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I find it convenient to use Google Fonts on the websites I build.

Quite often I need to find the closest Google Font to a specific commercial font to match a client requirement.

This type of question is fairly common for specific fonts such as Helvetica Neue Equivalent on Google Fonts? but is there an online tool where I can show an example of a commercial font by uploading an image and then have the tool display the three closest Google Fonts?

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    In a lot of cases, this would be somewhat subjective. Also note that not all brand guidelines would be OK with choosing a typeface that's "close but not quite"
    – DA01
    Commented Jan 17, 2014 at 16:30
  • Thanks @DA01, it doesn't have to be perfect. I am mostly working for small businesses rather than big brands and they are generally pretty happy to avoid paying for a commercial font if there is something similar for free.
    – Neil Robertson
    Commented Jan 18, 2014 at 1:41
  • for a specific answer, Roboto sans is a good google font to replace Helvetica, it's been accused of being a "Helvetica ripoff." as far as the more general area of any other fonts, the tools referenced in the answers below will be your best bet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roboto google.com/fonts/specimen/Roboto
    – BrianC
    Commented May 27, 2014 at 15:57

4 Answers 4

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The first thing to say, is that I want to be honest and I'm affiliate to the software I present bellow (I'm the software designer/programmer of this font identification engine) and I'm really proud about it :)

It's not an online service but a software application that runs on your Mac or Windows PC: http://www.findmyfont.com

It takes as input a Text image and identifies the font of any letters you select, by examining both your local fonts (installed or stored in a folder) and also querying the Find my Font online font database (currently about 125.000 fonts).

The reason I decided to post a message here, is that Find my Font has many advantages over the traditional WhatTheFont and WhatFontIs services, especially considering Google Web Fonts matching. Nothing is actually free on free services, everything has it's price when it comes to performance or final results.

WhatTheFont identifies only the fonts they sell (and most of the time they can't even accurately identify their own fonts). There is no reason ever to add Google Web Fonts on their database. In fact I think they wish that Google Fonts never existed.

WhatFontIs has a lot of free & commercial fonts in their database, but it's not their primary concern to add & update free fonts, as their main income comes from affiliation sales of commercial fonts from MyFonts.com (the owner of WhatTheFont service), fonts.com and other commercial font resellers. More than this, it will not tell you that the free font they identified belong to Google Fonts.

FindMyFont is not a "free service". You can download the 30-days-trial but if you really like it you have to buy the Pro edition (once). What you get in exchange for this (non-free service) is that we have no affiliation ties, so we can focus to offer you the best service:

a) The current online database of Find my Font contains all Google Fonts published until now. They are stored in a special group and the App always let you know that the font you identified belong to Google Fonts.

b) The same thing applies to other free/fremium/commercial fonts sources as our online database contains the complete collection of Dafont.com, OPTI Fonts, etc. as well as more than 300 commercial foundries.

c) If you want to find a Google Web Font which is a good substitute of a commercial font, there is no reason to create any images: Find my Font has a special function to select a font of your computer, type the letters you want and find all similar fonts (including Google Fonts).

d) If you want to focus your results only on Google Fonts, you can download the whole Google Fonts set on your computer, let Find my Font know where these fonts are, and find an equivalent / similar font within seconds (the local font identification speed is about 5 million fonts / minute).

More than that, the matching algorithm of Find my Font is superior in many ways to WhatTheFont and WhatFontIs: You can use images with text as small as 20 pixels high, it accurately matches both the font-family and the weight, it can match samples artificially italicized / emboldened / expanded / condensed and many more.

I declared off-course that all above info comes from a person affiliate to (and very proud of) the software presented here. Too good to be true? You can always try it yourself by downloading the 30-days-free trial:

http://www.findmyfont.com/index.php/download/download-free-edition

You will love it!

Regards

Fivos

UPDATE (31/3/2015) Satisfying the customer requests we received, the new Find my Font version 3.3.02 now supports the following options for Online Font Matching: "All", "Freemium", "Commercial" and "Google Web Fonts". Google Fonts will still appear in results if you select "All" or "Freemium", but if you select "Google Web Fonts" the matching results will contain exclusively Google Fonts + a matching percent for each one of them. This makes it even easier to choose the closest Google font to your image sample or to any font you have on your computer.

