The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Free font
Saira
A free alternative to DIN.
About Saira
Saira is a technical sans by Hector Gatti and Omnibus-Type, released in 2018 with a variable width system that runs from tightly compressed to extended. Its curves are flattened, its construction plainspoken and engineered, and it was drawn with screen-rendering accuracy at small sizes in mind. The width axis is the point of the family: hierarchy can come from proportion as much as from weight.
That makes it a natural DIN substitute — the condensed variants track DIN Condensed closely, and the family suits technical interfaces and data-heavy layouts. The width range also reproduces Interstate's signage-style hierarchies, where headline and label have to sit in one voice at different widths. Its squared-off quality lands close to the instrument-panel character of Porsche Next as well. Choose Saira when a layout needs a single engineered sans stretched across many widths.
- Designer
- Hector Gatti / Omnibus-Type
- Released
- 2018
- Available at
- Google Fonts →
Saira is also a free alternative to…
- DIN → Technical sans with multiple width axes — including condensed variants that closely match DIN Condensed. Designed for screen-rendering accuracy at small sizes, the right pick for technical interfaces and data-heavy layouts.
- Interstate → A sturdy, faintly technical sans with a large width range, useful for reproducing Interstate's signage-style hierarchies. Its plainspoken engineered look sits comfortably in the same register.
- Lunchtype24 → A wide, semi-geometric sans with a generous horizontal footprint and a full weight range, giving a similar stretched headline feel at Regular and Medium. Its rounder bowls and softer joins lean technical rather than deadpan, and it also comes in condensed widths Lunchtype24 does not offer.
- Porsche Next → A technical grotesque with flattened curves and a wide variable-width system, echoing the squared-off, instrument-panel quality of Porsche Next.
- Thicker → A squared-off geometric sans with the same slightly boxy curves Thicker borrows from Eurostile, running from Thin to Black with italics in a variable font. It is narrower in its default width and its heaviest weight is less extreme than Thicker's Extrablack, but the technical, sporty register is the same.
- TT Lakes → A technological sans with four widths, from normal through extra condensed, and nine weights apiece. It covers the compressed-to-normal range that makes TT Lakes useful for headline systems, with a similar engineered feel. Saira's forms are squarer and more angular, so it reads a little more industrial than TT Lakes' cleaner geometry.
- Chicago → A semi-squared sans with slightly flattened curves and a wide range of weights, so its bold styles approximate Chicago's compact, chunky titles. Saira softens the corners where Chicago chops them, giving a smoother, more contemporary surface while keeping the same boxy skeleton.
- JAF Bernini → A variable sans with a width axis that runs from Ultra Condensed to Ultra Expanded, so it covers the compressed end of Bernini's range in one family. Its squarer, technical shapes feel less warm than Bernina's informal alternates.
Display + body that work together
Letters that hold their nerve
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.
Modern · Editorial Saira + Source Serif 4
Quiet type that does the work
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.