How to choose and use free fonts

A practical guide to picking free fonts by style, checking open-source licenses, using them on the web and choosing Korean, Japanese and Chinese fonts.

Preview with your own words

Type any text into the box above the list and every font card switches to your words at once. Use the size slider to compare headline and body sizes. Your text stays in your browser; only the characters needed for the preview are requested from the font server.

Pick a style for the job

Sans serif fonts are clean and easy to read on screens, so they suit apps, menus and long web text. Serif fonts feel classic and work well for books, articles and formal documents. Handwriting fonts add warmth to invitations and social posts but are hard to read in long paragraphs. Display fonts are made for big titles and logos. Monospace fonts give every letter the same width, which is ideal for code and tables.

Check the license before you use it

Every font on RisingFonts comes from Google Fonts, Fontsource or the maker’s official release under an open-source license such as SIL OFL, Apache 2.0, MIT, CC0 or UFL. These licenses generally allow personal and commercial use, but details differ — for example, the OFL does not let you sell the font file on its own. Always read the license on the font’s official page before publishing.

Using a font on a website

The easiest way is to link the font from Google Fonts in your page’s head and then set it in CSS with font-family, always followed by a fallback such as sans-serif. Load only the weights you need: each extra weight adds download time.

Tips for Korean, Japanese and Chinese fonts

CJK fonts contain thousands of characters, so their files are much larger than Latin fonts. On the web, prefer services that split fonts into small pieces or load only the characters you use. For body text choose a plain gothic (sans) style; save brush and handwriting styles for titles.

Save favorites

Tap the star on any font to keep it in your favorites list on this device, so you can come back and compare your shortlist later.