The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Neue Montreal vs Inter
A Swiss-flavoured display grotesque against the default UI font of the modern web. Neue Montreal, drawn by Mathieu Desjardins for Pangram Pangram in 2018, takes its cue from Helvetica-style neo-grotesques with tighter spacing built for headlines, while Inter, Rasmus Andersson's open-source workhorse, is engineered for computer screens and dense interface text.
Neue Montreal is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Switzer, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Neue Montreal →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- Neue Montreal is a commercial font: Pangram Pangram offers trial fonts for personal use only, and commercial licenses start at around $30 per family for desktop, with web and app use licensed separately, whereas Inter is free under the SIL Open Font License, including for commercial work.
- Inter has a tall x-height and small-size optimisations such as ink traps and pixel-aware stem drawing, which are made for 12px data tables; Neue Montreal's tighter spacing and closed apertures are tuned for display settings and read best large.
- Inter ships as a variable font with both weight (100 to 900) and optical size axes plus true italics, while Neue Montreal is sold as 14 static styles (7 uprights and 7 italics).
- Inter covers over 2,000 glyphs and 147 languages with UI-grade OpenType features like tabular figures and a slashed zero; Neue Montreal's character set is smaller and geared toward branding rather than data display.
- Neue Montreal carries a slightly raw, Montreal-design-scene personality with a straight-legged R and flattened curves, where Inter is deliberately neutral and sits close to Roboto and San Francisco.
Neue Montreal
Reach for Neue Montreal when you want a punchy Helvetica-style grotesque for headlines, logotypes, and editorial or brand sites, and the budget covers a commercial license.
Inter
Reach for Inter for product UI, dashboards, documentation, and any project where free licensing, variable weights, and proven small-size legibility matter more than display character.