FREE and Cheap Commercial Use Fonts, Designs, and Craft Files Resource Guide
Free Fonts for Commercial Use: The Ultimate Guide
This is the ultimate source guide for where to find FREE and cheap fonts with commercial use for Cricut, Silhouette, LASER cutting software, Inkscape, Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel Draw, and other design and craft projects, including information on font licenses and how they apply to crafters.
Some of the free and cheap fonts with commercial use that I have been able to grab are Oaker Font FREE, MF I Love Glitter for only $1, Manhattan Script Font FREE, Amastery Font Duo with extras FREE. I have found whole font and design bundles with commercial use for FREE. There are so many resources to build your font and design library for cheap or free. Keep reading for where I go to build my digital library for designing and crafting.
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Please note, since fonts are downloaded onto your computer’s operating system, they will work with any of your software that uses fonts. You do not download fonts for each, or specific software.
Before I get to the list of resources, I will include some information about downloading fonts and different font licenses here because I didn’t know this when I began. I am not a lawyer or even a trained graphic designer, just a crafter who loves fonts, so please always read the license to make sure it applies to your situation.
What kind of fonts and designs can I get for free?
I started compiling this list of websites to get FREE fonts for commercial use, however, a lot of font sites have other design resources that are helpful for crafters as well, such as cut files, SVGs, mock-ups, printable patterns, graphics, stock photos, and more, so I will include those too. There are a number of them that have free commercial use products, $1 deals, inexpensive single products, and bundles (I love bundles).
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It is important to have proper security measures in place such as antivirus and threat protection software, before downloading any files from the internet. Download at your own risk.
How do I get fonts on my computer?
If you are new to downloading fonts, click here to learn how to download and install new fonts onto your computer.
Why would a font designer or creator offer their fonts for free?
There are several reasons a creator might offer a font or design for free. Some of these could be, to build interest in their work, attract new customers, to thank their customers, or just to offer a way to try before you buy (you download the free demo version of the font and if you like it, pay for the license to access the glyphs and/or use it commercially). Font websites sometimes make arrangements with font designers to offer a typically paid font for free or $1 for a short time or limited release, to promote and bring customers into their site.
What is a font license?
For those who don’t know, when you download a font, you don’t actually own the font. You are agreeing to use the font according to the font creator or seller’s license. Always read the Terms of Use (TOU) or End User License Agreement (EULA) for what is allowed when using a font. If you only create things for personal use then you shouldn’t need to worry about it, but since I encourage side hustles and creative businesses, it is most likely you are here looking for fonts to use commercially.
Which version of the font license do I need?
A lot of the websites listed below have only the desktop license included and an option to upgrade to a license that allows other uses. Here is an example of Glamour Absolute on CreativeMarket. You would most likely just need the desktop license. There is even a blue box next to it that says recommended. But for some people, they may need the higher priced option for the E-pub or App license.
Here are some examples of licenses you may come across and what they could mean.
Desktop and Print license: This license is sufficient for most crafters. It allows you to download the font on your computer and use in the software you have installed such as word processors, Silhouette Studio, Cricut Design Space, Inkscape, Adobe products, Corel products, etc. to create your work.
Webfont license: This is only needed if you are embedding the font in code for websites, digital ads, and emails. NOTE: This is not the same as creating an image with text and putting it on your website.
Embedded Products license: This could mean a few different things so check the license for clarification. One example is when you want to use a font to create a PDF and you want the viewer to be able to see it as you created, it needs to be embedded. My understanding is that a lot of font creators don’t like to offer this because it is a way of distributing the font because it could be extracted from the file. Another example is if you need to embed the font into the operating system of software apps and hardware.
Mobile app or App license: for fonts used (embedded) in a mobile app.
ePub license: If you self publish e-books and publications that you sell, or give away to promote your business (commercial use), you need this license for the fonts used.
Server license: This is for including a font in a cloud-based SaaS (Software as a Service), not something most crafters will need.
Open-Source license/Open Font license: These fonts are free to download, use, and share. These fonts can also be modified. Familiarize yourself with what is allowed when modifying and distributing these fonts if you choose to do so. Google fonts are an example of open-source licensed fonts.
Do I have to pay for a font license or digital files?
It depends on where you get the font or digital files from and how you are going to use them. Here are some situations that could apply to you.
Free for Personal use: These are for personal use only. You create digital or physical products for yourself or to give as a gift to family or friends. Some fonts are available by the designer, foundry, or someone else, (not always legitimately) to download and use free for personal use.
I stopped downloading these fonts because I do use fonts commercially, or at least hope to, and I don’t want to fall in love with a font for a project and then realize it is $60, or even more, for commercial use. For example, Lavanderia is an absolutely gorgeous font and you can name your price to get it for personal use, but it is $60 for commercial use. These personal use free fonts are also most likely DEMO versions and don’t contain the extra characters or glyphs. Creators deserve to be paid for their work, just as we do, so don’t download a free font for personal use and use it to sell something. There are lots of options for free products with commercial use.
