The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Free font
Source Serif 4
A free alternative to Baskerville.
About Source Serif 4
Source Serif 4 is Adobe's open-source old-style serif, drawn by Frank Grießhammer and expanded into a variable family with optical-size axes. It's a transitional-tradition workhorse: neutral, rational letterforms that stay comfortable and authoritative from long body copy up through subheads and display, all from a single typeface.
That range is its main appeal as a free alternative. Where you might otherwise reach for Garamond, Caslon, or a screen serif like Georgia, Source Serif fills the same role with sharper, more contemporary detailing and optical sizes tuned for on-screen reading — one family covering jobs those classics are usually split across.
- Designer
- Frank Grießhammer
- Released
- 2014
- Available at
- Google Fonts →
- Featured on
- 12 paid font pages
Source Serif 4 is also a free alternative to…
- Baskerville → Adobe's open-source old-style serif with optical-size axes. Less of a literal Baskerville descendant than Libre Baskerville, but shares the transitional-tradition rationalism — a workhorse choice across body, subhead, and display sizes from one family.
- Caslon → Adobe's open-source old-style serif. Less of a direct Caslon descendant than Libre Caslon, but the same workhorse register and a comprehensive optical-size axis — good when one family needs to serve display, subhead, and body.
- Garamond → Adobe's open-source old-style serif, drawn by Frank Grießhammer with optical-size axes. Neutral and reliable — the workhorse choice when you need Garamond's voice across body, subhead, and display sizes from a single family.
- Georgia → Adobe's open-source serif with optical sizes tuned for screen text. Crisper and more contemporary than Georgia, but it fills the same role of comfortable, authoritative on-screen body copy.
- Guardian Headline → Adobe's editorial workhorse shares Guardian Headline's soft, low-contrast news-serif warmth without the overt slab. Optical sizes let it flex from dense article text to substantial headlines, mirroring the Text/Headline split.
- Imperial → Adobe's open-source text serif with low contrast and sturdy, open forms; its optical sizes let it do double duty as compact body text and clean subheads, much as Imperial serves the Times.
- Minion Pro → Adobe's own open-source text serif, drawn to sit alongside Source Sans the way Minion sits alongside Myriad. Slightly crisper and more transitional than Minion, but the same workhorse philosophy from the same foundry — with optical sizes, like the Pro family.
- New York → Adobe's transitional text serif with an optical-size axis, low-fuss detailing, and the same screen-first sturdiness as New York. The closest overall match in proportion and temperature.
- Plantin → A transitional-leaning text serif with low contrast and robust forms; its optical sizes reproduce Plantin's trick of staying warm at text sizes while sharpening up for display.
- Sabon → Adobe's open-source old-style serif with optical-size axes. The 20th-century descendant of the same Garamond-family tradition Sabon refined, with comprehensive sizing for body, subhead, and display from one family.
- Tiempos → The closest free match — a rational, transitional serif with the same disciplined, moderate contrast and even editorial color as Tiempos Text. Multiple optical sizes and true italics give it Tiempos-like workhorse range for both body and heads.
- Times New Roman → Adobe's open-source old-style serif. Less of a literal Times match than Tinos, but the same workhorse register at body-text sizes — and the optical-size axes give clean small-text and display variants from one family.
Display + body that work together
Headlines, written under pressure
A pairing is a relationship: one voice speaks first, the other answers, and the contrast between them sets the tone for the whole page.
Editorial · Modern Source Serif 4 + DM Sans
Quiet type that does the work
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 Switzer + Source Serif 4