# Fonts Like Tahoma

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

## Quick Answer

The closest open font to Tahoma is Clear Sans (similarity 90), then Noto Sans Display and Radio Canada. Clear Sans is released under the Apache License 2.0 and is free for commercial use.

## Reference Font Profile

- **Family**: Tahoma
- **Kind**: system font (no preview: commercial font, described from its sources)
- **Designer**: Matthew Carter
- **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/tahoma) (read 2026-10-22)

### Fallback CSS Stack

```css
font-family: "Tahoma", "Clear Sans", sans-serif;
```

## Ranked Open Lookalikes (12 Fonts)

| Rank | Font | Similarity Score | Licence | Details |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| #1 | **Clear Sans** | 90 / 100 | Apache-2.0 | [/fonts/clear-sans/](/fonts/clear-sans.md) |
| #2 | **Noto Sans Display** | 84 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/noto-sans-display/](/fonts/noto-sans-display.md) |
| #3 | **Radio Canada** | 82 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/radio-canada/](/fonts/radio-canada.md) |
| #4 | **Noto Sans JP** | 82 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/noto-sans-jp/](/fonts/noto-sans-jp.md) |
| #5 | **Source Sans 3** | 82 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/source-sans-3/](/fonts/source-sans-3.md) |
| #6 | **DejaVu Sans** | 82 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/dejavu-sans/](/fonts/dejavu-sans.md) |
| #7 | **Varta** | 82 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/varta/](/fonts/varta.md) |
| #8 | **IBM Plex Sans** | 81 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/ibm-plex-sans/](/fonts/ibm-plex-sans.md) |
| #9 | **Assistant** | 80 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/assistant/](/fonts/assistant.md) |
| #10 | **Asap Sharp** | 80 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/asap-sharp/](/fonts/asap-sharp.md) |
| #11 | **Hind Siliguri** | 80 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/hind-siliguri/](/fonts/hind-siliguri.md) |
| #12 | **PT Sans** | 80 / 100 | OFL-1.1 | [/fonts/pt-sans/](/fonts/pt-sans.md) |

## Other Scripts With Similar Latin Letters

- **Narnoor** (Gong): Similarity 83, licence OFL-1.1 - [/fonts/narnoor/](/fonts/narnoor.md)
- **Noto Sans Hebrew** (Hebr): Similarity 82, licence OFL-1.1 - [/fonts/noto-sans-hebrew/](/fonts/noto-sans-hebrew.md)
- **Menbere** (Ethi): Similarity 81, licence OFL-1.1 - [/fonts/menbere/](/fonts/menbere.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/tahoma.json](/api/fonts-like/tahoma.json).