The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Free font
EB Garamond
A free alternative to Baskerville.
About EB Garamond
EB Garamond is Georg Duffner's open-source Garamond revival, drawn from Robert Granjon's sixteenth-century specimens at the Plantin-Moretus Museum. It keeps the warm humanist proportions and gently bracketed serifs of the French Renaissance originals, with a calm color, a modest x-height, full small caps, and a complete italic axis.
Being the most faithful free Garamond makes it the closest match to Sabon — Tschichold's Garamond — and to Minion Pro, which Slimbach drew from the same Renaissance sources. By lineage it is also the nearest free relative to Caslon, and it works as the old-style counterpart to Baskerville's transitional sharpening. Its soft modelling and deep ligature and small-cap support capture the hand-press finery Mrs Eaves chases. Set in all-caps, its capitals carry much of Trajan's classical weight. Best where the register is bookish and classical rather than screen-hardened.
- Designer
- Georg Duffner
- Released
- 2017
- Available at
- Google Fonts →
- Featured on
- 9 paid font pages
EB Garamond is also a free alternative to…
- Baskerville → An adjacent old-style serif from a generation before Baskerville. Shares the warm humanist proportions Baskerville sharpened — useful as the "before" pair when contrasting old-style with transitional in editorial typesetting.
- Caslon → The closest free relative to Caslon by lineage — same old-style English / French Renaissance tradition, same warm humanist proportions, same gentle bracketed serifs. Drawn from 16th-century specimens at Plantin-Moretus.
- Garamond → The most faithful open-source Garamond revival. Drawn by Georg Duffner from Robert Granjon's 16th-century specimens at the Plantin-Moretus Museum, with the closest direct match to historical proportions. OFL-licensed, full italic axis, full small caps.
- Minion Pro → A faithful revival of the same Renaissance Garalde sources Slimbach studied, with the calm color and classical proportions that make Minion feel bookish. The closest free match in spirit, though its x-height is smaller, so it sets a touch more delicately on screen.
- Mrs Eaves → An older model than Baskerville, but its soft old-style modelling and moderate x-height capture the warm, hand-press quality Mrs Eaves chases better than most strict transitionals. Excellent ligature and small-cap support helps replicate her typographic finery.
- Plantin → A faithful revival of Claude Garamont's sixteenth-century types — the same French Renaissance school Granjon belonged to. Lighter and more delicate than Plantin, but historically the truest relative on this list.
- Sabon → Sabon is Tschichold's Garamond — so the most-faithful Garamond revival is also the closest free Sabon match. Same 16th-century proportions Tschichold drew from, with the variable axis Sabon never had.
- The Seasons → A faithful Garamond revival for the classical, timeless register — the right pick when The Seasons is being used at text sizes rather than display.
- Trajan Pro → When set in all-caps, EB Garamond's capitals capture much of Trajan's classical weight — it lacks the inscriptional sharpness but compensates with full small-caps support and a complete italic axis. Good when one family has to serve display + body.
Display + body that work together
A grammar of empty space
Two thousand years of letterforms boil down to a handful of decisions — width, weight, proportion. Pick a pair you trust, and let the rest take care of itself.
Editorial · Modern EB Garamond + Inter
Letters that hold their nerve
Crisp, even strokes give the display its punch. Quiet serifs underneath stay readable across thousands of words — used together by editors at the kind of paper that still prints corrections.
Modern · Editorial Archivo + EB Garamond