The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Free font
Libre Bodoni
A free alternative to Bodoni.
About Libre Bodoni
Libre Bodoni is Pablo Impallari and Rodrigo Fuenzalida's 2014 Bodoni revival, a Didone serif redrawn so the style survives on screen rather than only in print. It reproduces the defining characteristics faithfully — extreme stroke contrast, flat unbracketed serifs, vertical stress — and carries true italics and proper weights, with the hairlines thickened just enough that they don't drop out at smaller sizes.
As a free stand-in for Bodoni it's repeatedly cited as the closest match available, at roughly 88% similarity, and it covers Didot equally well since the two share the same Didone skeleton. The practical argument for reaching for it over Bodoni Moda is scale: Libre Bodoni keeps its color below headline size, where a stricter revival begins to break up. Distributed through Google Fonts.
- Designer
- Pablo Impallari / Rodrigo Fuenzalida
- Released
- 2014
- Available at
- Google Fonts →
Libre Bodoni is also a free alternative to…
- Bodoni → Impallari Type's direct Bodoni revival, repeatedly cited as the closest free match at ~88% similarity. Faithfully reproduces the defining characteristics — extreme stroke contrast, flat unbracketed serifs, vertical stress — with true italics and proper weights.
- Didot → A Bodoni revival tuned for the screen, keeping the Didone skeleton while thickening the hairlines just enough to survive at smaller sizes. Choose it over Bodoni Moda when the Didot look needs to hold up below headline scale.
- Rasbern → A free Bodoni in four styles, Regular and Bold with italics, with the same high contrast and vertical stress. It gives you the Didone flavour at a mid weight where Rasbern's Medium and SemiBold sit, but it lacks both the Thin extreme and the Black extreme of the commercial family.
- Fenice → Based on Morris Fuller Benton's Bodoni, this cut was reworked with a larger x-height and sturdier hairlines for screen use, which echoes the proportional changes Novarese made. It is wider and more text-oriented than Fenice, with a Regular and Bold rather than the Light to Ultra range.
- Normandia → A direct Bodoni revival in four weights with italics, giving you the Didone proportions and modelling behind Normandia at text and headline sizes. It never reaches fat-face weight, so it works as the bookish counterpart rather than a poster substitute.
- Pistilli Roman → Based on the nineteenth-century Morris Fuller Benton Bodoni, it gives the same heavy-stem, thin-serif silhouette with a sturdier hairline built for the web. Choose it when a Pistilli-style headline must also survive at medium sizes; the letterforms are a little wider and more restrained.
- Bauer Bodoni → A revival based on nineteenth-century Bodoni cuttings and drawn for the web, with the vertical stress and flat serifs of the model. Its hairlines are heavier than Bauer's, so it reads more like ATF Bodoni and holds up better at smaller sizes.
- Butler → A web-tuned Bodoni in four weights with italics, giving Butler's vertical stress and flat serifs with slightly sturdier hairlines that survive smaller sizes. It lacks the ultra light and black extremes and the stencil variant, but the regular weights match closely.
- Modern No. 20 → A Bodoni revival drawn for web use, with slightly thickened hairlines that bring it closer to Modern No. 20's sturdy titling weight than most Didones. The letter proportions are wider and less condensed, and it lacks the Victorian stiffness of the Stephenson Blake original.
Display + body that work together
Pages that earn the read
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.
Display · Editorial Libre Bodoni + Source Serif 4
A grammar of empty space
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.
Display · Editorial Libre Bodoni + Lora