Free alternatives to paid fonts
25 commercial typefaces that something in this archive can honestly be set instead of, with what each one is and what a substitute has to get right. 33 of the 260 families here make a claim like this; the other 227 do not, which is the point of the section at the bottom of this page.
Sans-serif
The grotesques and geometrics that most brand and interface work is specified in.
- Helvetica (1)Drawn by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann at Haas in 1957, and the twentieth century default for anything that wanted to look neutral.
- Arial (1)Drawn for Monotype in 1982 by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders, and on essentially every computer sold since.
- Futura (2)Paul Renner, Bauer, 1927 — the geometric sans that every geometric sans since has been measured against.
- Franklin Gothic (2)Morris Fuller Benton for ATF, 1902, and the American gothic that newspapers and posters have used ever since.
- Circular (1)Laurenz Brunner for Lineto, 2013, and the face behind a decade of technology branding.
- Interstate (1)Tobias Frere-Jones, 1993, drawn from the Highway Gothic alphabet on American road signs.
- Calibri (1)Luc(as) de Groot for Microsoft, 2007, and the default in Office for over a decade.
Serif
Text faces, mostly, and the ones where the substitution is about how a page of it reads rather than how one word looks.
- Garamond (1)Claude Garamont cut the originals in Paris in the 1530s and 1540s, and almost every old-style text serif since is descended from them.
- Baskerville (3)John Baskerville, Birmingham, 1750s — the transitional serif that sits between the old-style faces and the didones that followed.
- ITC New Baskerville (1)ITC's 1978 redrawing, which is what most people have actually set when they have set Baskerville.
- Georgia (2)Matthew Carter, 1996, drawn for Microsoft to be read on the screens of the time rather than printed.
- Bodoni (2)Giambattista Bodoni, Parma, late 1700s, and the face that defined what extreme contrast in type looks like.
- Cambria (1)Jelle Bosma for Microsoft, 2004, and the serif that ships beside Calibri in Office.
- Clarendon (1)Robert Besley patented it at the Fann Street Foundry in 1845, as the face to set in when the surrounding text needed emphasis.
- Goudy Old Style (1)Frederic Goudy for ATF, 1915, and the American book serif for most of the century that followed.
- Caslon (1)William Caslon, London, 1720s. “When in doubt, use Caslon” is the oldest piece of advice in English typography.
- Frank Ruehl (1)Rafael Frank, 1908, and the Hebrew book face that most Hebrew text has been set in since.
Monospace
Code and documents. Two of these three are wanted for their character widths rather than their drawing.
Display and script
Headline faces, where one word at one size is the whole job and the substitution either works immediately or does not.
- Alternate Gothic (2)Morris Fuller Benton for ATF, 1903 — the condensed gothic that American headlines were set in for most of the twentieth century.
- Impact (1)Geoffrey Lee, 1965, drawn to be the heaviest thing available in a headline.
- Bodoni Poster (1)The display weight of Bodoni, drawn for the sizes where the hairlines can be as thin as the printing will allow.
- Trajan (1)Carol Twombly for Adobe, 1989, drawn from the inscription at the base of the Trajan column in Rome.
- Murray Hill (1)Emil Klumpp for ATF, 1956, and the casual connecting script of American mid-century advertising.
Why the list is this short
A free typeface is listed against a paid one here only when the substitution would survive a designer setting both and looking at them. That is a high bar and it is meant to be: 227 of the 260 families in this archive name nothing at all, including several that are routinely described elsewhere as alternatives to faces they do not actually resemble. An empty answer is a correct answer, and a flattering guess is the fastest way for an archive like this one to stop being worth reading.