The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Best free alternatives to
Arial
Arial is the typeface everyone has read and almost no one has chosen. Drawn at Monotype in 1982 by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders to share Helvetica's exact widths without its licensing fees, it rode Windows to a ubiquity few typefaces will ever match. Designers sneer at it, but its neo-grotesque bones are genuinely sound — neutral, legible, and invisible in the way workhorse type should be. These free typefaces work in that tradition.
The closest font to ArialThe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
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.
Modern · Editorial Arimo + Source Serif 4
Quiet type that does the work
Body type does the heavy lifting. Get it right and the reader never thinks about it; get it wrong and they feel it before they can name what is off.
Editorial · Modern Playfair Display + Arimo
Fonts like Arial
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Most-cited free fonts
Common questions about Arial alternatives
- Is Arial free?
- No — Arial is a commercial typeface from Monotype. Arial ships with Windows and macOS under system licenses that do not allow you to self-host it or serve it as a webfont. The closest free alternative is Arimo, available on Google Fonts.
- What font is similar to Arial?
- Arimo is the closest free match. The metric-compatible open clone of Arial, derived from Liberation Sans (which isn't on Google Fonts — Arimo is its webfont incarnation). Documents and layouts set in Arial reflow identically.
- Can I use Arimo in commercial projects?
- Yes — Arimo is published under a free license on Google Fonts and can be used in commercial work. Confirm the license text at the source before shipping.