15 Best Free Fonts Alternatives to San Francisco (SF Pro)
San Francisco, or SF Pro, is Apple’s in-house system typeface, and its license keeps it tied to Apple platforms and apps built with Apple’s design tools. That leaves designers building websites, cross-platform products, and marketing sites in search of a free alternative to SF Pro that keeps the same neutral, screen-optimized feel without the licensing headache. The good news is that the current generation of Google Fonts includes several grotesque and humanist sans families built with the same priorities SF Pro cares about: even spacing, calm letterforms, and legibility at small sizes on high-density screens.
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Inter
Designed for clarity on interfaces and screens
Inter
Inter is the font most designers reach for first when SF Pro isn’t an option, and for good reason. It was built specifically for user interfaces, with tall x-heights and a wide range of weights that hold up cleanly from a 12px label to a 72px hero line. If you want a drop-in replacement that reads as neutral and modern without calling attention to itself, this is the safest starting point.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended, Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended, Greek, Greek Extended, Vietnamese
- Styles: 18 styles (9 weights plus italics)
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IBM Plex Sans
Clean systems for products, apps, and dashboards
IBM Plex Sans
Where SF Pro carries a corporate polish, Plex Sans brings a slightly more engineered, technical character that suits developer tools, dashboards, and documentation sites. It was commissioned by IBM as a proprietary corporate typeface before being released for free, so it has that same sense of belonging to a coherent design system. The italics and monospace companion in the same family make it a strong pick for product teams that need more than one register.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended, Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended, Greek, Vietnamese
- Styles: 14 styles (7 weights plus italics)
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Public Sans
Accessible type built for government and civic apps
Public Sans
Public Sans came out of the U.S. government’s design system, built explicitly for readability and accessibility across web services. It has almost none of the personality flourishes of display fonts, which is exactly the point: it’s meant to disappear into the interface the way SF Pro does on iOS. Choose it when a project needs to feel official, dependable, and free of stylistic distraction.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended, Vietnamese
- Styles: 18 styles (9 weights plus italics)
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Work Sans
Friendly grotesque for websites and simple apps
Work Sans
Work Sans softens the strict geometry of a typeface like SF Pro with slightly warmer curves, making it feel a touch more approachable in body copy. It was optimized for on-screen reading at text sizes, so paragraphs of UI copy or blog content stay comfortable rather than clinical. It pairs easily with punchier display fonts for headlines while staying restrained in menus and buttons.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended, Vietnamese
- Styles: 18 styles (9 weights plus italics)
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Manrope
Modern geometric sans for apps and dashboards
Manrope
Manrope leans slightly geometric, with rounder bowls and a more contemporary feel than some of its peers, which makes it popular in fintech and SaaS interfaces. It carries an open-source, semi-condensed structure that saves horizontal space in tight UI components like navigation bars and tab labels. Try it where a brand wants something a step friendlier than pure Helvetica-style neutrality.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended, Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended, Greek, Vietnamese
- Styles: 7 weights (Extra-Light to Extra-Bold)
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Figtree
Rounded, calm sans built for modern web apps
Figtree
Figtree has quickly become a favorite for product marketing sites because its rounded terminals soften the usual sharpness of grotesque sans fonts. It reads as understated and current at once, which is a hard balance to strike. Small UI text stays crisp, but it also holds its own set large as a hero headline.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended
- Styles: 14 styles (7 weights plus italics)
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DM Sans
Low-profile grotesque for buttons and labels
DM Sans
DM Sans was designed with a low x-height contrast and tight letterspacing meant specifically for small text in interfaces, mirroring one of SF Pro’s core strengths. It stays legible in dense UI without feeling cramped, and its geometric skeleton gives it a slightly more contemporary edge than older grotesques like Arial.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended
- Styles: 18 styles (9 weights plus italics)
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Hanken Grotesk
Versatile grotesque for modern product design
Hanken Grotesk
Hanken Grotesk has a wider range of weights and a slightly more expressive italic than most SF Pro alternatives, giving it more flexibility across an entire brand system. It works equally well set tight in a navigation bar or loosened up in a marketing headline.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended, Cyrillic Extended, Vietnamese
- Styles: 18 styles (9 weights plus italics)
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Plus Jakarta Sans
Contemporary sans for startups and product UI
Plus Jakarta Sans
This one has become something of a shorthand for the current startup aesthetic online, showing up across countless SaaS landing pages. Its slightly condensed proportions and confident weight contrast make it feel current without drifting into anything trendy enough to date quickly. Use it where a brand wants to look established and modern at the same time.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended, Cyrillic Extended, Vietnamese
- Styles: 14 styles (7 weights plus italics)
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Outfit
Geometric sans with a confident, modern edge
Outfit
Outfit trades the strict neutrality of SF Pro for a more geometric, slightly rounded structure that reads as friendlier and more design-forward. It works well in interfaces aimed at a younger or more creative audience, and it holds up nicely in all-caps navigation labels thanks to its even letter widths.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended
- Styles: 9 weights (Thin to Black)
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Sora
Balanced sans for interfaces and marketing
Sora
Sora sits comfortably between a UI font and a display font, with just enough personality in its curves to work as a headline typeface while still functioning in body copy and buttons. It’s a solid single-family solution for teams that don’t want to manage a separate pairing for headers and interface text.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended
- Styles: 8 weights (Thin to Extra-Bold)
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Archivo
Sturdy grotesque built for signage and screens
Archivo
Archivo was originally drawn with signage and wayfinding in mind, so it carries a structural sturdiness that reads clearly from a distance or at a glance, much like SF Pro does in iOS status bars and navigation. Its extensive weight range, including a condensed cut, makes it useful for data-heavy interfaces that need to pack in numbers and labels without losing legibility.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended, Vietnamese
- Styles: 18 styles (9 weights plus italics)
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Source Sans 3
Practical sans for text-heavy applications
Source Sans 3
Adobe built Source Sans as its first open-source typeface, aiming at exactly the kind of practical, get-out-of-the-way legibility that SF Pro delivers on Apple devices. It can feel a bit plain at large display sizes, but that plainness is an asset in long-form UI text, settings screens, and documentation.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended, Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended, Greek, Greek Extended, Vietnamese
- Styles: 16 styles (8 weights plus italics)
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Karla
Grotesque sans with subtle character and warmth
Karla
Karla has slightly more personality in its curves than a purely neutral grotesque, giving interfaces a touch of warmth without sacrificing the clean lines the SF Pro look depends on. It’s a good option for consumer apps that want to feel a little less corporate.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended
- Styles: 14 styles (7 weights plus italics)
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Lexend
Readability-focused sans for apps and screens
Lexend
Lexend was developed with reading research behind it, aimed at reducing visual stress and improving comprehension speed on screens. That makes it a thoughtful choice for education platforms, accessibility-focused products, or any interface where extended reading matters more than brand personality.
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended, Vietnamese
- Styles: 9 weights (Thin to Black)
Pairing and Implementation Tips
Most of these fonts are designed to function as a full system on their own, so resist the urge to pair two of them together in the same interface.
If you do want contrast, combine one of these neutral grotesques for UI text with a serif or a more expressive display face reserved for marketing headlines.
When replacing SF Pro on the web, load only the weights you actually use in the interface; two or three weights are usually enough for a clean UI hierarchy.
Test your chosen font at the smallest size it will actually appear at, such as a button label or a form field, since that’s where subtle spacing differences from SF Pro show up first.
Any of these families can be downloaded free from Google Fonts and self-hosted or loaded via the Google Fonts API, making them practical, license-friendly substitutes for SF Pro across websites, web apps, and cross-platform products.