Merriweather
Sorkin TypeSphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Serif · Variable · 7 weights · OFL · Türkçe
Free Georgia alternatives
Matthew Carter, 1996, drawn for Microsoft to be read on the screens of the time rather than printed.
Why people look for a Georgia alternative
Georgia was commissioned by Microsoft for screens in 1996 and is bundled with Windows rather than licensed for the web. It is the reason a great many older sites look the way they do, and it is unavailable to any of them as a self-hosted file — so a redesign that wants to keep the reading experience has to find the shapes elsewhere.
What a Georgia substitute has to get right
A large x-height, sturdy bracketed serifs that survive being rendered small, and old-style figures — the numbers that sit below the cap height are half of why a page in Georgia looks like Georgia.
The 2 in this archive
Listed only where the substitution would survive a designer looking at both — a flattering near-match is worse than a short list.
Gelasio
Eben SorkinSphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Serif · Variable · 4 weights · OFL · Türkçe
Georgia and its free alternatives, at a glance
- How you get it
- Installed with Windows and macOS
- Pass it on, embed it or self-host it
- Not permitted by its licence
- On a website
- Only as a system font, on machines that already have it
Georgia
| Property | Merriweather | Gelasio |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | OFL-1.1 — free, commercial use allowed | OFL-1.1 — free, commercial use allowed |
| Weights | 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900 | 400, 500, 600, 700 |
| Variable | Yes | Yes |
| Italic | Yes | Yes |
| Türkçe | Yes | Yes |
| Other alphabets | Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended, Vietnamese | Vietnamese |
| Glyphs | 2,384 | 1,070 |
| Web font | 1.4 MB Latin cut | 62 KB Latin cut |
Questions
- What is the best free alternative to Georgia?
- Merriweather — it is the closest match in this archive, and the page above says which shapes the substitution turns on. 2 faces are listed in total, and which of them is right depends on the size you are setting and the mood you want; set your own words in each before choosing.
- Are these Georgia 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 Georgia 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 Georgia 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.