The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Calibri vs Georgia
Two Microsoft screen fonts from different eras. Georgia is Matthew Carter's 1993 transitional serif, hinted by Thomas Rickner so it holds up at small sizes on low-resolution displays, while Calibri is Lucas de Groot's humanist sans-serif, built for ClearType rendering and the Office default from 2007 until Aptos replaced it in 2024.
Calibri is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Carlito, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Calibri → Georgia is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Gelasio, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Georgia →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- Georgia is a serif with sturdy strokes, thickened serifs, and old-style (text) figures that sit inside running text, while Calibri is a sans with subtly rounded stems and corners that show at larger sizes.
- Calibri ships with a true italic with handwriting influences plus a Light weight added in Windows 8, whereas the original Georgia offers only regular, italic, bold, and bold italic, with extra weights and small caps reserved for the separately sold Georgia Pro.
- Georgia was released in Core Fonts for the Web and bundled on both Windows and Macintosh, so it has been a safe web stack font since the 1990s; Calibri is bundled with Windows and Office only, and Google's metric-compatible Carlito exists to fill the gap elsewhere.
- Both are proprietary: outside the Microsoft software they come with, each needs a paid license (Calibri from LucasFonts or Monotype), so licensing cost is a factor for web embedding or non-Windows platforms.
Calibri
Reach for Calibri when you want a neutral, friendly sans for documents, slides, and spreadsheets that will be read on screen and need to feel like modern office work.
Georgia
Reach for Georgia for long-form body text, editorial sites, and anything that needs a trustworthy serif voice that still reads well small and on low-resolution screens.