DM Sans
Colophon FoundrySphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Sans-serif · Variable · 10 weights · OFL · Türkçe
Free Circular alternatives
Laurenz Brunner for Lineto, 2013, and the face behind a decade of technology branding.
Why people look for a Circular alternative
Circular is a contemporary geometric that became the default look of technology branding, and it is one of the more expensive families to license — deliberately so, since the foundry controls how widely it appears. Its ubiquity is exactly what makes people want it and what makes a substitute worth finding.
What a Circular substitute has to get right
A geometric skeleton softened just enough not to be cold — a true circle for the o, but a lowercase drawn by eye rather than by compass. Strict geometry overshoots it.
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.
Circular 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
Circular
| Property | DM Sans |
|---|---|
| Licence | OFL-1.1 — free, commercial use allowed |
| Weights | 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000 |
| Variable | Yes |
| Italic | Yes |
| Türkçe | Yes |
| Other alphabets | Latin only |
| Glyphs | 486 |
| Web font | 110 KB |
Questions
- What is the best free alternative to Circular?
- DM 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 Circular 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 Circular 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 Circular 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.