Understanding font licenses

What a font license actually is

When you download a font you are not buying the typeface — you are being granted permission to use it under certain conditions. That permission is the license. A license is a legal agreement between you and the font’s creator (the type designer or foundry), and it spells out what you may and may not do: whether you can use it commercially, how many people or computers may use it, whether you can put it on a website or inside an app, and whether you are allowed to modify or redistribute the files.

The same font can be offered under different licenses, and two fonts that both call themselves “free” can have completely different terms. The only reliable way to know what you are allowed to do is to read the specific license that comes with the specific font you downloaded.

Common types of font license

Free for personal use

One of the most common labels on free font sites, and the most misunderstood. It means you may use the font for your own non-commercial projects — a gift, a personal blog, a school assignment, your own desktop — but you may not use it for anything that makes money or promotes a business. If a project earns revenue, advertises a company, or is a paid client job, a personal-use license does not cover it. To use such a font commercially you usually have to buy a separate commercial or extended license from the designer.

Open-source / SIL Open Font License (OFL)

The SIL Open Font License is the gold standard for genuinely free fonts and the license behind a huge share of the fonts on services like Google Fonts. Fonts under the OFL are free to use for any purpose — personal and commercial alike — and you may embed, bundle and modify them. The main conditions are simple: you cannot sell the font on its own, and any modified version you distribute must not use the original’s reserved name and must itself remain under the OFL. Other open licenses such as the Apache License are similarly permissive. These are the safest fonts to reach for when in doubt.

Commercial / paid license

A commercial license is one you typically pay for, and it grants the right to use the font in revenue-generating and professional work. Commercial licenses are often sold by use case — a desktop license for design software, a webfont license measured in pageviews, an app or e-book license, and a broadcast or logo license — and they frequently limit the number of users or installations. Read the tier you are buying carefully: a desktop license usually does not, by itself, permit hosting the font on a website.

Public domain (CC0)

A public-domain font, often released under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) dedication, has had all copyright waived. You can do essentially anything with it — use it commercially, modify it, redistribute it, even sell products made with it — with no attribution required. These are the most permissive fonts of all. Be careful only to confirm the file genuinely is public domain, as the term is sometimes used loosely.

Creative Commons (CC BY and others)

Some fonts are released under standard Creative Commons licenses such as CC BY (use freely but credit the creator) or CC BY-NC (non-commercial use only). The exact letters after “CC” change everything — “NC” forbids commercial use, “ND” forbids modifications, and “SA” requires you to share derivatives under the same terms — so check which variant applies.

What “commercial use” really means

Commercial use is broader than many people assume. It is not limited to selling the font itself. You are using a font commercially whenever it appears in work connected to making money or promoting a business: a company logo, product packaging, advertisements, a paid client’s website, a book or magazine you sell, merchandise like t-shirts and mugs, a mobile app, or marketing materials for any business — even a small one.

By contrast, personal use covers things with no commercial angle: a birthday card, a personal portfolio, a hobby project, a non-profit flyer (though some licenses treat non-profits separately), or simply using the font on your own computer. When a project sits in a grey area, treat it as commercial and choose a font whose license clearly allows commercial use.

Embedding fonts: web, apps, PDFs and documents

Embedding means including the font file inside something you distribute, and it is a frequent source of license violations because a desktop license rarely covers it. The main scenarios to watch for are:

• Web embedding: hosting a WOFF/WOFF2 file and loading it with CSS @font-face. This requires a webfont license; many free-for-personal-use fonts forbid it outright.
• Apps and games: bundling the font in a mobile or desktop application usually needs a specific app license.
• PDFs and documents: most licenses permit embedding for viewing and printing a PDF you share, but some restrict editable embedding.
• E-books: embedding a font in an EPUB or Kindle file you sell typically requires a dedicated e-book or commercial license.

A useful workaround for logos and short headlines is to convert the text to vector outlines before sharing the file — this turns the letters into shapes, so no font file is embedded and the license issue is sidestepped.

Do

• Read the license file that comes with every font you download.
• Keep a copy of the license with your project files for future reference.
• Prefer OFL or public domain fonts when you need commercial freedom.
• Buy the right license tier (desktop, web, app) for how you will actually use the font.
• Give attribution when a license such as CC BY requires it.

Don’t

• Assume “free” means free for commercial use.
• Use a personal-use font in a logo, ad or product you sell.
• Host a font on your website without a webfont license.
• Resell or redistribute a font file on its own.
• Rename and re-release a modified OFL font using the original’s reserved name.