Free Fonts for Logo Design You Can Legally Use Commercially: 20 Picks

Searching for free fonts for logo design commercial use is easy. Finding ones you can legally hand to a paying client, put on packaging, and file with a trademark application is a different story. Most font directories bury the licence in a text file nobody opens, and the phrase “free for personal use” is plastered on thousands of typefaces that look perfect for a wordmark.

This list solves that. Below are 20 typefaces that carry genuine commercial licences (mostly SIL Open Font License, plus a few free licences from reputable foundries). For each one we explain the licence in plain English, where it actually works inside a logo lockup, and which weights to avoid so your mark does not fall apart at 16 px or on an embroidered polo.

First, the licence types you need to recognise

Ninety percent of the confusion around free fonts comes down to five licence families. Learn these and you can clear a font in under a minute.

Licence	In plain English	Logo work?
SIL Open Font License (OFL 1.1)	Use it anywhere, including paid client work, products and logos. You may modify it. You may not sell the font file on its own, and if you distribute a modified version it must keep the OFL and drop the original reserved name.	Yes, no attribution needed in the artwork
Apache 2.0 / MIT	Same practical freedom as OFL. Commercial use, modification and redistribution allowed. Keep the licence file if you redistribute the font itself.	Yes
ITF Free Font License (Fontshare)	Free for personal and commercial projects, including logos and client work. You cannot resell or redistribute the files, and you cannot bundle them into a product where the font is the product.	Yes
CC0 / Public Domain	No restrictions at all. Do anything, including selling derivatives.	Yes
Free for personal use / demo / CC BY-NC	Not usable on anything that earns money, and a client logo always earns money. “Demo” versions usually ship with missing glyphs on purpose.	No

The 60-second licence check we use on every project

Download from the source, not an aggregator. Google Fonts, Fontshare, the foundry’s own site or the GitHub repo.
Open the ZIP and read OFL.txt, LICENSE.txt or the licence page. If there is no licence file, treat the font as unlicensed.
Search the text for the words personal, non-commercial, demo and trademark. Those four words cause every dispute.
Screenshot or save the licence file into the client folder, with the date and version number. This is your only proof two years later.
For logos specifically, confirm the licence does not restrict trademark registration of the resulting artwork. OFL, Apache, MIT, CC0 and the ITF Free Font License do not.

One thing to keep straight about trademarks

In the EU and the US, a typeface design is protected, but the shapes of letters you type are not what you are registering. You register the logo you created. A properly licensed free font lets you do that. What you must never do is register or claim ownership of the font itself or its name. And if you heavily customise the letterforms, which we recommend for any serious wordmark, you are creating original artwork on top of a licensed base. That is exactly what the OFL was written to allow.

Modern and geometric sans: 6 picks

1. Inter

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1. Free for client work, products, apps, logos. No attribution required in the artwork.
Where it works in a lockup: The neutral workhorse. Ideal as the secondary element, so taglines, descriptors, a city name under a mark, or the entire wordmark for SaaS and fintech brands. Its tight apertures and generous x-height hold up at favicon size.
Weights to avoid: Thin and ExtraLight disappear below 24 px and in single-colour print. Skip Black for wordmarks, the counters clog. Stick to SemiBold or Bold and open the tracking by 20 to 40 units.

2. Manrope

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: Friendlier and slightly quirkier than Inter thanks to the semi-rounded terminals. Excellent for wellness, D2C and consultancy wordmarks where you want warmth without a rounded-cartoon feel. Pairs cleanly with an abstract monogram on its left.
Weights to avoid: ExtraLight and Light. Manrope’s low contrast means light weights read as grey mush when reversed out of colour. Use Medium to ExtraBold.

3. Space Grotesk

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: The go-to for technical, engineering and web3-adjacent brands. The odd, slightly squared shapes give a wordmark instant personality, so use it alone rather than fighting a busy icon.
Weights to avoid: Light. Also be careful with the default lowercase “a” and “g” in all-caps lockups, mixing them creates rhythm problems. Test the numerals before committing, they are distinctive and not everyone likes them in a logo.

4. Outfit

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: A clean geometric with circular bowls, the free answer to the expensive geometric sans everyone specs. Strong for architecture, interiors and premium service brands in all caps with wide tracking.
Weights to avoid: Thin and ExtraLight for anything that will be printed, cut in vinyl or embroidered. Also note that at Black weight the circular “O” and “Q” can feel bottom-heavy, so optically correct manually.

