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 →
- Featured on
- 10 paid font pages
Source Sans 3 head to head
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.
- 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.
- 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.
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