Free fonts for commercial use: where to find them safely

The safest free fonts for commercial use are ones released under the SIL Open Font License (OFL), and the easiest place to find them is Google Fonts, where nearly every family is under the OFL or the Apache License. Both let you use the font in logos, social posts, packaging, websites and apps without paying or asking. The danger is the other kind of "free": fonts labelled free for personal use, which are common on download sites and are not licensed for anything a business does.

What free for commercial use actually means

A font is software, and you never own it; you hold a licence that says what you may do with it. Free fonts come with several kinds of licence, and only some of them cover a business. Read the licence, not the label on the download button.

Commercial use is wider than people expect. Social posts for your shop, a menu, a client's flyer, a YouTube thumbnail on a monetised channel and a logo on a product label are all commercial. If money or a business is anywhere near the design, treat it as commercial.

Where to find free commercial fonts safely

• Google Fonts: well over a thousand families, open licences, and every font page shows its licence. Download from fonts.google.com or the designer's own repository.
• Fontshare: a library from the Indian Type Foundry with its own free licence, which it says covers commercial use. Read its terms once.
• The League of Moveable Type and Velvetyne: small open source foundries publishing distinctive display faces, mostly under the OFL.
• Font Squirrel: a curated directory that lists fonts it considers free for commercial use, with each licence linked. Still open the licence for logo use.
• Fonts bundled with a service you pay for: Adobe Fonts comes with Creative Cloud and is licensed for commercial work, but you can't pass the font files to anyone else.

How to check a free font in two minutes

1. 1

   Find the original source

   Search for the font's name and its designer. Download from them or from Google Fonts, never from a mirror site.

2. 2

   Open the licence file

   Look for OFL.txt, LICENSE or a licence page. If there is no licence anywhere, assume you have no rights.

3. 3

   Search for three words

   "Commercial", "personal" and "logo". They take you straight to the clauses that decide whether your use is covered.

4. 4

   Check what you plan to do

   A website, an app or a product you sell may need rights a basic licence leaves out. Font licensing explains desktop, web and app licences.

5. 5

   Save the proof

   Keep the licence file with your brand assets and note where and when you downloaded the font. If anyone asks later, you have the answer.

Good free commercial fonts to start with

You don't need hundreds. A small brand is well served by one strong headline face and one calm body face, both under the OFL. These are dependable pairs from Google Fonts that cover most needs.

Using free fonts on your website

Open licences let you embed fonts on a website. You can load them from Google's servers or host the files yourself. Many sites in Europe self host for privacy reasons, so visitors' browsers don't contact a third party just to draw text. Self hosting also gives you full control over loading and caching, and it survives any change on the font service's side.

/* Self-hosted OFL font: keep OFL.txt in the same folder */
@font-face {
  font-family: "Fraunces";
  src: url("/fonts/Fraunces.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-weight: 100 900;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

h1 {
  font-family: "Fraunces", Georgia, serif;
}

Free fonts in your design tool

Whatever tool you design in, keep your chosen pair consistent across every post so the type becomes part of how people recognise you. Brand fonts covers choosing them, and fonts for social media covers what reads well on a phone. In Gradiently, the brand kit (part of Pro) holds a heading and a body font and you can upload font files, so an OFL pair you've chosen follows you into every design.