5. Satoshi

Licence: ITF Free Font License via Fontshare. Free for commercial and client work, including logos. You cannot redistribute or resell the files.
Where it works: Probably the most “agency-looking” free sans available. Neo-grotesque with just enough character for a standalone wordmark. Works beautifully with a tight, single-colour icon above it.
Weights to avoid: Light, which loses its identity. The Variable version is great for fine-tuning logo weight, but export to outlines before delivery so nothing shifts on the client’s machine.

6. General Sans

Licence: ITF Free Font License via Fontshare.
Where it works: A genuinely neutral sans with better spacing than most free fonts out of the box. Best used for the descriptor line of a lockup, or for brands that need to feel institutional and calm. Also our default pick for building a full brand system around a free logo font.
Weights to avoid: Extralight and Light for the primary mark. Semibold is usually the sweet spot for wordmarks, Bold can feel heavy-handed.

Condensed, heavy and display: 6 picks

7. Archivo (and Archivo Expanded)

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: A whole family in one licence. Archivo Expanded Bold makes a confident, wide wordmark for sport, media and events. Archivo Narrow handles long company names that refuse to fit.
Weights to avoid: Mixing widths inside one lockup. Pick Narrow or Expanded, not both. Avoid Thin in the Expanded cut, the contrast breaks at small sizes.

8. Bebas Neue

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: Uppercase-only condensed. Punchy for gyms, breweries, streetwear and anything that needs to shout in a narrow space. Excellent stacked over two or three lines.
Weights to avoid: There is no true lowercase, so never set sentence case. Avoid the Thin and Light cuts in the extended family for logos. Also be aware it is extremely common, so customise at least two letterforms or you will match a hundred other brands.

9. Anton

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: One weight, maximum impact. Ideal for short, punchy names of four to eight characters, poster-style lockups and anything that will be seen from across a room. Reverses out of photography without vanishing.
Weights to avoid: Not applicable, but a real warning instead: Anton has almost no room for tracking. Do not letterspace it, it falls apart. Keep it tight and fix individual pairs by hand.

10. League Spartan

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1 (from The League of Moveable Type).
Where it works: Geometric, slightly retro, very stable. Great for all-caps wordmarks with an enclosed badge or circular lockup. A natural fit for coffee, barbers, artisan food.
Weights to avoid: ExtraLight and Light at small sizes. Black can look heavy in tight lockups. The 700 weight covers most logo needs.

11. Big Shoulders Display

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: Very tall and narrow with an industrial edge. Perfect for vertical lockups, spine-style logos, and long names that need to sit in a slim container. Strong in cultural, festival and manufacturing branding.
Weights to avoid: Thin and ExtraLight, which are essentially display-only at huge sizes. Never use it for a tagline, legibility collapses fast below 14 px.

12. Clash Display

Licence: ITF Free Font License via Fontshare. Commercial and logo use allowed.
Where it works: Contemporary display with slightly compressed, slabby forms. Great for creative studios, fashion and independent labels. Works as a pure wordmark with no icon at all.
Weights to avoid: Extralight and Light for primary marks. Medium and Semibold hold detail best. Because it is a display design, do not use it for body copy in the brand system.

Serifs with real commercial licences: 6 picks

13. Playfair Display

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: High-contrast transitional serif for editorial, beauty, hospitality and real estate. Best in a centred, generously tracked all-caps setting, or as a large single-word wordmark.
Weights to avoid: Avoid Regular at small sizes, the hairlines vanish in print and on a favicon. Use Medium or SemiBold and always build a simplified small-size variant of the logo with thicker strokes.

14. Fraunces

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: A soft, wonky old-style serif with variable axes for “softness” and “wonk”. Outstanding for food, D2C, skincare and family businesses. The optical size axis means you can build a small-size logo variant from the same family, which is rare in free fonts.
Weights to avoid: Light for the primary mark. Turn the Wonk axis down for corporate clients, it reads as playful and clients often change their mind about that six months in.

15. Instrument Serif

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: A tight, tall display serif that looks far more expensive than free. Ideal as a one-word wordmark for studios, wine, galleries and boutique hotels. The italic makes an elegant secondary element.
Weights to avoid: It ships in a single weight, so the trap is size rather than weight. It is a display design. Do not use it under 20 px, and do not set a long legal name in it.

