There is a sea of font websites out there – some offer free fonts, and some sites offer a free selection as an enticement to premium fonts. The same fonts are usually posted over and over across multiple sites, creating a very confusing mess to wade through.
I am simplifying the work for you: this is the list of sites I personally use to find free fonts, including commercial-use fonts, for my Cricut projects and curated font lists.
A warning: anytime you download files from any site you’re taking a risk that you might download malware. All I can say is that I have downloaded hundreds of fonts from the sites listed and haven’t had a problem yet.
What does “free” font mean?
- free for personal use, which includes projects you won’t be selling or using in a commercial capacity (e.g. gifts for friends/family)
- free for commercial use, which includes any project you will be selling or distributing as part of a commercial venture, even if you don’t sell the items/files directly (e.g. items you sell on Etsy, or the digital artwork that I distribute here as part of my website)
Always check the licensing agreement that comes with each font, usually as a text or PDF file in the font folder.
Looking for a specific style? Curated fonts by Snip to it!
If you don’t want to spend hours looking through font sites, you can always check out the fonts in our curated lists of freebies. We are always adding new styles!
We don’t just go through and pick any old fonts, we test them by writing or cutting with our Cricuts, and we make sure every chosen font has a full character set.
What sites are mobile friendly?
If you are primarily browsing sites on your phone, I’m not going to waste your time, there are many font sites that are virtually unusable on mobile. These are my recommended sites for mobile users:
My top picks for 100% free font sites:
These are my favorite free font sites, most have been around since the late 90s/early 2000s. This is where I go when I’m creating my curated lists to share with you. Although most are ad-supported, none of these sites require you to sign up or create an account in order to access fonts.
All of these sites have functions where you can preview your own text.
DaFont
- great source for fun cutting fonts & dingbats
- character map included on each font page
- tons of complete legacy fonts
- active font-identification forum
- absolutely terrible on mobile
- very bad search function
DaFont is my favorite source for cutting fonts, especially retro, groovy, fun, or unusual styles. This is also the very best site to browse through dingbat fonts, a fantastic source of free images.
The category menu is right up top, organizing fonts by visual style. Once you choose a category to browse, you can filter results by 100% free vs free for personal use, etc.
DaFont also has a very active forum where users help each other identify fonts or discuss other issues. If you need help, the DaFont forum might be a good place to start.
The only downsides are that DaFont has a very bad mobile experience, and the search function only works for searching font names, you can’t search for styles. I like DaFont’s old-school style, but you may not.
1001 Fonts
- personal or commercial use is indicated next to each font right on the search page
- good mobile experience
- includes some fonts not found elsewhere
If you are looking for an updated version of DaFont, 1001 Fonts is the site for you. My pick for most-underrated font site, 1001 Fonts is also more than 20 years old but has gotten a glow-up as a mobile-friendly site with a very good search function. You can refine your searches with multiple filters.
There is a pulldown category menu with choices like “Style” or “Attitude”, and useful features like Weight (hairline, thin, heavy, etc.) – perfect if you are looking for writing or cutting fonts. Each font page includes all the info you need like licensing, character set, and a ton of sample text.
1001 Fonts isn’t the biggest site, but it is a great site. Writing this reminded me that I really need to use it more often!
fontspace
- lots of contemporary fonts, crafter-focused
- tons of great fonts for writing
- good mobile experience
- create your own font collections
- decent search function, but some designers tag their fonts with every style
- tons of fonts are incomplete demo versions
Contemporary is the name of the game on fontspace, and you won’t find a 100% free site that has more crafting-focused fonts. In fact, fontspace was the first to have a Cricut fonts collection, and they also added “thin” as a font style if you’re looking for fonts that might write nicely with a pen.
You can browse fonts by style categories or search for whatever you’re looking for. But the only downside to the search function is that a lot of designers will tag their fonts with unrelated styles, which crowds the results. Each font page has a designer’s preview image, and you can click to get the complete character map.
fontspace has a lot of fonts perfect for writing, and popular styles of script and handwritten fonts. The main drawback is that many of these fonts are just demos with limited character sets, and most are only free for personal use.
Font Squirrel
- all fonts are free for commercial use
- good mobile experience
- tons of information and samples given on each font page
- small selection compared to other sites
- limited search function
- a lot of fonts must be downloaded off-site
Font Squirrel’s big appeal is that all of its fonts are free for commercial use (although you should still check the license that comes with each font). That said, there aren’t a lot of fonts with big appeal for crafters. One big problem I have with Font Squirrel is that many fonts require you to download from a different site, although these are clearly marked “OFFSITE”.
