A free font finder from image that works in your browser
It happens all the time. You see a logo, a book cover or a poster with lettering you love, and the first thing you want to know is: what font is that? A font finder answers that question. You show it a picture, and it points you to fonts that look the same or very close.
This font finder is free and simple. You add an image, mark the line of text, type the words and press Find matching fonts. A few seconds later you get a ranked list from this website's directory, each with a preview, a match score and a link to the font page where you can read the license and download the files. Nothing is uploaded, because the whole comparison runs inside your own browser tab.
How to find a font from an image, step by step
- Add your image. Drag a picture onto the box, click it to choose a file, or copy an image and paste it with Ctrl + V. Screenshots work very well.
- Mark the text. Drag a box around one line of letters. If you are not sure, press Detect the text area and the tool will outline the dark shapes for you. The small preview shows the plain black-and-white shape the tool will compare.
- Fix the preview if needed. If your text is light on a dark background, tick the box for that. If the letters look broken or blobby, move the Cleaning strength slider until they look clean.
- Type the words. Enter exactly what the text says, with the same capital letters. This is how the tool knows which letters to draw in each font.
- Choose the writing system (Latin, Arabic, Devanagari and so on) and press Find matching fonts.
- Look at the results. The top fonts are shown with your marked image above and the same words in the font below, so you can judge the match with your own eyes.
How the matching works
Your marked text is turned into a plain black-and-white shape and scaled to a standard height. The same words are then drawn in each font of the directory, in a regular, bold and italic style where those exist. Every drawing is laid over your shape, and the tool measures how much of one covers the other. It also takes the width of the words and the thickness of the strokes into account, so a narrow font does not pass for a wide one. The fonts with the best overall score come first.
This is a visual comparison, not a magic recognition engine. That is why it asks for the words: it needs to draw the same letters you see. In return it is private, free, and it explains its answer by showing the two versions next to each other.
Tips for better results
Crop tightly around one line
Extra shapes such as photos, borders and a second line of text confuse the comparison. A tight box around the letters is the single most useful thing you can do.
Choose words with different letters
The word “Quickly” tells a font apart much better than “Hello”. Letters such as g, y, Q, R, a and t are especially revealing because designers draw them in very different ways.
Avoid curved, tilted or heavily decorated text
Text on a bottle, a wave or a perspective photo is hard to read for any tool. Straighten the image first if you can. Shadows, outlines and glow effects add shapes that are not part of the font.
Use a bigger image
Letters that are only a few pixels tall lose their details. If you have a larger version of the picture, use that one.
Try more than one crop
If the first answer looks wrong, mark a different word or a different line. Two or three tries often point to the same few fonts, and that is a good sign.
Font finder by text: what do you need to type?
Some people search for a “font finder by text” and expect to type a sentence and receive a font name. A font is a design, not a piece of text, so the words alone cannot identify it. What the finder does is use your words as a guide: you tell it which letters appear in the picture, and it draws them in every font to compare. If you have no picture at all, but you know the style you want, such as rounded, handwritten or old-fashioned, the font directory lets you browse by style and type your own text into every preview.
Arabic font finder from image
Choose Arabic as the writing system, mark one line of Arabic text and type the same words. The tool then draws your words from right to left in every Arabic font of the directory and compares them with your picture. Urdu and Persian work in the same way. Arabic letters join and change shape depending on their neighbours, so a short, clean crop gives better matches than a long line. The same steps work for Hebrew, Devanagari (Hindi, Marathi, Nepali), Bengali, Thai, Cyrillic and Greek.
What the font, Adobe fonts and DaFont: how this compares
You may have used tools such as WhatTheFont, the font identification features of Adobe's apps, or the identification forum on DaFont. They are good at different things. Large font-identification services search enormous databases of commercial and free fonts and read the letters from the image automatically. Forums rely on helpful people who recognize typefaces by eye. Adobe's tools work best for fonts that are part of Adobe's own library.
This page is a lighter option. It is free, instant and private, it only searches the fonts published on this website, and it asks you to type the words. If your font is a rare commercial typeface, you may see only look-alikes here, and a large identification service is the better next step. If you want a free font that looks like the one in your image, and you want to download it with its license, this is a quick way to get there.
Found a font? Check the license first
A match tells you what a font looks like, not how you may use it. Every font in the directory has its own page with the license shown in plain words. Some licenses allow commercial work, some allow personal use only, and some ask for credit. Read the page, or our font licensing guide, before you use the font on a logo, a product or a website.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free font finder from an image?
Yes. Upload a picture that contains text, mark the line you want to identify, type what it says and press Find. The tool compares the shape of your letters with the fonts in this directory and lists the closest ones. It is free, needs no account and the image never leaves your device.
How does this font finder work?
Your image is cleaned up into a plain black-and-white shape. The same words are then drawn in every font in the directory and each drawing is laid over your image. The fonts whose letters cover the same area, with a similar width and stroke weight, score highest and appear first.
How is it different from “What the Font”?
Services such as MyFonts WhatTheFont search very large font databases and use image-recognition technology to read the image for you. This tool is a lighter, free helper: you type the words yourself, and it only searches the fonts published on this site. It is a good first step, and a result here comes with a page where you can download the font and read its license.
Can I find a font by typing text instead of using an image?
Typing is part of the process: the tool needs the words that appear in the image. If you have no image and only a description such as “rounded handwriting font”, use the font directory search and browse the categories, where you can preview every font with your own text.
Does it work as an Arabic font finder from an image?
Yes. Choose Arabic as the script, crop one line of Arabic text and type the same words (Urdu and Persian work too). The tool then compares the picture only with fonts that support Arabic. Cursive scripts are harder to match than Latin letters, so crop tightly and expect a short list of candidates rather than one sure answer.
Why are my results not exact?
The tool only knows the fonts in this directory. If the font in your image is a commercial or custom typeface, the closest free look-alike is shown instead. Text on a curved or tilted surface, heavy effects such as shadows and outlines, and very small or blurry images all lower the accuracy.
Is there a font finder from image free download or app?
You do not need to download anything. The finder runs in your browser on this page, on a phone as well as on a computer.
Is it like the DaFont font finder or the Adobe font finder?
DaFont’s forum lets people identify fonts for you, and Adobe’s tools identify fonts inside Adobe programs or from Adobe Fonts. This page does the matching automatically and for free, using the fonts of this website, without a forum wait or a subscription.
Are my images uploaded or stored?
No. Everything happens inside your browser. The picture is not sent to our server, so it is safe to use with private or unreleased designs.
What kind of image works best?
A sharp screenshot or photo of straight, horizontal text with good contrast between the letters and the background. Crop to one line. Two to ten letters are enough, and a word with several different letters (such as “Quickly”) gives the best match.
Can it identify handwriting?
Only if a handwriting font in the directory resembles it. Real handwriting is unique to the writer, so the tool shows the closest handwriting-style fonts instead of an exact match.
May I use the font I found?
Check the license on the font’s page first. Each font in the directory shows what its license allows, and our font licensing guide explains the common licenses in plain language.
Browse more fonts
If you did not find an exact match, the font directory has many more fonts to preview with your own text. Popular places to look: Sans serif fonts, Serif fonts, Display fonts, Handwriting fonts, Script fonts, Arabic fonts. New to fonts? Read how to install a font on your computer.