The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Best free alternatives to
Tahoma
Matthew Carter drew Tahoma for Windows 95 with the pixel grid, not the printed page, as his canvas — a narrow humanist sans with tight spacing and sturdy forms that stayed crisp in dialog boxes and menus at tiny sizes. It is Verdana's compact sibling, trading airiness for economy, and for a decade it was the literal face of the Windows interface. Few typefaces have been read so often at eleven pixels. These free typefaces work in that tradition.
The closest font to TahomaThe 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
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 PT Sans + EB Garamond
A grammar of empty space
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 + PT Sans
Fonts like Tahoma
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Most-cited free fonts
Common questions about Tahoma alternatives
- Is Tahoma free?
- No — Tahoma is a commercial typeface from Microsoft. Tahoma is a Windows system font licensed for use on the device it ships with — it cannot legally be self-hosted or served as a webfont. The closest free alternative is PT Sans, available on Google Fonts.
- What font is similar to Tahoma?
- PT Sans is the closest free match. No open metric clone of Tahoma exists, and PT Sans comes closest in spirit — a narrow, tightly fitted humanist sans built for functional text at small sizes. Its compact proportions echo Tahoma's space-saving character.
- Can I use PT Sans in commercial projects?
- Yes — PT Sans 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.