The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
GT America vs Libre Franklin
GT America and Libre Franklin both descend from the American gothic tradition, but they come at it from opposite ends. Libre Franklin is Impallari Type's open-source reinterpretation of Morris Fuller Benton's 1912 Franklin Gothic, while GT America is Grilli Type's 2016 commercial family that reads those same American gothics through a Swiss neo-grotesque lens, with the cooler, tidier details that implies.
GT America is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Libre Franklin, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to GT America →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- GT America, designed by Noël Leu with Seb McLauchlan, was built as a bridge between 19th-century American gothics and 20th-century European neo-grotesques, so its forms are more regularized and Swiss in temperament than a straight Franklin revival.
- Libre Franklin stays close to Benton's original, keeping the sturdy, slightly uneven character of early American gothic rather than smoothing it out.
- GT America ships as 84 styles across six widths (Compressed to Expanded, plus a Mono) and seven weights, with variable width and weight axes; Libre Franklin covers a single width with a variable weight axis from Thin to Black.
- GT America is a commercial font licensed per computer, monthly web visitors, or app developers, with free trial fonts restricted to mockups; Libre Franklin is free under the SIL Open Font License and served by Google Fonts.
- Libre Franklin adds Cyrillic to its Latin coverage, while GT America extends to Cyrillic, Greek, and Vietnamese.
GT America
Reach for GT America when a brand or editorial system needs a full width spectrum and a matching mono, and the licensing budget is already there.
Libre Franklin
Reach for Libre Franklin when you want authentic Franklin Gothic character with a variable weight range at no cost, for websites, headlines, and body text alike.