# Fonts Like Century Schoolbook

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

## Quick Answer

The closest open font to Century Schoolbook is Arbutus Slab (similarity 81), then Redaction and Besley. Arbutus Slab is released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 and is free for commercial use.

## Reference Font Profile

- **Family**: Century Schoolbook
- **Kind**: stand-in font (no preview: commercial font, described from its sources)
- **Licence**: unknown
- **Stand-in Comparison**: We compared against TeX Gyre Schola, which CTAN describes: "Schola serves as a replacement for the standard New Century Schoolbook font."
- **Sources**:
  - [why the stand-in, original designers](https://ctan.org/pkg/tex-gyre-schola) (read 2026-10-22)

### Fallback CSS Stack

```css
font-family: "Century Schoolbook", "Arbutus Slab", serif;
```

## Ranked Open Lookalikes (12 Fonts)

| Rank | Font | Similarity Score | Licence | Details |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| #1 | **Arbutus Slab** | 81 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/arbutus-slab/](/fonts/arbutus-slab.md) |
| #2 | **Redaction** | 77 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/redaction/](/fonts/redaction.md) |
| #3 | **Besley** | 75 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/besley/](/fonts/besley.md) |
| #4 | **Old Standard TT** | 73 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/old-standard-tt/](/fonts/old-standard-tt.md) |
| #5 | **STIX Two Text** | 72 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/stix-two-text/](/fonts/stix-two-text.md) |
| #6 | **Stardos Stencil** | 71 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/stardos-stencil/](/fonts/stardos-stencil.md) |
| #7 | **Brygada 1918** | 71 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/brygada-1918/](/fonts/brygada-1918.md) |
| #8 | **Adamina** | 70 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/adamina/](/fonts/adamina.md) |
| #9 | **Sawarabi Mincho** | 70 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/sawarabi-mincho/](/fonts/sawarabi-mincho.md) |
| #10 | **Prata** | 69 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/prata/](/fonts/prata.md) |
| #11 | **Frank Ruhl Libre** | 69 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/frank-ruhl-libre/](/fonts/frank-ruhl-libre.md) |
| #12 | **Cantata One** | 69 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/cantata-one/](/fonts/cantata-one.md) |

## Other Scripts With Similar Latin Letters

- **BJCree** (Cans): Similarity 93, licence OFL-1.1 - [/fonts/bjcree/](/fonts/bjcree.md)
- **Uchen** (Tibt): Similarity 87, licence OFL-1.1 - [/fonts/uchen/](/fonts/uchen.md)
- **Zen Antique Soft** (Jpan): Similarity 79, licence OFL-1.1 - [/fonts/zen-antique-soft/](/fonts/zen-antique-soft.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/century-schoolbook.json](/api/fonts-like/century-schoolbook.json).