Every logo brief eventually hits the same wall: the type has to look expensive, the budget says zero, and the client wants to trademark the result. Good news is that the pool of free fonts for logo design commercial use has never been deeper. Bad news is that half the "free font" sites on page one of Google mix personal-use-only files in with genuinely open licences, and nobody reads the .txt file inside the zip. See fontshare.com for their take.
So we did the boring part. Below are 12 typefaces we use in real client work at Impact Photography, each one with its actual licence named, the brand personality it flatters, and a lockup recipe you can reproduce in Figma, Illustrator or Affinity in about 90 seconds to judge it before you download anything.
How we vetted these fonts
Every font in this list was checked against five criteria in August 2026:
- The licence file explicitly permits commercial use, including use inside a logo.
- The family ships with at least 3 usable weights (or is a variable font), so the wordmark and tagline can differ.
- The uppercase, lowercase and numerals are all complete and consistent, no half-finished glyph sets.
- The wordmark stays legible at 32 px (favicon and app icon test) and at billboard scale.
- The design is not so overexposed that a client will spot it on a competitor’s site the same week.
"Free" and "free for commercial use" are not the same thing
Before the list, the part that actually protects you if a client’s lawyer calls. Free fonts circulate under very different licences, and only some of them let you put the letters on a paid logo, a product label or a shop front.
| Licence you will see | Commercial logo use? | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|
| SIL Open Font Licence (OFL 1.1) | Yes, including logos and trademarks | If you modify the font you must rename it (Reserved Font Name clause) and keep it under OFL |
| Apache 2.0 / MIT | Yes | Keep the licence notice if you redistribute the font files themselves |
| CC0 / Public domain | Yes, no strings | Rare, and quality varies wildly |
| CC BY / CC BY-SA | Usually, with attribution | Attribution inside a logo is impractical, ask the designer for a waiver |
| "Free for personal use" | No | The most common trap on free font aggregators, a paid desktop licence is required |
| "Freeware, no logo/trademark use" | No | Some independent foundries carve logos out specifically, always read the EULA |
Rule of thumb: if the download page does not name a licence, treat the font as unlicensed until proven otherwise. All 12 fonts below are OFL 1.1 unless stated, which is the cleanest licence family for logo work.
The 12 free commercial-use fonts, with lockup recipes
1. Inter
- Licence: SIL OFL 1.1, commercial and trademark use permitted
- Personality: neutral, engineered, calm authority. Fintech, SaaS, B2B services, dashboards
- Lockup recipe: Wordmark in Inter SemiBold, tracking -20. Tagline in Inter Medium all-caps, tracking +120, set at 32% of the wordmark cap height, left-aligned under the last letter
- Make it yours: Inter is deliberately generic, so the logo needs one custom move. Cut the terminal of the lowercase "t", or replace a dot with a circle from your brand mark
2. Outfit
- Licence: SIL OFL 1.1
- Personality: geometric, friendly, contemporary. Direct-to-consumer products, wellness, app brands
- Lockup recipe: Lowercase wordmark in Outfit Bold, tracking -15, with the icon set to the exact x-height on the left and a gap equal to one "o" width
- Watch out: the perfectly circular bowls need optical spacing by hand around "o", "e" and "c"
3. Montserrat
- Licence: SIL OFL 1.1
- Personality: urban, confident, approachable. Real estate, hospitality, local retail
- Lockup recipe: All-caps in Montserrat ExtraBold, tracking +40, with the second word in Montserrat Light at the same size to create contrast without a second font
- Watch out: it is one of the most used typefaces on the internet. Justify the choice to your client by stacking weights rather than using it flat
4. Space Grotesk
- Licence: SIL OFL 1.1
- Personality: technical with a wink, slightly odd letter shapes. Creative studios, music labels, product design agencies
- Lockup recipe: Medium weight, tracking -10, then manually reduce the space around the "r" and "a" pairs. Add a thin 1 px rule above and below the wordmark at 60% of its width
- Best trick: the numerals are excellent, so "Studio 04" style names look designed rather than typed
5. Archivo Black
- Licence: SIL OFL 1.1
