The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Free font
Inter
A free alternative to Aeonik.
About Inter
Inter is a screen-first grotesque drawn by Rasmus Andersson, released free in 2017 and now one of the most widely used interface typefaces on the web. It has a tall x-height, open apertures, and quiet, neutral construction in the Helvetica and Akzidenz-Grotesk tradition, refined specifically for legibility on displays across a full variable weight axis.
Because of that it's the default free answer for almost any paid product sans built on the same principles — Aktiv Grotesk, Atlas Grotesk, Aptos, and the many bespoke UI faces in that space. It rarely matches their letterforms exactly, but it captures the texture and intent better than anything else free, which is why it turns up in so many interfaces.
- Designer
- Rasmus Andersson
- Released
- 2017
- Available at
- Google Fonts →
Inter is also a free alternative to…
- Aeonik → Shares Aeonik's generous x-height, open apertures, and screen-first legibility, sitting in the same space between geometric clarity and grotesque pragmatism. The default choice when the priority is UI readability rather than an exact letterform match.
- Aktiv Grotesk → Inter and Aktiv Grotesk share the same modernist refinement of the Helvetica / Akzidenz tradition — neutral construction, sharper terminals, screen-tuned proportions. The free workhorse for any project that would otherwise license Aktiv.
- Akzidenz-Grotesk → Modern grotesque drawn for screens, with the same neutral construction principles Akzidenz-Grotesk pioneered. The most-cited free option in this tradition, especially for digital interfaces — and the most heavily downloaded sans on Google Fonts for a reason.
- Aptos → The honest closest match — a screen-first grotesque with the same tall x-height, open apertures, and quiet neutrality Aptos is built on. No open font is metric-compatible with Aptos yet, but Inter gets the texture and intent closest.
- Arial → Where Arial reads as a print grotesque adapted to screens, Inter was born there — same neutral voice, taller x-height, and exceptional legibility at UI sizes.
- Atlas Grotesk → The workhorse choice for Atlas's UI-and-body-text role — rational grotesque structure, generous x-height, and screen-first spacing. Cooler and more neutral than Atlas, but unbeatable for the Dropbox-style product-interface job.
- Chirp → Less characterful than Chirp but unbeatable at UI sizes; the pragmatic choice for replicating X's dense timeline typography.
- Coinbase Sans → The most reliable free substitute — a neutral, rational sans engineered for interfaces, matching Coinbase Sans's clarity in dense fintech UI.
- Graphik → Inter and Graphik share the same design philosophy — a typeface designed to "disappear" into the content. Similar structural overlap in body text, where both produce the even typographic colour editorial art directors prize.
- GT America → The Swiss neo-grotesque side of the same brief — screen-tuned, neutral, with a tall x-height and a deep weight axis. More rationalist and less characterful than GT America, but the safe pick for interface and body text.
- Helvetica Neue → A neo-grotesque drawn for screens, with the same horizontal terminals and even rhythm as Helvetica Neue and a very similar overall texture in UI sizes. It differs in its taller x-height, more open apertures and variable-font axes, which make it read more like San Francisco than the print-born original.
- Helvetica → The most-recommended Helvetica alternative for screens. Inter's terminals are strictly horizontal and vertical (the defining Helvetica gesture) but with a larger x-height and more open apertures, designed from the ground up for digital reading.
- JetBrains Sans → The default typeface of modern developer brands — its tall x-height, open forms, and screen-first engineering make it the closest all-purpose stand-in for JetBrains Sans.
- Neue Haas Grotesk → Inter shares the same 1957 neo-grotesque DNA Miedinger drew — strictly horizontal and vertical terminals, neutral construction — but rebuilt for screen-rendering with a generous x-height. The closest free workhorse to the Schwartz revival.
- Neue Montreal → A neo-grotesque tuned for UI that shares Neue Montreal's tall x-height, moderate apertures, and rational digital-first structure. More neutral and less characterful, but the safest structural swap for product and web work.
- OpenAI Sans → The definitive open-source screen grotesque, with the same tall x-height, open apertures, and quiet neutrality OpenAI Sans aims for. If you want the ChatGPT-interface feel without the bespoke warmth, this is the closest widely available match.
- PT Root UI → The default free interface sans, with the same tall x-height, open apertures and screen-first hinting that make PT Root UI legible at small sizes. Inter is warmer and noticeably heavier at matching weights, and it is not uniwidth, so weight changes shift surrounding text, but it is the widest-available stand-in.
- SF Compact → The web's standard stand-in for San Francisco generally, with tall x-height, open spacing, and UI-tuned details very close to SF Pro. It is a normal-width face rather than a compact one, so pair it with tight tracking where SF Compact's narrower footprint matters.
