and collections, many of which are licensed for commercial use. FontSpace’s community is made up of thousands of unique font creators who contribute to the foundry. 

12. FontStruct (free)

FontStruct, as the name implies, is a free tool that lets you construct fonts. You can build typefaces quickly with geometric shapes using the "FontStructor." 

Once you've made a font face, FontStruct creates TrueType fonts immediately available for download and compatible with any software. You can also download fonts that others have created and tweak them to make your own version.

If FontStruct’s learning curve is too steep, check out our article on 11 font generator tools for a more beginner-friendly resource.

Learn more about fonts with Webflow 

Typography is a focal element of a site’s design, so it’s crucial to know how to make meaningful choices. 

Webflow can teach you all about fonts, from how to pick the best font for your website and what fonts you should and shouldn’t use to which fonts are web-safe and accessible. We also offer Webflow University, which has over 15 lessons on web layout and design alone.