Free Programmer's Fonts
Free Monospace / Fixed-Width Fonts for Programmers
Free Programmer's Fonts and Other Free Monospace Fonts
Monospace fonts, as opposed to proportionally-spaced fonts, are particularly useful if you work with ASCII text, HTML code or programming source code. While proportionally-spaced fonts have different widths for different characters, for example, a "w" is wider than an "i", monospace fonts have the same width regardless of the character displayed. Since many of the monospace fonts listed below are designed for programmers, the number zero ("0"), often has a diagonal stroke cutting across it to distinguish it from the capital letter "O". Similarly, the small letter "l" is also distinguished visually from the number '1'. This helps programmers avoid hard-to-spot errors like wrongly using the letter "O" for a zero and vice versa. Note that the use of monospace fonts is not restricted to programming — it is useful in all sorts of places where you need every character to have the same width.
By default, most programmer's editors and HTML editors use some commonly found monospace font on your operating system. However, you may prefer to change the default font to one of the following free programmer's fonts, some of which are more pleasing to the eye (or have useful characteristics like the features mentioned in the above paragraph).
Note: this page merely lists monospace / fixed-width fonts. If you are looking for fonts in general, please see the more general Free Fonts page. In addition, if you are planning to create your own fonts, you may want to take a look at the Free Font Editors and Free Online Font Creation Sites page. Finally, for those thinking of sprucing up your website with fancy fonts, please read Which Font Should I Use for My Web Page? Tips on Choosing Fonts for Your Website as well.
Related Pages
- How to Make / Create a Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide
- How to Accept Credit Cards on Your Website
- Free 3D Software Box Image Makers
- Free Autorun/Autoplay DVD and CD Menu Creation Software
- Free Installers and Setup Utilities
- Free Source Code Version Control Software
- How to Put an Icon Beside Your Website's URL in a Web Browser
- How to Add the Copyright Symbol to Your Web Page
- Free Help Authoring Tools
- Free Text Search and Replace Utilities
Disclaimer
The information provided on this page comes without any warranty whatsoever. Use it at your own risk. Just because a program, book, document or service is listed here or has a good review does not mean that I endorse or approve of the program or of any of its contents. All the other standard disclaimers also apply.
Free Programmers' Fonts
- Anonymous Pro
Anonymous Pro is a fixed-width TrueType font licensed under the Open Font License. (Actually, it is a family of four fonts: the regular, bold, italics and bolditalics versions.) Like many programmer's fonts, it distinguishes between the O, 0, I, l and 1 characters.
- Inconsolata (Programmer Font)
Inconsolata is an OpenType monospaced font designed for source code listings in print. It is a sans serif face, inspired by Microsoft's Consolas font. It has slashed zeros. It works with or without ClearType enabled on Windows.
- Envy Code R
Envy Code R is a programmer font (fixed pitch font designed to display code). This TrueType font that works best with ClearType enabled. It has an optimal point size of 10 on Windows and 13 on Mac OS X and Java. It has slashed zeros.
- Raize Font
Raize is a monospaced sans-serif font sutiable for programming, scripting, HTML writing, etc. It supports 10, 12 and 14 point sizes. It has slashed zeros. Versions of this font are available for Windows and Linux. Note that this is a bitmap font.
- Bitstream Vera Fonts
The Bitstream Vera fonts are TrueType monospace fonts. Included are four sans serif faces - normal, oblique, bold and bold oblique, as well as two serif faces - normal and bold. The fonts are free to use but you may not sell it by itself. (Read the licence agreement and the FAQ for more information about this if you're planning to sell it). The zero ("0") in this font has a dot in the centre to distinguish it from the letter "O".
- DejaVu Fonts
The DejaVu fonts are modifications of the Bitstream Vera True Type fonts to include more characters in Unicode. It currently includes Basic Latin, Latin-1, IPA and phonetic extensions, Greek and Coptic, Cyrillic, combining diacritical marks, Armenian, Hebrew, Arabic, NKo, Thai, Lao, Georgian, Unified Canadian Aborginal Syllabics, superscripts and subscripts, mathematical operators and symbols, geometric shapes, arrows, number forms, dingbats, etc. Included families are DejaVu Sans, DejaVu Sans Mono, DejaVu Sans Condensed, DejaVu Serif, DejaVu Serif Condensed. This is an ongoing project — that is, more character sets are continually being added to it and improvements made.
- UCS Outline Fonts
These Truetype fonts contain a subset of the Universal Character Set (UCS).
- Microsoft Consolas Font Pack
This is, in my opinion, one of the best monospace fonts for programmers and webmasters. It works well in screens with a high dpi (dots per inch) such as high resolution screens but looks horrible in lower resolution screens. It is however, only free for people who use Microsoft Visual Studio (either 2005 or 2008). I'm not sure if it will install if you use the free Microsoft Visual C++ Express. The zero ("0") character in this font has a diagonal stroke across it, a useful feature that distinguishes it from the letter "O". The font comes preinstalled in Windows Vista, Windows 7 (and presumably later versions) and Microsoft Office (the 2007 version and above).
Update: the Consolas fonts also come with the free Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer 2007 and the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack. That is, if you install either of these packages, the Consolas font (as well as the other new fonts from the newer Office and Windows software) will be installed.
Related Pages
- Free C / C++ Libraries, Source Code and Frameworks
- How to Register Your Own Domain Name
- How to Publish Your Own Electronic Book (Ebook)
- Free PDF Converters, Editors and Printer Drivers
- Which Web Host Do You Recommend? (FAQ)
- Free Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities
- Free Antivirus Software and Free Online Virus Scans
- Free Drawing and Painting Software, Image and Photo Editors
Can't Find What You're Looking For?
Newest Pages
- How to Make the Meta Tags for Your Website into an Editable Region in a Dreamweaver Template
- Free / Open Source Non-SQL Database Servers and Engines
- How to Create Bulleted Lists (Unordered Lists) for Your Web Page with KompoZer
- Free Royalty Free Music and Sounds
- How to Point Multiple Domain Names to One Website: And How to Avoid Search Engine Problems When Doing So
- Free Programmer's Fonts
- The Decline and Fall of Internet Explorer 6: Implications for Webmasters
- How to Point a Domain Name to Your Website (Or What to Do After Buying Your Domain Name)
- Should You Choose a Linux or a Windows Web Hosting Package? Is There Such a Thing as a Mac Web Host?
- What Does It Mean to Park a Domain Name? Domain Name Parking Explained
- How to Add a CAPTCHA Test to Your Feedback Form Script: Reducing Spam in Your Contact Form
Popular Pages
- How to Create/Start Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide
- How to Register Your Own Domain Name - how to get your own domain name
- How to Create a Website with Dreamweaver CS4 (Dreamweaver Tutorial)
- How to Create a Bootable Windows XP Setup CD/DVD on a Preinstalled Windows System
- Free Partitioning Software - Copy, Create, Move, Resize, Convert, Undelete Partitions
- Free Data Recovery, File and Partition Recovery, Undelete and Unformat Software
- How to Create an Emergency Windows Rescue CD
- Free DVD Authoring and Creation Software
- Free CD and DVD Burners and Copying Software
- Free Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities
How to Link to This Page
It will appear on your page as:
