The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Segoe UI vs Inter
Two screen-first sans-serifs from different eras of interface design. Segoe UI is Microsoft's humanist UI face, drawn by Steve Matteson and the default Windows interface font since Vista, while Inter is Rasmus Andersson's open-source neo-grotesque, released in 2017 and now one of the most-used fonts on Google Fonts.
Segoe UI is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Open Sans, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Segoe UI →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- Segoe UI is a humanist sans with rounder, friendlier letters and distinctive cursive italics, whereas Inter is a neo-grotesque with a tall x-height, open apertures and true italics tuned for small-size legibility.
- Inter ships as a variable font with weight (100 to 900) and optical-size axes plus extensive OpenType features such as tabular figures, slashed zero and contextual alternates, while classic Segoe UI comes as twelve static styles from Light to Black (Segoe UI Variable, bundled with Windows 11, adds optical sizes but moves the design toward a more geometric look).
- Segoe UI is commercial: it is bundled with Windows and Office and listed by Microsoft as exclusively included with its products, so web embedding or redistribution means a separate paid license, whereas Inter is free under the SIL Open Font License for any use.
- Segoe UI was designed and hinted around Windows ClearType rendering and is noticeably less legible when that rendering is off, while Inter was built from the start for cross-platform screen use and powers products like Figma, Notion and GNOME.
Segoe UI
Reach for Segoe UI when you are building for Windows or Microsoft ecosystems and want native platform consistency, accepting that use beyond Windows means paying for a license.
Inter
Reach for Inter for cross-platform product UI, dashboards and dense data, where its tall x-height, variable axes and open license make it the proven free default.