If you haven’t been using font detector tools for quite a while, you will be greatly surprised by their accurate solutions. Similar to how machine learning is evolving, these algorithms (which are often closely related to the GAN model) have made an enormous leap forward.
I believe there is no need to explain when and why you may resort to a font identifier. Spoken briefly, you may have seen some great typeface anywhere and feel the immediate urge to have the same or analog one in your toolbox or your current project. Of course, you can contact the author, but is it always possible? Definitely not, especially if you saw the font in some magazine, web design, or even metro!
Only a couple of years ago, there was hardly a font identifier to show accurate results. Now, you can rely more on them, and with a single photo or screenshot, you should be able to find fonts you need.
That’s why we’ve decided to share with you all the various tools: form apps to browser extensions and let you test them to find the most applicable one. From our side, we’ve done some research too, and checked all of the provided services in order to select a font detector that does its job best.
Types of Font Identifiers
There are 2 types of font identifiers depending on how they analyze the typeface and its features:
- Image-based font identifier tools. They can recognize specific attributes of the text in an image and match them with a font in the tool’s database. Such tools can identify selected glyphs, and if the algorithm is well-written, some magic happens, and the service comes with a suggestion from an available library. To get the most accurate results possible, you should make sure the uploaded image is high-resolution, and there is only one typeface for analysis. Sometimes, even a couple of letters is enough!
- Web-based extensions. They recognize highlighted text on a page by accessing the website’s code and identify the fonts. They are able to assess the font’s size, style, and color. However, they are helpless if you want to identify a font from an image.
In this selection, we’ll bring font detectors of both types, and we’ll also highlight some alternative tools in case none of them works for you.
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How to Use:
- Upload an image that contains the font you want to identify (you can crop box around the text if the type is on a part of it). The app will detect it automatically.
- The software will show you a list of similar fonts you can choose from.
Pros
- Provides suggestions in seconds
- Has almost no problems with hand-written fonts or patterned background
- There is an app for iOS and Android, so you can find a font wherever you are
Cons
- WhatTheFont library is limited to a single source
WhatTheFont is a popular image-based font finder that is fast, intuitive and provides amazing accuracy. To perform the search, it uses deep learning algorithms and seeks analogs to the provided fonts among a collection of over 133,000 styles on My Fonts. Yes, you got it right, the service is provided by this typographic marketplace.
WhatTheFont allows unlimited font identification: it equally works with sans serif, serif, and even connected scripts. Moreover, it can analyze images containing more than one font or images with a pattern instead of the recommended white background.
The PRO membership will cost 199$ a year and provides users with unlimited searches.
How to Use:
- Upload the images with the font you want to find and draw a manual crop box around the type or the text. The app will detect and identify individual glyphs.
- After that Font Matcherator will give you a list of fonts with links you can click to purchase the needed one.
Pros
- Easy to use unless you have proper graphics
- Works with Open Type, and there is no other app that can do it as well
Cons
- Rejects images and doesn’t provide any info about the size or format before you start uploading them
- If you upload an image via URL, there is no guarantee it will work
Font Matcherator is the second best-used font identifier, which works much like WhatTheFont, but it’s totally free. And it also checks the scanned types in its own library (which is vast and varied as well). Moreover, Fontspring states that it can quickly identify a font and almost any typography content details, including glyphs and Open Type.
This may look like I’ve already made my choice, but I really enjoyed the super minimalist form of Font Matcherator, which allows some manipulations with the image. For example, you can rotate the image or select particular glyphs to find an analog for. However, when I started uploading the screenshots, the app rejected them due to the big size. Apparently, Font Matcherator isn’t a font identifier for instant use, and you’ll have to resize/crop/optimize the sample image beforehand. Or upload an image URL if you have one.
How to Use:
- Upload an image with the font you want to identify and draw a crop box around it (make sure to optimize it if it is distorted).
- Customize the picture with the provided tools so the type is seen better.
- Identify 3-5 letters following the instructions for the better results.
- Once these steps are complete the app will try to guess what font it is.
