The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Free font
Source Sans 3
A free alternative to Adobe Clean.
About Source Sans 3
Source Sans 3 was Adobe's first open-source typeface, drawn by Paul D. Hunt and released in 2012 as a sturdy humanist sans for interfaces and long text. It has generous apertures, quiet detailing, and excellent small-size legibility, with a slightly serious, unobtrusive voice that stays comfortable at body sizes.
Coming from the same type program that later produced Adobe Clean, it's the natural free stand-in for that face and for humanist UI classics like Myriad, Frutiger, Calibri, and Segoe UI. It scratches the same itch — friendly, legible, neutral — with permissive licensing, which is why it's a common workhorse choice for product and documentation type.
- Designer
- Paul D. Hunt
- Released
- 2012
- Available at
- Google Fonts →
Source Sans 3 is also a free alternative to…
- Adobe Clean → Adobe's own first open-source typeface, drawn in the same type program that produced Adobe Clean — a humanist UI sans with near-identical temperament and impeccable small-size behavior. The natural free stand-in, from the same house.
- Amazon Ember → Adobe's UI workhorse shares Ember's humanist skeleton and excellent small-size legibility, with a slightly more neutral, less rounded finish.
- Calibri → Adobe's first open-source family — a sturdy humanist sans that reads comfortably at text sizes, a touch more serious than Calibri but just as unobtrusive.
- FF Meta → Adobe's first open-source type family shares Meta's brief — a friendly, legible humanist sans for interfaces and long text — and its generous apertures and quiet detailing scratch the same itch with a slightly more neutral voice.
- Frutiger → Adobe's open-source humanist sans, with optical-size axes tuned for screen use. The same versatile professional tone as Frutiger, slightly taller x-height — the closest free workhorse for body text and UI in this list.
- Myriad → Adobe's own open-source sans, made in the same studio that produced Myriad. It shares the humanist skeleton, open apertures, a tall and legible x-height, low stroke contrast, and was drawn from the start for screens. If you want a free face that feels like it came off the same shelf as Myriad, start here.
- National 2 → A humanist grotesque built by Adobe for extended reading. Narrower and a touch more contained than National 2, but the same even color and unfussy voice hold up across body text and captions.
- Officina Sans → Adobe's open-source humanist sans draws on Morris Fuller Benton's News Gothic and Franklin Gothic rather than typewriter faces, so it is smoother and less quirky than Officina. It shares the practical, interface-friendly tone and generous weight range, and it reads cleanly at small sizes where Officina was designed to perform.
- Segoe UI → Adobe's first open-source family, a humanist UI sans in the same Frutiger lineage. Slightly narrower than Segoe, with a fuller weight range and impeccable text behavior.
- Tahoma → Designed for user interfaces at Adobe, it is slightly condensed with clear, simple forms — a natural fit for the control panels and settings screens Tahoma used to own.
- Whitney → Adobe's first open-source family, drawing on News Gothic and Franklin Gothic just as Whitney does; quietly excellent at UI and long-text sizes, which is exactly Whitney's job description.
- Segoe UI Variable → Adobe's humanist sans has the same soft, open structure and quiet personality as Segoe UI, with a variable weight axis from ExtraLight to Black. It is narrower and more compact on the line than Segoe, which makes it efficient for dense UI copy.
- JAF Bernini → Adobe's open-shaped text sans shares Bernino's plain, comfortable rhythm in paragraphs and interfaces. It is a variable font with a wide weight range. It comes in a single width only, so it cannot match Bernini's narrow and compressed styles.
Display + body that work together
The shape of a working week
The display sets the register; the body follows through. When both halves of a pair pull in the same direction, the design disappears and the words come forward.
Modern · Editorial Source Sans 3 + Crimson Pro
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.
Editorial · Modern DM Serif Display + Source Sans 3