Open-source Unicode typefaces
A few projects exist to provide free and open-source Unicode typefaces, i.e. Unicode typefaces which are open-source and designed to contain glyphs of all Unicode characters. However, there are also numerous projects aimed at providing only a certain script, such as the Arabeyes Arabic font. The advantage of targeting only some scripts with a font was that certain Unicode characters should be rendered differently depending on which language they are used in, and that a font that only includes the characters a certain user needs will be much smaller in file size compared to one with many glyphs. Unicode fonts in modern formats such as OpenType can in theory cover multiple languages by including multiple glyphs per character, though very few actually cover more than one language's forms of the unified Han characters.
History
GNU Unifont
GNU Unifont is a bitmap-based font created by Roman Czyborra that is present in most free operating systems and windowing systems such as Linux, XFree86 or the X.Org Server. The font is released under the GNU General Public License Version 2+ with a font embedding exception.Fixed
The Fixed X11 public-domain core bitmap fonts have provided substantial Unicode coverage since 1997.21st Century
2000s
Free UCS Outline Fonts
The Free UCS Outline Fonts is a font collection project. The project was started by Primož Peterlin and is currently administered by Steve White. The aim of this project has been to produce a package of fonts by collecting existing free fonts and special donations, to support as many Unicode characters as possible. The font family is released as GNU FreeFont under the GNU General Public License. It also supports several font formats, including PostScript, TrueType, and OpenType. For this reason the fonts are derived from original work made in FontForge, and stored in.sfd files. The most recent release is from May 2012.SIL fonts
offers a large number of fonts, editors, translation and book production systems as part of their goal to bridge the digital divide to minority languages. This site contains many utilities for Windows systems, including right-to-left editors, keymappers, RTF translators, and high-quality, free Unicode fonts.SIL publish their fonts under their own SIL Open Font License. Typefaces include Charis SIL, Doulos SIL and Gentium.
MPH 2B Damase
Mark Williamson's MPH 2B Damase is a free font encoding many non-Latin scripts, including the Unicode 4.1 scripts in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane:Armenian, Cherokee, Coptic, Cypriot Syllabary, Cyrillic, Deseret, Georgian, Glagolitic, Gothic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Limbu, Linear B, Old Italic, Old Persian cuneiform, Osmanya, Phoenician, Shavian, Syloti Nagri, Tai Le, Thaana, Tifinagh, Ugaritic, and Vietnamese.
IndUni fonts
The IndUni fonts are a GPL-licensed font family with many accents and combining characters, especially suitable for Indic, Indian and Nepali and Middle Eastern languages and Urdu in transliteration. It also includes characters for Avestan and for the Pinyin representation of Chinese, a set of Cyrillic characters and a basic set of Greek letters. The fonts implement almost the whole of the Multilingual European Subset 1 of Unicode. Also provided are keyboard handlers for Windows and the Mac, making input easy.They are based on fonts designed by URW++ Design and Development Incorporated, and offer lookalikes for Courier, Helvetica, Times, Palatino, and New Century Schoolbook.
2010s
Noto fonts
Noto is a font family designed to cover all the scripts encoded in the Unicode standard. It is designed with the goal of achieving visual harmony across multiple languages/scripts. Commissioned by Google, the font is licensed under the SIL Open Font License. Until September 2015, the fonts were under the Apache License 2.0.2020s
Kurinto Font Folio
Kurinto is a large collection of Pan-Unicode, OFL-licensed fonts. The intended use-case is academic publishing, especially when authoring in Microsoft Word and publishing to PDF. The primary goal is to address issues when mixing languages using Latin script with secondary languages using other scripts.Comparison
| Font name | License | Version / date | Notes |
| Amiri Font | OFL | 0.111 | Digitalization of a Naskh styled Arabic metal typeface by the Bulaq Press of Cairo, Egypt |
| Bitstream Vera | 2002 | ||
| Public domain | June 2017 | Created by Ray Larabie for the Canadian sesquicentennial; released into the public domain shortly before Canada Day 2017. A pan-Unicode extension of Larabie's "Mesmerize," in turn inspired by Kabel and Semplicità. | |
