# Fonts Like Arial

12 open fonts whose letters are closest to Arial, ranked by a glyph comparison. All free for commercial use.

## Quick Answer

The closest open font to Arial is Almarai (similarity 89), then Zalando Sans and Istok Web. Almarai is released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 and is free for commercial use.

## Reference Font Profile

- **Family**: Arial
- **Kind**: system font (no preview: commercial font, described from its sources)
- **Designer**: Monotype Type Drawing Office - Robin Nicholas, Patricia Saunders 1982
- **Vendor**: Agfa Monotype Corporation
- **Supplied With**: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1
- **Licence**: LicenseRef-Windows-Font
- **Sources**:
  - [designers, vendor, products](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/arial) (read 2026-10-22)

### Fallback CSS Stack

```css
font-family: "Arial", "Almarai", sans-serif;
```

## Ranked Open Lookalikes (12 Fonts)

| Rank | Font | Similarity Score | Licence | Details |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| #1 | **Almarai** | 89 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/almarai/](/fonts/almarai.md) |
| #2 | **Zalando Sans** | 88 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/zalando-sans/](/fonts/zalando-sans.md) |
| #3 | **Istok Web** | 87 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/istok-web/](/fonts/istok-web.md) |
| #4 | **Inter** | 86 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/inter/](/fonts/inter.md) |
| #5 | **Arimo** | 86 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/arimo/](/fonts/arimo.md) |
| #6 | **Schibsted Grotesk** | 86 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/schibsted-grotesk/](/fonts/schibsted-grotesk.md) |
| #7 | **Pretendard** | 85 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/pretendard/](/fonts/pretendard.md) |
| #8 | **Akt** | 85 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/akt/](/fonts/akt.md) |
| #9 | **Adwaita Sans** | 84 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/adwaita-sans/](/fonts/adwaita-sans.md) |
| #10 | **Liter** | 84 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/liter/](/fonts/liter.md) |
| #11 | **Open Sauce One** | 84 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/open-sauce-one/](/fonts/open-sauce-one.md) |
| #12 | **Funnel Sans** | 84 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/funnel-sans/](/fonts/funnel-sans.md) |

## Other Scripts With Similar Latin Letters

- **Mingzat** (Lepc): Similarity 84, licence OFL-1.1 - [/fonts/mingzat/](/fonts/mingzat.md)

## Scoring Method

62 letters and digits (A-Z a-z 0-9) rendered at 160px cap height on a 32x32 grid with 3px gaussian blur, combined with edge-orientation texture (15% weight). Scores are normalized so that 0 represents an average pair of fonts across the 1571 compared fonts, and 100 represents identical letter shapes. Computed on 2026-10-22 using glyph-shape + edge-texture v2.

## Machine API

JSON representation available at [/api/fonts-like/arial.json](/api/fonts-like/arial.json).