The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Calibri vs Roboto
Calibri was Microsoft's default Office font for seventeen years; Roboto has been Android's system face since 2011. Both were built for the screen, but Calibri is a soft-edged humanist sans tuned for ClearType and long documents, while Roboto is a neo-grotesque engineered for Google's UI and Material Design.
Calibri is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Carlito, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Calibri →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- Calibri (Lucas de Groot, released 2007) is a humanist sans-serif with subtly rounded stems and corners and a true italic with handwriting influences, whereas Roboto (Christian Robertson, 2011, revised 2014) is a neo-grotesque with oblique rather than true italics.
- Calibri was designed for Microsoft's ClearType rasterizer and on-screen reading of long text, which is why it became the Word and PowerPoint default from Office 2007 until Aptos replaced it in January 2024.
- Roboto was built as Android's system font and later became the typeface of Material Design, YouTube, and Google Maps, so it is tuned for interface text across devices.
- Roboto ships from Thin to Black with a variable version, while Calibri's bundled set is narrower, with the Light weight only arriving with Windows 8.
- Calibri is proprietary: it ships with Windows and Office, but using it elsewhere requires a license from LucasFonts or Monotype, whereas Roboto is free under the SIL Open Font License on Google Fonts.
Calibri
Reach for Calibri when you need the familiar, gentle look of Office-era documents and already have it through Windows or Office, since licensing it separately for the web adds cost.
Roboto
Reach for Roboto for product UI, Android apps, and anything in the Material Design idiom, where it is the free, proven default with a full weight range.