Online Font Recognition Tools – 15 Free Online Solutions

You are surfing the Internet looking for inspiration and suddenly you come across a page with an awesome font. This typography would perfectly suit the project you are working on! But, alas, you can’t find out what the font exactly is used! You try this or that variant without any success, waste a lot of time and feel quite disappointed by the absence of a result. Probably, each of us has experienced a similar situation at least once in his/her life. Not to have an ability to identify what the font is applied when you badly need to know the correct answer can be rather frustrating. To avoid the unpleasant experience in future, look at this collection of free tools for online font recognition. These font analyzers are quite different and have their pros and cons. So, study these font checkers to find out what font identifier will work for you.

Online Font Recognition by Text

There are 2 main ways to identify a font:

• By Image
• By text

Let’s start with the search by text.

Identifont

This font checker applies an interesting approach to the online font recognition. Here you are supposed to answer a number of questions about the font you are looking for. You can search fonts by appearance, by name, by similarity, by picture or by the designer or publisher. Probably, this way to identify the font is a bit complicated but it can lead to unexpected results – you may find an excellent variant you were not thinking about.

Serif Font Identification Guide

This browser-based font checker is able to identify serif based fonts. All you need is to answer the questions on the shape of the glyphs of the font in question. The Guide offers you a list of possibilities on analyzing the elements that more closely match your font. In fact, this tool for online font recognition is similar to Identifont. Still, the main difference is that you input the data all on one page and it makes the whole process a bit quicker. Besides that, the owner of this site is also ready to answer any online font recognition questions for free via email.

Search by Sight

Search by sight uses a set of questions (there are 12 of them) to find what the font style exactly you need. As soon as you are through with the questions, the font analyzer offers you a list of options to choose from. This style of online font recognition may seem time-consuming. Still, the positive side of this system is that you are welcome to play with the answers and then you will get an unusual font for your purposes.

Online Font Recognition by Image

If you prefer to use images while looking for the font you like, the next tools may be really helpful:

WhatTheFont

If you are looking for the easiest way to identify the font, this font analyzer is for you. You just need to take several elemental steps while uploading the font image or screenshot. For better results, try to get the text as horizontal as possible. Letters should be around 100 pixels tall in your image and do not touch each other.

WhatFontIs

This font identifier is simple and very useful if you want to find a close match for that font you love. Moreover, it is one of the best variants of online font recognition for budget-minded uses because you can choose to only search free fonts for the closest match. WhatFontsIs has one more very handy feature – you can search the font data by specifying the URL of the picture instead of using the picture or its screenshot.

Fontspring Matcherator

To apply Fontspring Matcherator you only need to click on the font you want to identify. This font identifier with a nice design offers you the font names it finds for you. With this tool, you also have a possibility to download the fonts you have identified, but be ready to pay a considerable sum of money. Still, if you only want to know the name, it is completely free.

FontEdge

This tool for online font recognition may not be as well-known as the previous options, but it’s worth a paying attention to. To start the identification process, click on the Image icon and upload your image. Then click ‘Identify now’ button to receive the results. This font analyzer is pretty good, so it is extremely likely that you will get more one result. Choose the most suitable one and at the bottom, you’ll see an example of how that will look.

Pre-Installed Font Recognition Tools

You can also identify the font by using pre-installed tools such as the following.

WhatFontTool

This easy-to-use font checker can help you identify fonts while browsing a website. But you need to install WhatFont first and only then you will be able to use it. To do it, drag the icon in your bookmark bar, activate it and enjoy the convenience of recognizing any font type directly on a web page.

Fount

This font identifier will tell you not only the type of the font but also the font size, weight, and style. This feature is really important in some cases. To use the tool drag the Fount button into your bookmarks bar. On doing it go to any site and click the Fount bookmarklet, then click on any type you want to identify. Now you are able to identify any web font you see. Fount works in Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and IE8+.

Font Finder

Font Finder is a Firefox add-on created for designers, developers, and typographers who deal with website customization. This font identifier allows a user to analyze the font information of any element on a page. You only need to copy any piece(s) of that information to the clipboard and perform inline replacements to test new layouts. But take into consideration that to be able to use the tool you have to install it first of all.

FontInfos

FontInfo is one more variant to find out what the font it is. This add-on is easy to install and to use. It provides a “Fonts” panel in the Page Info dialog, listing all fonts actually used in the page, and whether they are locally-installed fonts or downloadable web fonts loaded using @font-face. In addition, the add-on creates a “Show Fonts in Selection” command, so that you can determine exactly which fonts are being used.

Type Sample

Though the homepage looks quite simple, this online font recognition tool works pretty well. They have a browser extension for Chrome as well as a JavaScript bookmarklet.To create a bookmarklet you need to drag the “Type Sample” link up into your bookmarks toolbar. When you want to identify a website font, just click this bookmark. Also, you can type in a text to see how it would look in a particular font.

Online Groups for Asking

Sometimes the easiest way to identify fonts you like is just to ask. Here are some special groups where you can ask about the font you are interested in:

Font in Use

The members of the Font in Use group are designers themselves, so they can be really helpful when you need some help with font recognition. Besides that, if you decide to join this group, you will get a wonderful chance to learn more about different fonts.

Quora

One more excellent place to ask a question about the font you are looking for is Quora. There is a special section for typeface identification. Go ahead and ask people. You will certainly find what you are looking for this way.

Reddit – Identify this font

This is one of the most diverse and heavily-trafficked social news communities. Reddit website is made up of mini-forums called subreddits that each focus on a particular topic. Identify This Font is one such forum. The best thing about this site that in most cases your question is answered within 24 hours.

Online Font Recognition – Final Words

As you see, there are plenty of options to choose from. Go ahead and find the variant which will satisfy your needs in the best manner and save your time. I hope that these font identifiers will be truly helpful when it comes to font checking.

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