# Fonts Like Microsoft Sans Serif

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

## Quick Answer

The closest open font to Microsoft Sans Serif is Almarai (similarity 90), 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**: Microsoft Sans Serif
- **Kind**: system font (no preview: commercial font, described from its sources)
- **Vendor**: Microsoft Corp.
- **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/microsoft-sans-serif) (read 2026-10-22)

### Fallback CSS Stack

```css
font-family: "Microsoft Sans Serif", "Almarai", sans-serif;
```

## Ranked Open Lookalikes (12 Fonts)

| Rank | Font | Similarity Score | Licence | Details |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| #1 | **Almarai** | 90 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/almarai/](/fonts/almarai.md) |
| #2 | **Zalando Sans** | 89 / 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 | **Arimo** | 86 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/arimo/](/fonts/arimo.md) |
| #5 | **Inter** | 86 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/inter/](/fonts/inter.md) |
| #6 | **Pretendard** | 86 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/pretendard/](/fonts/pretendard.md) |
| #7 | **Funnel Sans** | 86 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/funnel-sans/](/fonts/funnel-sans.md) |
| #8 | **Liter** | 86 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/liter/](/fonts/liter.md) |
| #9 | **Akt** | 85 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/akt/](/fonts/akt.md) |
| #10 | **Open Sauce One** | 85 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/open-sauce-one/](/fonts/open-sauce-one.md) |
| #11 | **Archivo** | 85 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/archivo/](/fonts/archivo.md) |
| #12 | **Adwaita Sans** | 85 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/adwaita-sans/](/fonts/adwaita-sans.md) |

## Other Scripts With Similar Latin Letters

- **Mingzat** (Lepc): Similarity 86, 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/microsoft-sans-serif.json](/api/fonts-like/microsoft-sans-serif.json).