Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Variable · 9 weights · OFL · Türkçe
Free Avenir alternatives
Adrian Frutiger for Linotype, 1988 — a geometric sans drawn to be warmer and easier to read than the strict geometrics before it. Avenir Next, the 2004 reworking with Akira Kobayashi, is the version most people now set.
Why people look for a Avenir alternative
Avenir is sold by Linotype, now part of Monotype, per weight and per use, and it is one of the most requested faces in identity work for the same reason it is costly to adopt: it reads as modern and friendly without Futura’s chill. Many people first meet it because it is installed on a Mac, but that copy is licensed for use on the Mac — not for a website, an app or a file handed to a client.
What a Avenir substitute has to get right
Round, nearly circular bowls with a double-storey a and stroke ends cut just short of square — geometric from across a room, humanist in the details. A face with a single-storey a is Futura’s territory, not this one.
The one in this archive
One entry, because one is the honest answer. A face is listed here only if the substitution would survive a designer looking at both.
Avenir and its free alternatives, at a glance
- How you get it
- Bought from a foundry under a commercial licence
- Pass it on, embed it or self-host it
- Only as the licence you bought allows
- On a website
- Usually a separate web licence on top
Avenir
| Property | Nunito Sans |
|---|---|
| Licence | OFL-1.1 — free, commercial use allowed |
| Weights | 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000 |
| Variable | Yes |
| Italic | Yes |
| Türkçe | Yes |
| Other alphabets | Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended, Vietnamese |
| Glyphs | 1,104 |
| Web font | 134 KB Latin cut |
Questions
- What is the best free alternative to Avenir?
- Nunito Sans — it is the closest match in this archive, and the page above says which shapes the substitution turns on. It is the only one listed, because one honest match is a better answer than a longer list of near misses.
- Are these Avenir alternatives free for commercial use?
- Yes. Every font on this site is under a licence that permits commercial use with no fee and no attribution requirement, mostly the SIL Open Font License. That covers paid client work, products you sell, self-hosting on a website, and embedding in an application. The licence file is inside every download.
- Can I use a Avenir alternative in a logo?
- Yes. An open font licence covers the font software rather than the shapes you set with it, so a logo made with one of these can be trademarked like any other. What you cannot do is claim rights over the typeface itself.
- Will a Avenir substitute keep my layout the same?
- Only if it is metrically compatible — drawn so every character occupies the same width as the original, which makes a document reflow identically. Very few faces are, and where one is, this site says so on its page. Everything else will look similar and set differently, so a layout built to the original's widths needs checking rather than assuming.