The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Segoe UI vs Open Sans
Two humanist sans-serifs from the same hand: Steve Matteson drew Segoe UI at Agfa Monotype and it became Microsoft's default interface font with Windows Vista, then drew Open Sans for Google in 2011 as a wider, italic-equipped descendant of his Droid Sans. Both are open, neutral, and tuned for the screen, but Segoe UI is a system font you only get with Windows, while Open Sans is a free web font you can ship anywhere.
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 proprietary: Microsoft lists it as exclusively included with Windows and Office, so using it on the web or in non-Microsoft products means licensing it through Monotype's fonts.com, whereas Open Sans is free under the SIL Open Font License.
- Open Sans has wide apertures and a large x-height carried over from Droid Sans, which keeps it legible at small sizes without relying on system hinting.
- Segoe UI was optimized for ClearType and hand-hinted at 8, 9, and 10 point for Windows rendering, which is why it looks crisp in native Windows UI but is only guaranteed to be present there.
- Both come with true cursive italics rather than slanted romans, and both now ship variable versions: Open Sans on Google Fonts since March 2021, Segoe UI Variable with Windows 11, the latter adding display, text, and small optical sizes.
- Open Sans spans six weights from Light to Extra Bold on Google Fonts, while Segoe UI's six weights run Light, Semilight, Regular, Semibold, Bold, and Black, with Black limited to Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic.
Segoe UI
Reach for Segoe UI when you are building Windows-native apps or Microsoft-platform products and want text that matches the operating system exactly, accepting that it is not free to license elsewhere.
Open Sans
Reach for Open Sans for websites, cross-platform apps, and anything you need to embed or redistribute, where it gives you a similarly friendly humanist voice with no licensing cost.