16. EB Garamond

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: Heritage, legal, academic, notaries, vineyards, anything that wants to look like it has existed since 1890. Use the small caps and old-style figures for a crest or monogram lockup.
Weights to avoid: Regular at small sizes is too delicate for a logo. Use SemiBold or Bold, and increase tracking noticeably when setting all caps.

17. Bodoni Moda

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: Extreme contrast for fashion, jewellery and luxury. Reserve it for wide-tracked all-caps wordmarks on a generous canvas. Includes optical sizes, so use the larger optical cut for the logo and the smaller one for anything set small.
Weights to avoid: Regular and Light for embroidery, engraving, vinyl cutting or letterpress. Those hairlines will break. For physical production, either move to Bold or manually thicken the thin strokes in your vector file.

18. Source Serif 4

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1 (released by Adobe as open source).
Where it works: A sturdy, low-drama serif that survives small sizes. The best choice on this list for a serif descriptor line, or for a logo that also has to work as a signature block, stamp or document header.
Weights to avoid: ExtraLight for logos. Note it is a text design, so a wordmark set in it needs manual kerning and often a slight width adjustment to feel intentional.

Script and monospace: 2 picks

19. Alex Brush

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: A calligraphic brush script that is one of the few genuinely OFL-licensed scripts worth using commercially. Best for a single word or a personal name, placed above or beside a clean sans descriptor. Photographers, florists, patisseries, weddings.
Weights to avoid: Single weight. The real traps: never set it in all caps, never use it for more than two or three words, and always redraw the connecting strokes by hand. Default script connections almost never line up correctly for a logo.

20. JetBrains Mono

Licence: SIL OFL 1.1.
Where it works: Monospace signals developer tooling, security, data and infrastructure. Its slightly taller lowercase makes it more readable than most monos in a wordmark. Excellent with a bracket, slash or cursor motif as the icon.
Weights to avoid: ExtraLight and Thin. Also remember that monospaced letterforms create awkward gaps in a wordmark, so plan to manually tighten spacing after converting to outlines, or the mark will look accidental rather than deliberate.

Quick reference table

#	Font	Style	Licence	Best lockup role	Avoid
1	Inter	Neutral sans	OFL 1.1	Wordmark or descriptor	Thin, ExtraLight, Black
2	Manrope	Warm sans	OFL 1.1	Wordmark beside monogram	ExtraLight, Light
3	Space Grotesk	Technical sans	OFL 1.1	Standalone wordmark	Light
4	Outfit	Geometric sans	OFL 1.1	Tracked all caps	Thin, ExtraLight
5	Satoshi	Neo-grotesque	ITF Free	Primary wordmark	Light
6	General Sans	Neutral sans	ITF Free	Descriptor line	Extralight, Light
7	Archivo	Grotesque family	OFL 1.1	Wide or narrow wordmark	Mixing widths
8	Bebas Neue	Condensed caps	OFL 1.1	Stacked lockup	Sentence case
9	Anton	Heavy display	OFL 1.1	Short bold names	Letterspacing
10	League Spartan	Geometric	OFL 1.1	Badge lockup	ExtraLight, Light
11	Big Shoulders Display	Tall condensed	OFL 1.1	Vertical lockup	Taglines, small sizes
12	Clash Display	Display sans	ITF Free	Icon-free wordmark	Extralight, body text
13	Playfair Display	High-contrast serif	OFL 1.1	Centred caps wordmark	Regular at small sizes
14	Fraunces	Soft old-style	OFL 1.1	Friendly wordmark	Light, heavy Wonk
15	Instrument Serif	Display serif	OFL 1.1	One-word wordmark	Small sizes
16	EB Garamond	Old-style serif	OFL 1.1	Crest or monogram	Regular for logos
17	Bodoni Moda	Didone	OFL 1.1	Luxury caps wordmark	Light for engraving
18	Source Serif 4	Text serif	OFL 1.1	Serif descriptor	ExtraLight
19	Alex Brush	Script	OFL 1.1	Signature word	All caps, long names
20	JetBrains Mono	Monospace	OFL 1.1	Dev and data brands	Thin, ExtraLight

