Google Fonts holds around 1,800 families and almost every list of "the best" ranks them by download count, which measures what was popular in 2016 rather than what is good. A more useful list is organised by the question you are trying to answer, because that is how a font gets chosen in practice.
For an interface
Inter is the default and deserves to be: drawn for screens, tall lowercase, l and I and 1 all distinguishable, tabular figures, and an optical size axis that adjusts the drawing to the size it is set at. IBM Plex Sans is what to use when an interface should not look like every other interface — it reads as engineered rather than neutral and brings a matching serif and mono with it.
For long reading on a screen
Lora and Merriweather were both drawn for text on displays: sturdy serifs, a large lowercase, moderate contrast. That is the combination that survives a phone screen, and it is why a Didone set at body size looks broken while these do not.
For a headline that has to carry the page
Playfair Display is high contrast and unmistakably editorial. Bebas Neue is condensed capitals and has become the default poster face, which is a reason to use it and a reason to modify it. Anton does what Impact does and can actually be shipped.
For code
JetBrains Mono has the tallest lowercase of the coding faces and was drawn for exactly this. IBM Plex Mono is warmer. Fira Code is the one that popularised programming ligatures. The full comparison goes through what actually separates them.
For a brand that needs its own voice
Outfit and Manrope are geometric without being cold. Space Grotesk has genuine oddities in its letterforms and is the reason a certain kind of technology site looks the way it does. Fraunces is a serif with a softness axis, which is unusual enough to be worth knowing exists.
| Family | Variable download | Static download |
|---|---|---|
| Inter | 957 KB2 files | 9.1 MB54 files |
| Lora | 224 KB2 files | 555 KB8 files |
| Playfair Display | 270 KB2 files | 1.0 MB12 files |
| JetBrains Mono | 187 KB2 files | 892 KB16 files |
| Outfit | 58 KB1 file | 270 KB9 files |
The ones to be careful with
Not because they are badly drawn — several are excellent — but because they are so widely used that they carry someone else’s associations. Montserrat, Poppins and Raleway are on a very large number of sites. If a project needs to feel particular, that is worth weighing.
A note on where you get them
All of these are under open licences, which means you can download and self-host them rather than linking to Google’s servers. That is now both the faster option and the private one — see the GDPR post. Every font page here has a WOFF2 download and a Latin-only cut for exactly that.