| OFL | Unicode 6 and MUFI v3-compatible | ||
| Caslon Roman | OFL or BSD-like license | 2001-12-16 | |
| CMU family | OFL | An updated version of Computer Modern. | |
| collection of fonts | GPL 2 + font exception | 0.133 | A basic collection of Hebrew fonts aimed at Hebrew-speaking GNU/Linux and Unix community |
| DejaVu fonts | 2.35 | A modification and wide extension of Bitstream Vera fonts | |
| Droid fonts | Apache license | A collection of fonts developed for Google's Android mobile phone operating system | |
| EB Garamond | OFL | ||
| MIT | |||
| GPL, OFL | Old Cyrillic script | ||
| Fira Sans | OFL | Commissioned for Firefox OS | |
| Fixed | 1997 | The Fixed X11 public-domain core bitmap fonts have provided substantial Unicode coverage since 1997. | |
| Fixedsys Excelsior | public domain | 3.01 / 2007 | |
| Gentium | OFL or BSD-like license | 5.000 | - |
| Ghostscript | GPL, AFPL, LPPL | URW ++ Type 1 fonts, a free alternatives to 35 basic PostScript fonts—e.g. Type 1 version of Nimbus Roman No9 L, Nimbus Sans L, Nimbus Mono L, URW Bookman L, URW Gothic L and others | |
| GNU Unifont | GPL 2+ | 13.0.02 | GNU Unifont is a bitmap-based font created by Roman Czyborra that is present in most free operating systems. |
| [in Japanese] | One of the few free software fonts that includes the whole CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C block, as well as many other CJKV characters, such as the Kangxi Radicals and CJK Radicals Supplement blocks. | ||
| IBM Plex | OFL | 2.0 / Jun 5, 2019 | IBM Plex is designed and developed by Mike Abbink at IBM in collaboration with Bold Monday, it is the replacement of Helvetica as the corporate typeface. |
| Jomolhari | OFL | Tibetan script | |
| Junicode | GPL | 1.002 / 25 June 2018 | - |
| OFL, free for any use | Most Latin blocks fully populated + Cyrillic, Georgian, Armenian & Runes. Comes in Roman, Italic, Bold & Bold Italic. | ||
| OFL | v2.196; 2020 July 26 | Pan-Unicode, 21 typefaces, 506 fonts, coverage of most of Unicode v12.1 plus many auxiliary scripts including the UCSUR. | |
| Latin Modern | Another derivative of Computer Modern | ||
| Lato | OFL | 2.015 / 6 August 2015 | Covers all Latin alphabets, along with Cyrillic, Greek, and IPA |
| Linux Libertine | GPL, OFL | 5.3.0 / July 2012 | Linux Libertine is a digital typeface created by the Libertine Open Fonts Project, which aims to create free and open alternatives to proprietary typefaces such as Times Roman. |
| Liberation fonts | OFL | 2.00.5 / 4 Mar 2019 | Liberation is the collective name of four TrueType font families: Liberation Sans, Liberation Sans Narrow, Liberation Serif and Liberation Mono. These fonts are metrically compatible with Monotype Corporation's Arial, Arial Narrow, Times New Roman, and Courier New. Versions since 2.00 use OFL while older versions use GPL + font exception. |
| GPL + font exception | Is a derivative of Liberation fonts with improved Cyrillic | ||
| M+ FONTS | Permissive free software licence | v 060 / 2015-06-15 | |
| GPL, OFL | Old Cyrillic script and Glagolitic script | ||
| GPL, OFL | Latin and Old Cyrillic script | ||
| OFL | |||
| Noto fonts | OFL | Commissioned by Google | |
| GPL, OFL | A Unicode font family for classical, medieval and Slavic studies; based upon Century — An unofficial extension, New Standard, is available at and includes an expanded character set. | ||
| Overpass | OFL | Commissioned by Red Hat as FOSS alternative to Interstate. | |
| GPL + font exception or OFL | Created by the KDE community, this font is optimised for the FreeType font rendering system and works well in all graphical user interfaces, desktops and devices. Alternative download at | ||
| GPL, OFL | Old Cyrillic script | ||
| Roboto | Apache license | 2.001047; 2015 | A collection of fonts developed for Google's Android mobile phone operating system |
| SIL fonts | OFL | Typefaces include Charis SIL, Doulos SIL and Gentium. | |
| Source Sans Pro and Source Code Pro | OFL | 2019 | By Adobe |
| Source Serif Pro | OFL | 2019 | By Adobe |
| Source Han Sans | OFL | 2019 | By Adobe |
| Source Han Serif | OFL | 2017 | By Adobe |
| STIX | OFL | 2.0.2 | Based on Times New Roman. |
| Symbola | No license, "free for any use" | 10.24 | A restrictive personal-use-only, no-derivative-works, no-redistribution license has been attached to all versions since version 11. |
| collection of fonts | |||
| Ubuntu Font Family | Ubuntu Font License | Ubuntu 11.10 / 7 March 2011 | |
| OFL |