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    The software feels old, but it's amazing. It found a font I was looking for that the 10-ish other services I tried couldn't.
    – yndolok
    Commented Jul 7, 2016 at 16:44
  • Good service, the ui needs an enhancement though
    – luis19mx
    Commented Nov 29, 2019 at 18:35
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    "It's not an online service" ... Doesn't answer the question asked or the question I came here to find answers for.
    – Vince
    Commented Aug 12, 2020 at 4:19
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    How come you're not packaging your software with Chocolatey? You'd have a lot more users...
    – Avery Freeman
    Commented Aug 15, 2021 at 15:52
  • It's 2023 and "Find my Font v3.4.02" just found the Google Web Font for me on Windows 11. Oldie but goldie. 👍
    – Benny Code
    Commented Apr 5, 2023 at 19:09
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Try this one (although it is not yet complete for all the Google fonts):

http://joelcrawfordsmith.com/closest-font/

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  • I don't think that the author of the page really put much effort into it. He finds Lato to be close to Gill Sans. None of the distinctive features of Gill Sans are found in Lato, e.g. the distinctive descender arc of the uppercase J and the uppercase Q.
    – dotancohen
    Commented Jan 17, 2016 at 15:48
  • There is a similar but more comprehensive list at: designtheway.com/most-used-fonts-alternative-google-fonts
    – Neil Robertson
    Commented Sep 16, 2019 at 9:55
  • Not much help unless you're looking for one of those 13 fonts...and not really an "online tool"
    – ashleedawg
    Commented Feb 17, 2021 at 3:34
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Here are two links.. i found these useful to find the fonts.. but you have to select font's image of reasonable size.

  1. http://www.whatfontis.com/
  2. http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

I hope this will help you

if you have only images (font's JPGs etc) then first you will need to know the name of that font. And there are 50+% chances to find the font names using these links. And afterwards, similar-fonts-to-those-found-names will be an easy way to Google.!

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    The problem with WhatTheFont is that it only works for fonts that MyFonts can sell. Since the fonts on Google Fonts are mostly released under the SIL Open Font License, I don't think there will be much (any?) overlap there. For example, WhatTheFont is clueless at recognizing Ubuntu: i.sstatic.net/apjeN.png
    – JohnB
    Commented Jan 17, 2014 at 15:33
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    What Font is is a better tool for this case, though in my experience the results are always less focused than WhatTheFont. It did recognize Ubuntu (albeit the wrong weight), and the advantage is you can ask it to display only free fonts or free alternative fonts
    – JohnB
    Commented Jan 17, 2014 at 15:40
  • Thanks @JohnB. These are both great tools especially whatfontis.com where you can limit results to non-commercial fonts. Ideally I'd like to limit results to Google Fonts only as (apart from a few standard fonts), only Google Fonts are available in the tools I use. I could add alternative font tools but this would add an unwanted and unnecessary overhead to the website.
    – Neil Robertson
    Commented Jan 18, 2014 at 2:17
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    While these are both useful resources, this post doesn't directly address the question - an online tool to identify the closest Google Font.
    – Luke
    Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 1:46
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    @Luke, You are right, but if you have only images, first you will need to know the name of that font. And there are 50+% chances to find the font names using these links. And afterwards, similar-fonts-to-those-found-names will be an easy way to Google.!
    – MFarooqi
    Commented Feb 10, 2015 at 14:36
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An important update regarding my previous post about Find my Font.
A few days ago, we released Find my Font mobile (a free App for both iOS & Android) which makes it even easier to find the closest Google Font:

a) You take a photo (or load an image) of your original font
b) You select 1-7 distinct letters
c) You choose "Google Fonts" as matching category
d) You tap on search button and get the 30 closest Google fonts

Take a look at the last 2 screenshots bellow, for an example of finding the closest Google font for Adobe Garamond.
You can get the free App from either App Store or Google Play, at the following link: https://www.findmyfont.com/download/download-mobile-edition

Happy font hunting!
I'll be glad to read your comments & suggestions on how to make the App even better.

PS: Using Find my Font mobile you can also match any commercial of free (e.g. dafont.com) font

FmF Mobile Screenshots

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  • Wish this was a web app...
    – Drewdavid
    Commented Dec 17, 2023 at 4:00

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