Weights and habits to avoid in any logo, free font or not

Thin, Hairline and ExtraLight. They look elegant on a 27-inch screen and disappear on a business card, an app icon, a stamp or a laser-etched surface.
The heaviest Black weight of a geometric sans. Counters fill in when scaled down or printed on absorbent stock.
Default tracking. Every font on this list was spaced for text, not for a logo. All-caps settings almost always need positive tracking, display serifs almost always need negative.
Default kerning pairs. Fix AV, WA, To, LT and any diagonal-plus-round combination by hand.
Live text in delivered files. Always convert the logo to outlines. It removes the font-embedding question entirely and guarantees the mark never reflows.
Variable font instances left unflattened. Great for exploration, risky on delivery.
Using the font completely untouched. A wordmark that is just typed text is not really a logo. Modify one or two letterforms, adjust a terminal, tie two letters together. The OFL and the ITF Free licence both allow modification of the artwork you produce.

How we handle free fonts on client projects

Choose the font from a verified source and save the licence file into the project archive.
Set the wordmark, then customise at least two letterforms so the mark is distinct and defensible.
Convert to outlines and rebuild spacing as vector geometry.
Produce three size variants: full lockup, compact lockup, and a simplified icon or monogram for sizes under 32 px.
Test in single colour, reversed, and at 16 px before showing anything to the client.
Document the typography in the brand guide, including the licence name, the download URL and the version. Brands change agencies, and the next team needs to know what they can legally reuse.
Check the trademark path. If the client plans to register the mark, remind them that the logo artwork is registrable while the font itself is not theirs. A quick note in the guide prevents an awkward conversation later.

FAQ

What are the best free fonts for commercial use?

For logo work specifically, the strongest free options with real commercial licences are Inter, Satoshi, Space Grotesk, Archivo, Playfair Display, Fraunces, Instrument Serif and Bebas Neue. All are covered by the SIL Open Font License or the ITF Free Font License, both of which permit paid client work, products, packaging and logos.

What fonts are 100% free for commercial use?

Fonts released under the SIL Open Font License, Apache 2.0, MIT or CC0 are free for commercial use with no payment and no attribution inside your artwork. That covers nearly everything in the Google Fonts library and a growing number of independent open-source releases. The only things these licences restrict are selling the font file itself and misusing the original font name on a modified version. The piece 20000+ Free Logotype Fonts makes a good next read.

Can I use free fonts for commercial use?

Only if the licence says so. “Free to download” and “free to use commercially” are two different claims. Thousands of fonts on aggregator sites are labelled free for personal use or demo, and using them on a client logo is a licensing breach that can surface years later when the brand scales. Always open the licence file and keep a copy.

What fonts on Canva are free for commercial use?

Canva’s font library includes many open-source families you could download independently, and Canva’s own terms allow use of its fonts inside Canva designs for commercial purposes. What Canva does not grant is the right to extract and install every font on your machine for use in other software, and some licensed fonts are limited to Canva Pro. For a logo that a client will own outright, we recommend downloading the font from its original source under its own licence, so the licence chain is clear and independent of any platform account.

Do I need a separate licence to trademark a logo made with a free font?

Under the OFL, Apache, MIT, CC0 and the ITF Free Font License, no additional licence or fee is required to register a logo you created with the font. You are registering your specific artwork, not the typeface. Some commercial foundries do impose logo or trademark clauses in their paid EULAs, which is one practical reason designers keep coming back to open-licensed fonts.

Can a free font make a brand look cheap?

The font is not the problem, the lack of craft is. A customised Fraunces wordmark with corrected spacing and a bespoke ligature will outperform an untouched premium typeface every time. Spend the budget you saved on licensing on kerning, optical variants and a proper brand system instead. 50 Free Logo Fonts For The Graphic Designers tackles the same question from another angle.

Which free fonts should I avoid for logos?

Avoid anything labelled demo, trial, personal use only, or CC BY-NC. Also be cautious with fonts that have become visual shorthand through overuse in default templates. They are perfectly legal, but they will not help a client stand out unless you modify them meaningfully.

Need a wordmark that is both legally clean and genuinely distinctive?

A free font is a starting point, not a logo. If you want a mark that is licensed correctly, customised properly and delivered with a brand guide your client can actually hand to a printer, get in touch with our team and tell us about the project. 50 free commercial fonts covers this in more depth.