Free fonts for Cricut: where to find them and how to use them

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Where can you find free fonts for your Cricut projects?

Typeface is a powerful tool for creating projects for your Cricut, Silhouette, or other cutting machine. Text can be used in so many ways to create fun, beautiful, and unique designs for T-shirts, mugs, labels, decals, signage, and decor.

Luckily, there awaits a sea of free fonts for Cricut that can take you well beyond the fonts available through Design Space! I have compiled a list of my favorite font sources for you here.

Most of the sites I have listed feature entirely free fonts, and I have included a couple of sites that have both free and paid fonts.

What does “free” mean?

“Free” can include:

  • completely free fonts that are ‘freeware’ or ‘public domain’
  • ‘demo’ or ‘shareware’ fonts that may have incomplete character sets (missing punctuation, symbols, some letters or numbers, etc.)

I recommend checking to see if the font includes all of the letters, numbers, and special characters you will need. Usually if you click on the font you like, you will see all of the included typeface listed.

In addition, fonts may be:

  • free for personal use, which includes any project you won’t be selling
  • free for commercial use, which includes any project you will use to make money (selling on Etsy or at craft fairs, making posters for paid events, etc.)

All of the sites listed below include fonts that are free for personal use, and many fonts are also free for commercial use. Don’t assume that ‘free’ means free for any purpose – always check the licensing agreement!

7 Free Font Sites for Cricut and Silhouette Projects

1. DaFont: most popular with tons of options

dafont.com has free fonts for cricut users

Probably the current champion of popular font sites, dafont.com is a clean, well-organized site with over 57,000 fonts. Fonts are easy to browse, organized into 9 categories according to easy-to-understand visual styles (“fancy” “script” “holiday” etc.). The category menu is right at the top of the page, easy to spot.

Fonts are free for personal use, but licensing for commercial use varies so check the notes that come with the font. You can filter search results by options like “100% free”, “free for personal use”, “shareware” etc.

DaFont is ad-supported like all other free font sites, but watch out for paid ads for envato in the sidebars – they look like search categories.

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.

2.1001 Free Fonts: simple with an option to buy a huge font bundle

free fonts for Cricut design space available at 1001freefonts.com

1001freefonts.com has a library of over 25,000 fonts, organized into 64 main categories – everything from “brush” and “alien” to “Disney” or “movies and TV“. Like DaFont, this site is straightforward and has the categories listed front and center on the homepage.

All fonts are free for personal use but commercial rights depend on the individual author of the font. They also sell a 10,000 font bundle for $20, which includes licensing for commercial use.

This site is also ad-supported, but the ads aren’t particularly intrusive.

3. Font Space: clean and designer-focused with a Cricut font list

free fonts for Silhouette and Cricut at fontspace.com

fontspace.com is a site with more than 75,000 fonts that emphasizes its hand-curation of fonts and focus on font designers. I think Fontspace is the cleanest and most attractive of the big free font sites, with very few ads to interfere with searching and downloading fonts.

There are 12 style categories on the main style page; click “see all styles” to browse the hundreds of subcategories.

You can also preview pages of fonts with custom text by typing it into the box at the top of the results page.

One cool thing: Font Space actually has a curated list of 178 fonts for Cricut projects! You can follow my link or search for “cricut” under “Style”. You can also search for “cricut” in “Collections” to see Fontspace users favorite fonts for Cricut projects.

Fonts are free for personal use, but not all are free for commercial use, you must check each font.

Related: How to fill in text with the Cricut Design Space Offset tool

4. Font Squirrel: free for commercial use

font squirrel free commercial fonts library

Fontsquirrel.com has over 1,500 fonts, and they are all free for commercial use.

This isn’t the biggest site, but the fonts are hand-curated and their licensing has been checked (although you should still read the documentation that comes with the font).

Instead of having a big menu of styles at the top of the page, you must scroll down until you get to the sidebar menu to browse font styles (see right sidebar of screencap).

Font squirrel is the free font site associated with premium paid font site fontspring.com, and they share a number of interesting tools like a font identifier (see our review).

5. urbanfonts: curated faves list

urbanfonts.com has over 8,000 free fonts and also offers paid, premium fonts. Like Font Squirrel, urbanfonts is the free sister site to myfonts.com, and you will be redirected to myfonts.com if you want to purchase premium fonts.

The free fonts on the site are free for personal use, but that includes a lot of shareware/limited use fonts that have incomplete character sets or other limitations.

This site does feature an “Our Favorites” list, which can point you to some high-quality fonts.

6. Abstract Fonts: famous fonts and old-school logos

If you’re looking for a font that matches a famous logo or brand, you might want to start with abstractfonts.com. Abstract Fonts has over 13,000 fonts to chose from, organized into 62 categories with a sample character illustrating each on the “Categories” page.

This isn’t the biggest or most modern site, but this is an interesting place to search if you have a copycat font in mind. Fonts are free for personal use, and since a ton of these fonts may infringe on copyright (looking at you, Disney-style fonts!), it’s probably best to steer clear of a lot of these for commercial purposes anyway.

7. Creative Market: select high-quality freebies every week

Creativemarket.com is like a digital Etsy where independent designers can sell their fonts, vector graphics, web templates, and more. This site tends to have more modern offerings reflecting current trends, unlike a lot of free font sites where selections can be decades old.

Although Creative Market exists primarily for designers to sell their work, they do offer select fonts for free every week – all you have to do is sign up. As a bonus, the freebies often include packages of vector graphics you can use for your Cricut projects.

You can find this week’s Free Goods here.

Bonus: if you enjoy finding unique gems from modern designers, you can also find some really kick-ass free fonts and design inspiration on Adobe’s Behance site, a showcase for creatives.

How to download and use free fonts in Cricut Design Space

If you are still unsure of how to download a font from a website and make it available for Cricut Design Space (or Silhouette Studio), we’ve compiled a list of simple steps to show you how to download, install and open a font on your computer.

There is no need to upload font files to Design Space directly in order to use them. Simply choose the “system fonts” instead of “Cricut fonts” in your project’s font menu and you can use any font installed on your computer.

Font Installation Instructions for Windows/PC Computers

  1. Choose a font you like and click “download” – this will download a zip file
  2. Show the zip file in your file browser, right click and choose “extract all
  3. Open the unzipped folder
  4. Right click on the font file
  5. Choose “install” from the menu
  6. The font will now be part of the system fonts on your computer

Font Installation Instructions for Apple/Mac OS Computers

  1. Choose a font you like and click “download” – this will download a zip file
  2. Show the folder in downloads – double click or right-click to unzip/extract folder
  3. Double click the font file, opens preview of the font in Font Book
  4. Click “Install Font” button
  5. The font file will be installed in Font Book and available to all apps on your computer

Dingbats: a font source for images and designs

The free fonts you can find on the sites I’ve listed don’t just include typeface, you can also find all kinds of neat little designs under “Dingbats” in category menus.

Dingbats fonts are composed of icons, small illustrations, or other design elements instead of letters and numbers. Free font sites can be used to find a huge variety of cool designs to use for your Cricut and Silhouette projects!

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