- Personality: loud, immovable, editorial. Sports, podcasts, streetwear, gyms
- Lockup recipe: Set all-caps at tracking -30 so the letters almost touch, then stack two lines with zero leading gap between cap height and baseline of the next line
- Watch out: only one weight in the Black cut, so pair it with Archivo Regular for the tagline
6. League Spartan
- Licence: SIL OFL 1.1 (The League of Moveable Type)
- Personality: geometric Bauhaus energy, no nostalgia. Architecture, furniture, industrial design
- Lockup recipe: All-caps Bold, tracking +100, split across two centred lines of equal optical width. This is the classic "luxury minimal" stack and it costs nothing
- Watch out: the short descenders mean lowercase looks cramped, keep it in caps
7. Playfair Display
- Licence: SIL OFL 1.1
- Personality: high-contrast, editorial, expensive. Interiors, weddings, boutique hotels, photography studios
- Lockup recipe: Title case in Regular at large size, tracking +10, with a spaced all-caps tagline in a plain sans below. Use the Italic for the initial letter only if the name has two words
- Watch out: hairline strokes disappear in embroidery and small print, test at 24 px before committing
8. Instrument Serif
- Licence: SIL OFL 1.1
- Personality: tight, modern, magazine cover. Restaurants, fashion editorial, creative portfolios
- Lockup recipe: Single word, Regular, tracking -20, set very large with the tagline in tiny all-caps letterspaced across the full width of the wordmark
- Why we like it: it delivers that paid-display-serif look that usually costs 200 euros per weight
9. Cormorant Garamond
- Licence: SIL OFL 1.1
- Personality: delicate, literary, old-world luxury. Beauty, bridal, jewellery, fine dining
- Lockup recipe: All-caps Light, tracking +200, centred, with a thin horizontal rule between wordmark and tagline. The extreme letterspacing is what sells the premium feel
- Watch out: the lightest weights break down under 18 px and on dark backgrounds. Keep a Medium-weight version of the logo in the brand kit for small applications
10. Fraunces
- Licence: SIL OFL 1.1
- Personality: warm, quirky, hand-cut. Artisanal food, coffee roasters, indie publishers, farm brands
- Lockup recipe: Use the variable axes: push the optical size axis up, set the "wonk" axis on, weight around SemiBold, tracking 0. Title case, one line, tagline in a neutral sans
- Bonus: because it is variable, you can generate a slightly customised cut that no competitor will match exactly
11. Libre Baskerville
- Licence: SIL OFL 1.1
- Personality: trustworthy, institutional, established. Law firms, accountants, private clinics, heritage brands
- Lockup recipe: Title case Bold, tracking 0, with the tagline in all-caps Regular at 30% size and tracking +150. Add a vertical divider line between name and speciality
- Watch out: it was designed for screen body text, so the sturdy strokes look best at moderate scale rather than huge display sizes
12. Sacramento
- Licence: SIL OFL 1.1
- Personality: monoline script, personal, warm. Bakeries, florists, personal brands, photographers
- Lockup recipe: Single word only, tracking 0, then manually nudge letters so the connecting strokes actually meet. Anchor it with a spaced sans-serif line underneath so it does not float
- Watch out: never set a script in all-caps, and never use it for the whole identity. It is a signature, not a system
Three bonus fonts worth having in the folder
- Bebas Neue (OFL 1.1): condensed caps, ideal for badge and crest lockups where vertical space is tight.
- Bricolage Grotesque (OFL 1.1): a wide, slightly strange grotesque with a variable width axis, great for brands that want to look new without looking silly.
- Manrope (OFL 1.1): semi-geometric sans with beautiful numerals, our default for the tagline line under a serif wordmark.
Pairing table: wordmark plus tagline
| Wordmark font | Tagline font | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| Playfair Display | Manrope Medium, caps, +150 | Editorial luxury |
| Archivo Black | Archivo Regular, caps, +80 | Bold and athletic |
| Cormorant Garamond Light | Inter Medium, caps, +200 | Quiet high-end |
| Sacramento | League Spartan Bold, caps, +180 | Personal and crafted |
| Space Grotesk | Space Grotesk Light, lowercase | Studio and tech |
| Instrument Serif | Outfit Regular, caps, +120 | Modern hospitality |
Your 5-step checklist before you download any free font
- Find the licence file, not the marketing copy. Open the zip and read OFL.txt or LICENSE.txt. If it is missing, skip the font.
