The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Best free alternatives to
Times New Roman
Stanley Morison commissioned and Victor Lardent drew Times New Roman in 1932 for The Times newspaper of London — a transitional serif designed to set tighter, set sharper, and read better than the typefaces the paper had been using. Bundled with Word and Office for decades, Times became the unmarked default for "serious" documents the world over. These five free typefaces work in the same documentary-serif register.
The closest font to Times New RomanThe 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
A grammar of empty space
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.
Quiet type that does the work
Crisp, even strokes give the display its punch. Quiet serifs underneath stay readable across thousands of words — used together by editors at the kind of paper that still prints corrections.
Fonts like Times New Roman
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Most-cited free fonts
Common questions about Times New Roman alternatives
- Is Times New Roman free?
- No — Times New Roman is a commercial typeface from The Times / Monotype. It is licensed per style or per family. The closest free alternative is Tinos, available on Google Fonts.
- What font is similar to Times New Roman?
- Tinos is the closest free match. Drawn by Steve Matteson to be metric-compatible with Times New Roman — same character widths, same line heights, same page counts when you swap them. The drop-in replacement when document fidelity matters most.
- Can I use Tinos in commercial projects?
- Yes — Tinos 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.