The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
SF Pro vs Inter
Apple's system font against the open-source UI workhorse it most resembles. Both are neo-grotesque sans-serifs built for screens, with tall x-heights, open apertures, and optical-size axes — but SF Pro is proprietary and licensed only for Apple platforms, while Inter is free under the SIL Open Font License and runs anywhere.
SF Pro is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Inter, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to SF Pro →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- SF Pro was designed in-house at Apple and released to developers in 2014, drawing on Helvetica and FF DIN; Inter was designed by Rasmus Andersson at Figma in 2016 and released in 2017 as a response to Roboto's limitations.
- SF Pro's license restricts it to mock-ups and apps for Apple operating systems and requires a registered Apple Developer account, so using it on a website or an Android or Windows app is not permitted; Inter can be embedded, self-hosted, and shipped in any product at no cost.
- SF Pro's variable font covers nine weights, four widths, optical sizes, and grades, plus a rounded variant and SF Symbols glyphs; Inter offers a weight axis from Thin to Black with italics and an optical-size axis, but no width axis.
- Inter ships an unusually deep OpenType toolkit — tabular figures, slashed zero, case-sensitive forms, and more than twenty stylistic sets and character variants — which lets teams tune its look per product.
- Inter already powers Figma, Notion, GitLab, Mozilla, and NASA interfaces, and a customized build is GNOME's default system face, so it is a proven cross-platform default.
SF Pro
Reach for SF Pro when you are building for iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV and want text that matches the operating system exactly — and only there, since Apple's license does not cover other platforms.
Inter
Reach for Inter for web apps, dashboards, and any cross-platform product, where it delivers the same screen-tuned grotesque feel with no licensing restrictions.