- Search the licence text for the words "logo", "trademark" and "personal". Thirty seconds of reading prevents a rebrand.
- Screenshot the download page and the licence. Save it in the client project folder with the date. This is your proof if anything is ever questioned.
- Test the exact brand name, not the specimen text. Type the real name, all caps and lowercase, then check awkward pairs like "rn", "VA", "Il" and any accented characters.
- Convert the final wordmark to outlines. Once the letters are vector shapes, the delivered logo no longer depends on the font file, and the client cannot install it and misuse it across their own materials.
Where to actually get them
Skip the aggregators that mix licences. Our shortlist of reliable sources for free fonts cleared for commercial use:
- Google Fonts: almost everything is OFL or Apache 2.0, licence stated on every family page. All 12 fonts above live here.
- The League of Moveable Type: small, curated, all open source.
- Velvetyne, Collletttivo and other open-source type collectives: more experimental shapes, licences clearly published.
- Directly from the designer’s own site or GitHub repo: the safest place to find the current licence version.
Aggregator sites such as FontSpace, 1001Fonts and Creative Fabrica do host genuinely free commercial fonts, but they also host personal-use files, so you must filter by licence and still open the text file inside the download.
Common mistakes we see in free-font logos
- Using the font untouched. A wordmark typed at default tracking is not a logo, it is a label. Kern every pair by hand.
- Choosing a display font with no lowercase. Fine until the client needs a long legal name on an invoice.
- Ignoring the small size. If the mark dies at 32 px, it dies as a profile picture, which is where most people will see it.
- Forgetting the icon. Type alone works, but a monogram cut from the same font gives the brand a second asset for free.
- Losing the paper trail. No saved licence, no defence.
FAQ
Where can I get free fonts for commercial use?
Google Fonts is the safest large library, since every family lists its licence and the overwhelming majority are SIL OFL 1.1 or Apache 2.0. The League of Moveable Type, open-source type collectives, and the designers’ own GitHub repositories are also reliable. On general aggregator sites, always filter for commercial licences and verify the text file in the download.
What fonts are legal to use commercially?
Any font whose licence grants commercial rights: SIL OFL, Apache 2.0, MIT, CC0, plus any commercial font you have bought the correct desktop licence for. Fonts labelled "free for personal use", demo versions and fonts with no licence at all are not legal in paid client work, even if the file installs perfectly.
What fonts on Canva are free for commercial use?
Fonts included in Canva’s font list can be used in designs you create and publish, including commercial designs, under Canva’s own terms. Two limits matter for logo work: you generally cannot extract and redistribute the font files themselves, and Canva restricts trademarking designs made with its templates. If the goal is a registered trademark, build the logo outside Canva with an OFL font you have downloaded and documented.
How do I know if a font is free for commercial use?
Open the downloaded zip and read the licence file. Look for a named licence (OFL, Apache, MIT) and search the text for "commercial", "logo" and "trademark". If the wording is unclear or absent, email the designer and keep the reply. No written permission means no commercial use. Anyone digging further should read Browse fonts in the Logo-Worthy Letters font pack.
Can I trademark a logo made with a free font?
Under the SIL Open Font Licence you can, because the licence does not restrict what you do with the outlines you set. You are registering your specific logo artwork, not the alphabet, so nobody else gains rights to your mark. Some other "freeware" licences explicitly forbid trademark use, which is exactly why the licence file matters. Convert the wordmark to outlines and, if the logo is central to the business, ask an IP lawyer to run the filing.
Should a paying client ever get a free font logo?
Yes, as long as the choice is deliberate. A well-kerned League Spartan stack beats a badly used paid font every time, and the client keeps a licence they can never breach. What you are charging for is the judgement, the kerning, the system and the documentation, not the font file.
Want the lockups instead of the theory?
We use these twelve typefaces in brand and photography identity work every month, and we keep a tested lockup file for each one. If you would rather have a finished mark than a folder of fonts, get in touch with the Impact Photography studio team and tell us the brand name. We will send back three type directions using commercially cleared fonts, with the licence proof attached. The subject deserves a deeper dive than we can give it here.