Paid for Commercial use: There are different kinds of uses for commercial use files. Even if you pay for it, it doesn’t mean you can use it however you like, so make sure the license applies to the type of creating you do. Within a paid commercial use license, there can be many restrictions.
Some restrictions I have seen are; the number of devices or users, limits on the number of end products, what type of products you are creating (physical or digital). Some you can use the file on its own, and some you need to add other design elements, some you are allowed, or even required to modify the design element, and some you cannot. Digitizing, or creating a vector file of the font is usually not allowed as well. Always read the license to make sure it is valid for how you want to use it.
NOTE: This is more for the digital files than fonts but I would like to add that, unfortunately, just buying a commercial use license doesn’t mean you have the right to sell the item or use it to make something with to sell. If someone created a file using a trademarked, or copyright protected item, that they didn’t have a license to sell, then you can’t either. Etsy is loaded with examples of this. From Disney and sports team logos, to even popular sayings that have been trademarked, you are ultimately responsible for making sure you are allowed to sell the items you create.
Free for Commercial use: These are offered directly from designers, foundry, or from font sites. As mentioned above, designers offer free fonts for several reasons. Free commercial use fonts and designs license can vary just as the paid ones do.
Enterprise use: This is sometimes an option for large scale use of the font or design, for design companies with many employees, or for use with print on demand sites.
With the exception of open-source fonts, you should never distribute, give away, or share the font file yourself, even if it is free, just refer them to the site where they can download for themselves.
Donations accepted
Most designers accept donations. Please consider donating to them if you are pleased with their work and/or you are making money using their work.
Membership: Some sites offer memberships. You pay a monthly or annual fee and you are able to use fonts, files, and graphics they offer. Some sites that offer memberships are:
Creative Fabrica: They have individual plans for fonts, graphics, craft files, or any combination. I have the All Access plan which includes unlimited access to all fonts, crafts, graphics & embroidery designs. You can sell physical & digital items for any commercial project, there are also products that can be used as-is for POD (Print on Demand). New products added daily. Includes CreativeFabrica’s generous commercial use license.
Craft House SVG: Lifetime Entire Site Access for one time payment. Use code LGS10OFF to get get 10% off. This is not a subscription but a one time payment that gives you commercial use license for all products currently on their site + new releases.
Fontbundles Plus and Designbundles Plus: There are now three levels of membership. Depending on the level you choose, they give you 10-50 credits to use towards a selection of hundreds of exclusive products, 10%-15% off every purchase, earn points for purchases, access to the $1 deal after party (which means you don’t need to set a timer and hope to be one of the lucky ones to get in on the $1 font or design deals before they sell out), and more!
CreativeMarket: With this monthly membership you can choose the level of credits you want to use each month, save 20% on purchases, and access free monthly design drops worth up to $1,000. If you cancel, you lose any unused credits but keep the license to the products you downloaded during your membership.
Crella Subscription: POD use allowed. Fonts, graphics, illustrations, SVGs, mockups, templates, presets. Access and download 15,521 136,294 products that include generous commercial use license.
Refer to each site for details as sometimes they change. And always read the Terms of Use or End User License Agreement.
Which font file do I need to download?
Whenever there is a choice, go with the OTF file (OpenType Font) . It is the one that will have the extra characters and swashes called glyphs. If there is only TTF file (TrueType Font), that is ok, download that one. Some fonts will have more than one font (the whole font family) in the file so make sure to download and install all the fonts included (that you want) but only one file version (OTF if available) .
Have a backup plan
Before you start downloading fonts and design files, it is a good idea to have a storage plan/backup in place. I use this WD My Passport external hard drive for my PC and this WD Passport portable storage for my Mac. It keeps bulky graphics files off my computer’s hard drive and a backup in case something happens to my computer.
I organize the folders by the name of the company that I downloaded them from to help access the license, or other information if needed in the future. For example, when downloading the file, I add “Creative Market FREE” or “CM Free” to the beginning of the file name if I got it from Creative Market and if it was free, if I paid for it, I don’t add free. Just be consistent with your names so they are organized.
Some companies include a printable image of the design bundle when you download it or a PDF of the fonts included for reference. This is another good reason to keep the files grouped by where you got them from, so you know which account to go back to for the items included in the bundles.
Note: When working in Silhouette Studio, I don’t save work that I create to the library. I only save it to a hard drive. Saving to the Silhouette library or Silhouette cloud is not guaranteed and work is often lost. Only files purchased from the Silhouette Store is guaranteed to be able to recover.
Here is the list of sites to get FREE or Cheap commercial use fonts and design resources:
My top three favorite sites for free fonts and designs
- Creative Fabrica: Generous, user friendly license for commercial use, and so many freebies. They are currently offering three free daily gifts; a font, a graphic, and a craft file. They also have great sales, and $1 deals.
- Fontbundles: Their $1 deals are not to miss! They have awesome bundles, loads of freebies, and a generous license which makes it easy for using their products to make you own products to sell. Also as mentioned above, they have a membership program. Their sister site is listed below.
