Free font alternative finder. Free fonts, compared.
Type a paid font or a brand: 27 paid fonts have measured scores, and 22 brands have free fonts in their lettering style.
Try
Verdana. DejaVu Sans comes closest, score 92.
Our lab scored 24 free fonts against Verdana on October 6, 2026; these are the 5 closest. Pick one to see it in your words.
5 / 5
Score 92 · closest by measurements
DejaVu Sans
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Loading font…
Verdana
Against Verdana: x-height 0.3% taller, 0.3% wider, 2.1% lighter, and 4.1% more stroke contrast.
Letters that differ most from Verdana: I, J, and j.
Styles: 2 weights, with italics.
- ✓Logo
- ✓Selling
- DejaVu Fonts licence
Will your text fit?
Measure a line in a free font from this result, then find a whole font size that fits your space.
Loading this font before measuring…
Loading this font before measuring…
Preview scaled to this panel. The measurements below are actual CSS pixels.
- Line width at your chosen size
- —
- Largest whole size, up to 512 px
- —
One line, current font weight and slant, normal kerning and zero extra letter spacing. Width is the text advance in CSS pixels; italic strokes may extend beyond it. Unsupported characters may use system fonts.
Your text stays in this browser. It is never added to the URL, storage or analytics.
How we measure, with Verdana as the example
The scores come from our lab, not from a list. Here is how DejaVu Sans got its score against Verdana.
01
Draw both fonts
The lab draws Verdana and DejaVu Sans letter by letter at 512 pixels, each letter centred in its box.
02
Compare the letters
A vision model (DINOv3) reads each pair of letters, and the comparison runs only among sans serifs, the kind Verdana is.
03
Turn the gap into a score
The result is a score from 0 to 100, never a percentage: 0 is as alike as a typical pair of sans serifs, 100 is closer than the best match nine fonts in ten ever get. DejaVu Sans scores 92, the highest of 24 free fonts the lab scored against Verdana.
04
Measure what differs
Against Verdana, DejaVu Sans has x-height 0.3% taller, 0.3% wider, 2.1% lighter, and 4.1% more stroke contrast, each as a share of the value of Verdana; the letters that differ most are I, J, and j.
05
Check the license
Each free font’s license is read for six uses, from a website to products you sell, and its verdict sits under the font.
Scores computed on October 6, 2026.
Brands are not measured as fonts: their lettering is drawn, not typed. Their free fonts are picked by eye, then joined by the fonts the lab finds nearest to those picks.
The 27 paid fonts our lab has measured
Each has its own page with every free font scored against it and the differences in numbers.
- Arial → Ragscore 87
- Bahnschrift → Alte DIN 1451 Mittelschriftscore 100
- Calibri → Asap Condensedscore 93
- Cambria → Noto Serifscore 85
- Candara → Alegreya Sans SCscore 97
- Comic Sans MS → Drama Sansscore 100
- Consolas → Codettascore 90
- Constantia → Bespoke Serifscore 85
- Corbel → Paysagescore 83
- Courier New → Cutive Monoscore 100
- Franklin Gothic Medium → Quilonscore 81
- Gabriola → Metalscore 83
- Georgia → STIX Two Textscore 87
- Impact → Antonscore 99
- Ink Free → Give You Gloryscore 89
- Lucida Console → DejaVu Monoscore 88
- Lucida Sans Unicode → DejaVu Sansscore 89
- Microsoft Sans Serif → Miedingerscore 86
- Palatino Linotype → Averagescore 85
- Segoe Print → Kalamscore 99
- Segoe Script → Kalamscore 93
- Segoe UI → TASA Explorerscore 84
- Sitka → Erodescore 83
- Tahoma → DejaVu Sansscore 88
- Times New Roman → Sneaky Timesscore 96
- Trebuchet MS → Merriweather Sansscore 80
- Verdana → DejaVu Sansscore 92
More tools and pages
- Font license checkerA free font and a use in: yes, no or yes with a condition, with the license clause.
- Free alternatives to paid fontsEach measured paid font on its own page, with every free font scored against it.
- How we measureThe method behind the scores and the license verdicts, with its sources.
Questions about the free font alternative finder
What does the free font alternative finder do?
It takes a paid font or a brand and shows the free fonts closest to it. For the 27 paid fonts our lab has measured, every free font carries a score; for 22 brands, the free fonts follow the lettering’s style, picked by eye and by measurements.
Which paid fonts does the finder score?
27 paid fonts, all of them fonts that come with Windows, such as Times New Roman, Arial, and Calibri. The lab scores only fonts it holds a licensed file of. For the other 125 paid fonts the finder shows up to 3 free fonts in the same style, labelled as not measured and with no score.
What does a score in the finder mean?
It ranks how close the letters of two fonts come, on a scale from 0 to 100, and it is not a percentage. In the example above, DejaVu Sans scores 92 against Verdana, and the highest score the finder shows is 100, for Drama Sans against Comic Sans MS.
Can I use the fonts the finder suggests commercially?
309 of the 316 free fonts the finder suggests are under open licenses that allow commercial work, logos and print. The rest carry conditions, which each result’s license marks show and the license checker spells out.
Why doesn’t the finder know my font?
It knows 152 paid fonts and 22 brands so far. A paid font outside them isn’t in our data yet, and we add fonts only once we can say something true about them.
Does the finder show the paid font itself?
The finder shows an existing specimen image where the paid font’s record permits one. This reference is the same on every device. Free fonts with web files can preview your own words; paid font files are never distributed here.