The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Amazon Ember vs SF Pro
Two proprietary corporate sans-serifs built for screens, and neither is licensed for general use. Amazon Ember, drawn by Dalton Maag for Amazon and first shipped on the Kindle Oasis in 2016, is a humanist sans with a soft, approachable tone, while SF Pro is Apple's neo-grotesque system font, released to developers in 2014 and tuned for the OS-level UI of iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV.
Amazon Ember is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Nunito Sans, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Amazon Ember → SF Pro is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Inter, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to SF Pro →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- SF Pro is a neo-grotesque that draws on Helvetica and FF DIN, with Text and Display optical sizes that Apple's operating systems switch between at 20 points; Amazon Ember is a humanist sans whose Display style is reserved for headlines and very large sizes.
- SF Pro ships as a variable font with weight, width, optical-size and grade axes, plus SF Compact and SF Pro Rounded companions; Ember is a static family with Condensed, Display, Mono and Duospace siblings.
- Ember was drawn for e-ink readers first, then rolled out to Amazon.com, the mobile app, Echo and Fire devices in 2017, so it reads calm and open at long-form body sizes.
- Both are commercial in the sense that you cannot buy them: Apple licenses SF Pro to registered developers only for designing apps on its platforms, and Amazon owns Ember outright and makes it free only to its internal product teams, so licensing is a hard blocker rather than a cost line.
Amazon Ember
Reach for Amazon Ember's warmer humanist voice only if you are building inside Amazon's own ecosystem, where it is the mandated brand font; everywhere else, pick a free humanist sans instead.
SF Pro
Reach for SF Pro when you are designing an iOS, iPadOS, macOS or tvOS app, where it is the system default and the only place Apple's license allows it.