Like DaFont, the search function isn’t good for searching by style, so you are better off browsing by category/tag. Each font page has lots of ways to view the font and has license info readily available.
Font squirrel is the free site associated with paid font site fontspring.com, and they share a number of interesting tools like a font identifier.
Google Fonts
- all fonts are free for commercial use
- all fonts have complete character sets
- high quality classics
- standard fonts may not appeal to crafters
- fonts are tagged using graphic design lingo, not visual style
Although Google is generally a malevolent force in the world that is currently ruining its search product, Google Fonts is a clean, ad-free site full of lovely professional fonts. All fonts include a full character set and are free for commercial use.
Given its ambitions as a source of fonts for design pros, Google Fonts sticks to technical font descriptions (e.g. ‘serif’ ‘monospace’ etc.), which makes the search function limited for crafting needs. Searching by visual style or other descriptors like ‘fun’ or ‘cute’ or ‘funky’ don’t work.
You won’t find many fun, trendy fonts here, but there are a lot of elegant classics. I don’t download many fonts from Google Fonts, but when I do, I know I’m downloading a safe, high-quality file.
Font sites with freebies that require you to sign up
These sites have certain features that make them worth using, but they require you to sign up or create an account in order to download free fonts. Full disclosure, I’m a paying Creative Fabrica subscriber, because they offer a great deal on commercial licensing for popular crafting fonts and SVGs.
Creative Fabrica
- huge crafter-focused site
- all fonts have commercial license
- tons of trendy fonts
- no search function in freebies section
- have to sign up
- not particularly good on mobile
If you are a crafter, you’re probably familiar with Creative Fabrica. It is a massive low-cost source of fonts, SVGs, and images for crafters where commercial use is included with all files. Creative Fabrica specializes in fonts and designs catering directly to cutting machine users.
There are many subscription font sites out there: envato, So Fontsy, Font Bundles – so why am I recommending Creative Fabrica? They have the most freebies. If you sign up to download some fonts, you will routinely get e-mails offering more huge free bundles of fonts, SVGs, and images.
The main downside of the Free Fonts section is that you can’t filter by style. Alternately, go to Fonts > Popular Styles or Holidays & Events > (choose a style or event) > click on Freebies in the category menu in the lefthand sidebar.
Font Diner
- niche site with great midcentury famous fonts
- small list of free fonts, but they are all complete
- must sign up to have the fonts e-mailed to you
- free fonts are personal use only
Font Diner is a tiny niche site, but I’m listing it here because I love the fonts. If you’re looking for a great midcentury modern font, I highly recommend getting some here. All fonts are for personal use only.
Bonus: 6 Font Diner fonts (check out Swanky!) can be found on Google Fonts, complete and free for commercial use.
Other sites that offer some free fonts but are primarily paid:
- Creative Market (this is the page for weekly freebies)
- Behance (owned by Adobe, who are dead to me since they switched to an overpriced subscription model, this is the page for free fonts)
How to download and use free fonts in Cricut Design Space
Font Installation Instructions for Windows/PC Computers
- Choose a font you like and click “download” – this will download a zip file
- Select the zip file in your file browser, right click and choose “extract all”
- Open the unzipped folder
- Right click on the font file (with .ttf or .otf extension)
- Choose “install” from the menu
- The font will now be part of the system fonts on your computer
Font Installation Instructions for Apple/Mac OS Computers
- Choose a font you like and click “download” – this will download a zip file
- Show the folder in downloads – double click or right-click to unzip/extract folder
- Double click the font file, preview of the font opens in Font Book
- Click “Install Font” button
- The font file will be installed in Font Book and available to all apps on your computer
Once you have installed your fonts, open Design Space. Choose the “System“ tab instead of “Cricut” in your project’s font menu and you can use any font installed on your computer.
If you can’t find your System Font
There are plenty of times I’ve searched for a font in the System font tab in Design Space and nothing has come up. If this is the case, it is almost always because the font name you know and the file name for that font do not match. For example, the Font Diner font Loungy can only be found searching for “fontdinerdotcom” (with or without the “loungy” added). The writing font Love Sick appears as “wwwhappyloverstowneuLoveSick” in the menu.
If you can’t find your font by searching for it, double check the actual file name that you installed.
Before you go…
Thanks for reading our top picks for free Cricut font sites. If you’re interested in doing more with fonts on your Cricut machine, here are a couple of tutorials we think would be helpful:
