This post isn’t for the Hollywood stars of free fonts. Nah. You won’t find household names here—no Roboto or Montserrat in sight.
Instead, we’re diving into the hidden gems. Newly released fonts, or older ones that deserve way more love and recognition than they get.
In short, 17 under-the-radar free fonts every designer should know about.
These beauties aren’t just trendy, they’re versatile enough to fit a range of projects, giving you a creative edge whether you’re designing a website, brand identities, templates, and what not.
So, if you’re ready to expand your font library with a few new favorites, I invite you to meet these stylish typefaces that even your most font-nerd designer friends might not know yet.
(Oh, and did I mention they are all free? 😱 They are ALL free.)
The List ⤵︎
Instrument Serif
A beautiful display font, intended for use at large sizes. It includes one regular weight both in normal and Italic styles.
Designed by: Rodrigo Fuenzalida and Jordan Egstad
Available via: Google Fonts
Check out their also stunning sans serif version Instrument Sans.
Darker Grotesque
A contemporary grotesque typeface, perfect for body text and headings. It comes in seven weights, from 300 to 900.
Designed by: Gabriel Lam
Available via: Google Fonts
Space Grotesk
A proportional sans serif typeface with five weights (300 to 700). It’s one of my personal favorites and go-to fonts for a monospace –yet sans-serif– look.
Designed by: Florian Karsten
Available via: Google Fonts
Bona Nova
A serif font with a more traditional vibe based on Bona, a cursive typeface from 1971. Perfect for editorial or personal projects. It comes in 400, 400 italic and 700 styles.
Designed by: Capitalics, Mateusz Machalski, Andrzej Heidrich
Available via: Google Fonts
Bricolage Grotesque
Quirky yet refined, Bricolage Grotesque mixes sharp angles and soft curves, giving your designs a playful but sophisticated vibe. Perfect for brands looking to make a bold statement. It comes in 7 weights, from 200 to 800.
Designed by: Mathieu Triay
Available via: Google Fonts
Fragment Mono
A monospaced typeface with a clean and modern aesthetic. Perfect as an accent font in designs with a minimalist vibe. It comes in two styles: regular and italic.
Designed by: Wei Huang
Available via: Google Fonts
Manrope
An open-source sans serif font family with a modern look including seven weights from 200 to 800.
Designed by: Mikhail Sharanda
Available via: Google Fonts
Cabinet Grotesk
A sans serif variable font with a twist. Its letters feature high contrasting strokes, which sets them apart from other sans serifs and gives this typeface a unique mood and lots of personality.
Designed by: Indian Type Foundry
Available via: Fontshare
Clash Display
A wide display font with 6 styles and variable weight. Its neo-grotesk style and small apertures make it a great choice for large-sized eye-catching texts.
Designed by: Indian Type Foundry
Available via: Fontshare
Rethink Sans
A fork of the beautiful DM Sans typeface, Rethink takes it even further with a few enhancements and refinements. It comes in five weights from regular to extra bold, including italic style. Perfect for body text as well as larger headings.
Designed by: Hans Thiessen
Available via: Google Fonts
Satoshi
A versatile modernist sans serif typeface that blends grotesque-style letterforms with geometric influences, drawing inspiration from Modernism and Industrial-era design. With ten weights (going from light to black), plus italics, I believe it’s perfect for branding, editorial, and poster design.
Designed by: Indian Type Foundry
Available via: Fontshare
Anton
A display typeface based on traditional advertising sans-serif fonts. Anton’s bold and condensed structure makes it ideal for impactful headlines and large-sized texts.
Designed by: Vernon Adams
Available via: Google Fonts
Host Grotesk
A sans-serif typeface based on the famous Poppins, with a grotesque and contemporary look. It comes in 6 weights from 300 to 800, including italics. What’s quite interesting about this typeface is that its letters have a uniform width and space across all its styles, which helps achieve more consistent layouts and makes it a great choice for both display and body text.
Designed by: Element Type, Doğukan Karapınar, İbrahim Kaçtıoğlu
Available via: Google Fonts
Geist
Inspired by Swiss design, Geist is a geometric typeface with a clean and modern aesthetic. It comes in 9 weights from thin to black. And will work great in both smaller and large-sized texts.
Designed by: Vercel and Basement Studio
Available via: Google Fonts
Inter Tight
You probably know the beautiful Inter, but have you heard of Inter Tight? It’s a version of Inter with tighter spacing, great for display usage and a more quirky look.
Designed by: Rasmus Andersson
Available via: Google Fonts
Gloock
A serif typeface that blends classic elegance with contemporary details, inspired by newspaper’s headlines. Its high contrast and sharp serifs make it a stunning choice for bold and big headlines.
Designed by: Duarte Pinto
Available via: Google Fonts
And there you have it!
17 stylish, fresh, and trendy free fonts to inspire your next design project.
Which one will you add to your library?