- SF Pro → The canonical free SF stand-in — same tall x-height, open apertures, and UI-first spacing, with a variable optical axis that mirrors SF's Text/Display split. At interface sizes most people cannot tell them apart.
- Söhne → Same modernist grotesque DNA as Söhne, screen-tuned and battle-tested. The natural starting point — Inter and Söhne share the Akzidenz / Helvetica lineage that Klim cites as Söhne's reference.
- Suisse Int'l → A neo-grotesque tuned for screens, with a taller x-height and slightly more open apertures than Suisse Int'l. Less continental in character, but the neutrality and huge weight range make it a dependable UI substitute.
- TT Norms Pro → Approximates TT Norms Pro's functional clarity through a neo-grotesque rather than purely geometric structure, but shares the tall x-height, clean apertures, and professional UI tone — the strongest choice when screen legibility matters most.
- Univers → The neo-grotesque DNA Univers and Helvetica share — clean construction, horizontal/vertical terminals — translated into a screen-tuned modern variable family. Inter is the default starting point for any Univers-adjacent web project.
- Universal Sans → The best free analogue to the whole idea of Universal Sans — a rational grotesque with a large set of OpenType character variants, so you can 'configure' your own cut much as Universal Sans buyers do. Tesla-clean at every size.
- Verdana → Today's screen-first UI font, designed around a tall x-height and disambiguated letterforms for exactly the small-size legibility problem Verdana solved in 1996. More neutral and much narrower than Verdana — a modernization rather than a lookalike.
- Whitney → The default modern UI sans, with a tall x-height and meticulous screen hinting. More neutral and less warm than Whitney, but the most practical drop-in for a Whitney-based interface.
- Core Sans → A neo-grotesque drawn for screens with the same neutral, undecorated stance as Core Sans N and a comparable weight range from Thin to Black. Its larger x-height and open apertures read a little more modern and software-flavoured, and it offers one width rather than three.
- Newport Gothic → A screen-first neutral grotesque with a tall x-height and open apertures. It is cooler and more Swiss than an American gothic, so it drifts away from Newport Gothic's warmth, but it delivers the clean sans look with the widest weight and feature set in the catalog.
- Non Sans → A screen-first grotesque with a tall x-height and open apertures, matching Non Sans's claim to legibility at small sizes and on low-resolution displays. Inter reads cooler and more mechanical, and its variable axes give far more optical range than Non Sans's five fixed weights.
- Aileron → Rasmus Andersson's screen grotesque shares Aileron's goal of a Helvetica look tidied for reading: open spacing, distinguished I and l, round dots. Inter is far larger, with nine weights, a variable axis and extensive OpenType features, and leans more toward the UI legibility of Roboto than toward Univers.
- Neue Haas Unica → A neo-grotesque with the same Helvetica-derived skeleton Unica refines, with open apertures and generous spacing tuned for screens. It covers Unica's full weight range and large language set, though its taller x-height and wider forms give it a slightly more utilitarian, UI-oriented feel than Unica's print proportions.
- Untitled Sans → A neo-grotesque built for screens with the same plain, unauthored feel Untitled Sans aims for, and a full variable weight range to match its Light-to-Black span. Inter is slightly wider with a taller x-height and more open apertures, so it reads a touch more technical at text sizes.
- Elza → A neo-grotesque built for screens that shares Elza's intention to be neutral and unremarkable, with similar weight coverage from Thin to Black and oblique-style italics. Inter is wider and more open in the counters, and it has no condensed widths, so it covers only Elza's normal width.
- Open Sauce One → Like Open Sauce One, it is a neutral contemporary grotesque with plain, low-contrast forms and a wide range of weights. It was drawn mainly for screen interfaces, so it sets a little more open and functional, with a tall x-height and an optional variable axis.
- Helvetica Now → Inter is a screen-first neo-grotesque with a large x-height, closed apertures and Helvetica-like horizontal terminals. It shares Helvetica Now's goal of a neutral Swiss sans that works in UIs. Its forms are slightly more open and squarer, and it has an optical-size axis for text and display use.
- Open Sauce → A screen-first grotesque drawn for user interfaces, closest to Open Sauce One's neutral, trap-free voice. It covers the same Light-to-Black range with italics, but its proportions are more open and less compact, and it has no ink-trapped or rounded companion.
Display + body that work together
Letters that hold their nerve
A pairing is a relationship: one voice speaks first, the other answers, and the contrast between them sets the tone for the whole page.
Modern · Editorial Inter + EB Garamond
Pages that earn the read
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.
Editorial · Modern Bodoni Moda + Inter