#i should just rename this series into sage shares resources

[sagecodex]

I know I’m not the only one who struggles to find the right fonts for my projects. So I put together a list of places to find good, free, legal, fonts to use in all of our websites. This list may be short, but it’s curated to help you find the best fonts in the easiest way, and without having to worry about all the legalese.

If there are any free font resources you like to use that I’ve missed, let me know! 

Google Fonts

Google Fonts is a great resource, and the go-to font repository. They make it easy to select and install fonts on your website—just click the font you want and copy the code! There’s over 1,455 font families to choose from, plus some great resources on typography, guides on how to choose the best fonts, and more.

All Google fonts are 100% free for personal and commercial use. The most common license is the SIL Open Font License. Some fonts are under the Apache license or Ubuntu Font License. You can redistribute open source fonts according to those conditions.

Fontshare

Similar to Google Fonts, Fontshare is a free fonts service launched by the Indian Type Foundry (ITF). Their mission is accessibility, so every font they release and promote is open source. There are 100 font families to choose from, as well as curated font pairings to help you pick! Like Google Fonts, they make it easy to install, just pick the font(s) you like and copy the code.

All Fontshare fonts are 100% free for personal and commercial use. They are offered on two licenses: Closed Source, which are are governed by ITF’s Free Font License (FFL) , and Open Source, which  are governed by SIL Open Font License (OFL). You can read more about their licensing here.

The League of Moveable Type

The League is the world’s first open source type foundry. They have some great fonts, as well as a newsletter, a podcast, and some tools to help you learn typography! You’ll need to download and install all of their fonts on your own website, but many of their fonts are also found in the first to foundries as well for easier install.

All the fonts from The League of Moveable Type are free & open source, available to use commercially and subject to the Open Font License.

Indestructible Type*

While its library is small, it has some very unique, iconic fonts. The designer only makes high quality, versatile, modern fonts that are accessible to everyone. If you’re familiar with fonts, you probably already know some of their core styles, but there are a few unique styles we don’t see used enough!

These fonts are licensed under the SIL open font license and are free for commercial use.

Font Squirrel

A great resource with thousands of available fonts for free commercial use. They also have a great font identifier tool, plus a forum to talk about fonts and typography. You do need to download the fonts and upload them into your own site. 

Unlike the other sites in this list, do be careful when selecting your fonts. While they do mark their fonts with what they think their individual licenses allow, there is no guarantee. So be sure to read their individual licenses and read Font Squirrel’s FAQ before using!

Other Free Font Resources

There are other places you can find good, free, legal fonts to use, but they are less reliable and often offer fewer free versions to promote premium paid fonts. Just be sure to read the individual font licenses before you use them. So check out these sites if you’re willing to dig around and see what you can find: Dribbble, Behance, Pixel Surplus, Graphic Pear, Fontbundles.net, Wild Picks, Sunrise Digital, Fontfabric, Pixelify, Font Shop, FontHaus, FontSpace, and MyFonts.

How to embed webfonts

Some of the linked resources give you easy links to install their fonts—but others require you to download the font and embed it into your website. So here’s the w3 article to show you how!

Remember: always use fonts with an open commercial license, specifically for the web. Using demo fonts or fonts designated for personal use on your website is not only bad practice (and usually not web-optimized), it’s almost always illegal! Personal use means for use on your single desktop (like when typing in a word doc) or for the free invitations you made for your dog’s fourth birthday. Everything else (including embedding a webfont) is almost always commercial.

Note: It is not advised to use sites like Dafont, Fontriver, 1001 Fonts, etc. to find fonts for your projects. While they do have free fonts, they are almost exclusively demo versions of commercial fonts that you need to buy a license to use on the web. Please read the license for every font you download to keep yourself out of trouble.