Pros
- Has the most extensive font library and many tools to make font identification accurate
- The search tool for finding similar or alternative fonts is helpful and easy to use
Cons
- The tools don’t function properly
- There are infinite pop-ups and lots of banners everywhere
- The PRO membership extended functionality isn’t worth buying
I have never heard of this font detector before, so I was pretty curious to check how it works. And I was immediately captivated by the message of What Font Is. It states that the user should be able to use the font identifier regardless of the publisher, producer, or foundry. And there are 850K+ fonts (commercial or free) in their catalog. Sounds great! Besides, What Font Is uses a finder AI, which increases our chances of finding an exact copy of the font in the image.
You can use What Font Is for free, but if you need a premium support (if you are a PRO user you can send the sample image with the font to the website’s authors and they will help you to identify it) you can buy it for 39$/year.
Font Identifiers From Websites
How to Use:
- Install the tool and open the site where you found the font you want to identify.
- Click the Font Ninja icon, and the font identifier will analyze the website and give you the list of types used there.
- You can also try every suggested font right in Font Ninja’s tab before buying it. The app allows testing fonts in any software, which is particularly convenient.
Pros
- There is an app for Mac and Windows and a browser extension for most popular browsers (Chrome, Safari, and Firefox)
- Elementary to use yet has everything a designer needs to identify fonts as well as selected letters and characters from a website.
Cons
- The library might have been more extensive
We’re done with image-based font identifier tools, so let’s check what web-based ones have to offer. Font Ninja is one of the most obvious options. Fonts Ninja is an app and a browser extension available for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox that allows identifying, trying, bookmarking, and even buying commercial fonts on a webpage. It offers an enjoyable user experience, which differs it from any other font detector on the list. And it is really good at paying close attention to all the little details and finding an exact match of the font you are looking for.
There are 3,000 fonts in Font Ninja’s library, and if it doesn’t have an exact match, it will offer something comparable. The font identifier is free for 15 days with 20 free font installs. After that, it’s $29/year.
How to Use:
- Install the tool ans open the website and scroll to the text written in the font you want to find.
- Simply point to the text and WhatFont gives the type’s name.
- It also provides additional information about it once you click the text: family, style, weight, size, line height, and color. Basically, everything it can get from the source code.
Pros
- Super easy to use, no problems identifying any font on the page
- Provides extensive information about the font and works well regardless of your browser version
- Fast work
Cons
- Does quite an obvious thing, as you can find the same info in the source code of the page
This font identifier is provided as a free Google Chrome browser extension. It is minimalist and very simple yet is a powerful workhorse whenever you need to recognize a font on the website. You can open as many info windows as you need, which might come in handy when you have to compare types with identical style within a single page.
This sleek font detector is used by over a million users (can you believe that?) and has got the hearts of multiple creators worldwide — and mine too! In fact, it’s an example of software that does exactly what you want from it. It will also help you find commercial fonts.
How to Use:
- Open the website and find the text you want to identify the font of.
- Click the button of the app and put your mouse on the text.
Pros
- Free, yet allows the same functionality as premium services
- Convenient, intuitive UI
Cons
- Sometimes you click and font recognition works just right, and sometimes it fails and you just, well, click the link.
This font identifier seems to show even greater minimalism than WhatFont, however it does a different kind of magic when checking the fonts, characters and letters on the page. Once you install it and add it to your bookmark bar and every time you need to check a font on the website, you click the button and hover your mouse over the text. You can click it too, and in this case you’ll be able to test the font in the tab. It sounds convenient, and it is really so. Compared to Font Ninja, Type Sample is even more compact. Besides, it’s free and will help you find an exact match!
How to Use:
- Answer the questions of the quiz given by the app to narrow the search.
- After you finished with the questions, Identifont will give you some options that are similar to the font you looked for.
Pros
- A free dose of nostalgia
Cons
- You may never find fonts you required, and you will likely miss some detail while choosing the glyph parameters
- The quiz may take long
Warning: this isn’t a font finder by image nor a web-based font identifier. Identifont is a huge throwback to the times when such tools didn’t imply image/code scanning or AI. Instead of these modern perks, this free app suggests a kind of a questionnaire: it asks you what characters and glyphs of the font you want to identify are like and step by step narrows down the options from a database of around 11,000 typefaces. If you are lucky enough, it will allow a couple of matches once you complete the quiz (or it may not!). Finding a specific font will be extremely hard.
