Inter
Rasmus AnderssonSphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Sans-serif · Variable · 9 weights · OFL · Türkçe
Free Helvetica alternatives
Drawn by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann at Haas in 1957, and the twentieth century default for anything that wanted to look neutral.
Why people look for a Helvetica alternative
Helvetica is licensed per user and per use, and a full family across desktop and web runs into four figures. It is also not installed on most machines a design will be seen on, so a web project either buys a web licence with a page-view cap or serves something else. That combination — expensive, and absent where it matters — is why this is the most searched-for substitution in typography.
What a Helvetica substitute has to get right
The apertures have to close. A face with open, angled terminals reads as humanist however tight you set it, and the even grey Helvetica makes at text size comes from the aperture rather than from the weight.
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.
IBM Plex Sans
Mike Abbink, Bold MondaySphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Sans-serif · Variable · 7 weights · OFL · Türkçe
Helvetica 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
Helvetica
| Property | Inter | IBM Plex Sans |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | OFL-1.1 — free, commercial use allowed | OFL-1.1 — free, commercial use allowed |
| Weights | 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900 | 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 |
| Variable | Yes | Yes |
| Italic | Yes | Yes |
| Türkçe | Yes | Yes |
| Other alphabets | Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended, Greek, Greek Extended, Vietnamese | Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended, Greek, Vietnamese |
| Glyphs | 2,933 | 1,025 |
| Web font | 189 KB Latin cut | 114 KB Latin cut |
Questions
- What is the best free alternative to Helvetica?
- Inter — 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 Helvetica 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 Helvetica 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 Helvetica 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.