It really looks like a quiz and takes pretty much of your time with no guarantee of success. I was frankly surprised that half of my colleagues were aware of it. Indeed, there are so many tools to find fonts in seconds, so Identifont is a loss of time.
How to Use:
- Add the app as an extension to your browser.
- When you found the type you want to identify, just click on it and wait till the app gives you the options of what font it is.
Pros
- Easy to use, even for beginners
- Reveals information about size, weight, and color of the typeface, and some other CSS properties which aren’t as commonly used
- Possible to not only find fonts, but also the background color of the website
Cons
- Works only with Google Chrome and Firefox
To help developers, designers, and typographers choose the appropriate font style and design for their website or other application, there is a free application called Fontello. It is a browser extension, and your browser window’s top will display an icon for it. By just clicking on the sentence or paragraph that comes to mind after hitting the browser icon, you can learn the font name, size, and family. It helps website designers pick the best font for their work, saving them valuable time.
How to Use:
- Sign up for Quora by using your email, Gmail, or Facebook. The app will offer to choose your interests and submit the topics you know about.
- Ask the question you need. Add the image with the font you want to find and wait for the answers from the users. Or you can try to look it up in previous posts, but it will work only of you word it perfectly.
Pros
- Many professional members of the community who answer the questions pretty fast
- High possibility of finding the font you are looking for
Cons
- The search feature is quite hard to work with
- If you want to look up your question in the previous posts, you need to know exactly how to word that query
- It’s impossible to find something “similar” this way or by the image
Quora is a Q&A-type website that enables people to ask questions from all areas of economics, business, marketing, or just regular life. And, of course, the design section on this app is also a huge one. The significant advantage of Quora is that the service uses an algorithm to rank the value of each user’s answer based on the ratings of his previous queries. It increases the chances of getting the correct answer to your question. The site also uses a machine-learning algorithm to classify the topic of a question based on the user’s history of questions and requests.
One category is dedicated to designing and typeface identification and has some very knowledgeable members who are always ready to help. Even if you did not find an exact typeface matchup and members don’t know it either, you will likely find a couple of similar options.
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Ease of use
Quality of search
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Price and functionality
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1. Ease of use
The ease of use is crucial, so I checked each font finder on how easy it is for a user who opened the site for the very first time to figure out the working pattern. Here 10 stands for the obviousness of actions and as harder it gets, the lower the grade becomes.
2. Quality of search
That’s, obviously, the most important criterion for the font finder, as we came there to get the results. Some sites gave me the exact font I was looking for, which got them a solid 10, others gave me similar options and there were font finders who weren’t even close. I also considered the time I spent searching and the easiness of the process.
3. Font library
The font library is a big part of the search success. The huger and more diverse it is, the higher are the chances to find the exact type you were looking for. It’s also cool when the font matches that the app gave me were really similar to the one I needed, as it may help designers pick an even better type for their projects.
4. Prices and functionality
In this collection of font finders there are options for any budget: free sites, premium sites and the possibility of buying a PRO membership after trying a free trial period. Here I rated the diversity of options so the user can find the perfect variant for their needs and the overall functionality for each plan.
Best Font Identifier — Our Editor’s Choice
After testing all of the listed font detection tools, the idea of the best one came up almost immediately and it was confirmed by assessing them against the criteria. WhatTheFont from My Fonts stands out with its fast, intuitive UX and the provided fonts library. With over 133,000 types, the designer is guaranteed to identify the font from an image thay upload or its close analog, making the app the most accurate font identifier tool.
For web fonts, WhatFont Google Chrome extension and Type Sample are the winners. Yet it’s limited to a single browser, it’s still the best choice being free and easy to use. True, they are more than just minimalist, however, they provide extensive information about typefaces in no time and at no cost.
Frequently Asked Questions
Give http://www.whatfontis.com a try, we’re able to detect both free and commercial fonts. Alex @WhatFontIs