- The Hungry Jpeg: Free fonts, SVGs, digital papers, graphics, photos, templates, themes, and more. They have a weekly freebie, $1 deals, and new bundles released often. Great source for high quality fonts and graphics. I checked my account when compiling this list. At this time, I have downloaded 67 freebies from them including fonts, gorgeous graphics, and even bundles. This is where I got the Amastery Duo with extras for FREE!
Craft House SVG: They sell on a couple of marketplaces but it is great to shop directly with the designer. They have hundreds of free cut files and thousands of cut files and graphics available for really great prices and awesome deals. They even have an option to buy a license for the entire site for one price. If you find any products you want to purchase, use my code LGS10OFF to save 10%.
Crella: Free fonts, patterns, graphics, SVGs, templates and more with commercial use. They also have super deals including more than 200 fonts for $1. But the $1 fonts are limited quantity so don’t wait if you see one you want.
Font Squirrel: High quality FREE fonts. This site started out as the best deals site by FontSpring but they have evolved into the 100% free for commercial use font site. They also have a font identifier.
DesignBundles: Lots of free cut files, graphics, clip art, patterns, icons, templates, and more. They also have amazing bundles, and their $1 deal event is not to miss! Sister site to Fontbundles.
SoFontsy: Marketplace of fonts and designs created by crafters, for crafters. The fonts and designs are curated to be optimal for use with die cutting machines like Silhouette, Cricut, Brother, etc. They have freebies as well as $2-$3 deals, including commercial use. These files are typically intended to be cut and sold on finished products, not as elements to create files to sell digitally.
Creative Market: Free fonts and designs weekly, and more freebies are unlocked with purchases. They offer photos, graphics, templates, themes, and more. Some products starting as low as $2. They also have bundles. NOTE: 07/23/2019 Creative Market has updated their license options. There are now four choices for font licenses including Desktop, Webfont, App, and E-pub licenses. They also added Personal, Commercial and Extended Commercial licenses for all of their non-font products. Click the link above for more information on this update. This is the fourth time they have made changes to their licenses. It says that these new licenses apply to purchases from now on (unless changed again), and previous purchases will maintain the license that was current at the time of purchase.
Happy Crafters: Not only a great place for Vinyl and HTV, they have dozens of free cut files that include commercial use.
Craft Bundles: Sister site of The Hungry Jpeg and self proclaimed “The best SVG and DXF cut files for crafters”. They offer hundreds of free and $1 cut files with commercial use, as well as bundles that are loaded with useful resources like fonts, mock ups, graphics, clip art, and more.
YouWorkForThem: “The original creative marketplace” Offers a number of free fonts as well as paid fonts, graphics, photos, videos, and Photoshop action. Receive instant access to over 1800 design resources with just your email.
InkyDeals: Marketplace that has freebies and 99 cent deals. They also have font bundles, graphics, textures, Photoshop actions, and more.
Pixelo: Free fonts, templates, mock ups, Photoshop actions, and more. They also have large, inexpensive bundles of fonts and design resources.
Pixel Surplus: Free fonts, graphics, textures, templates, and mock ups, with generous commercial use license. They also offer bundles as a way to get fonts for less.
Mighty Deals: A daily deals website. They offer free fonts as well as great deals on font bundles and design resources. This is where myself, and numerous other crafters have bought the famous Samantha Script by Laura Worthington. That deal finally ended and moved to Creative Fabrica, but I have also bought a bundle including Wallington Pro for about $9, a bundle of 50 fonts for $10, a huge pack (over 2,000) of graphics and design elements for about $9 as well, and, the Flower Power Mega Bundle, because I love floral graphics as much as fonts. All of those deals were an additional 15%-20% off with discount codes I had. I also picked up a really fun deck of playing cards that has elements of design on each card.
Deeezy: According to them “This platform is a valuable resource for quality assets, definitely a go to place for any professional designer”. Find fonts, stock photos, backgrounds, lots of 3D lettering, mockups, textures… Choose a category and select “only Freebies” filter to see the free offerings.
**Deeezy has an interesting offer. You can buy access to download their entire set of current and future freebie offers WITH commercial license. As of now, it has 318 items in the megabundle: 118 fonts & 200 photo & graphic bundles. Even though you are paying for the freebies, it is rather inexpensive for what you get if you want it all.
Design Cuts: They have some free fonts, but a whole lot of design assets like graphics, mock ups, vectors, textures, glitter patterns, even Procreate tools, so many unique resources. Their freebies include a tutorial to help you get the most out of using it, and their YouTube channel has tutorials on using Illustrator and Photoshop. I recently added their Podcast to my list of shows and look forward to listening to it. It is called The Honest Designers Show if you want to check it out.
Behance: Owned by Adobe. Creative professionals around the world showcase their projects and other users can discover creative work. It is an amazing site to scroll through when you need some creative eye candy. The generous artists also offer fonts and designs for free. Be sure to read the license for each item you download as they change by designer and even by product.
Fonthaus: They have been around for almost 30 years. Over 500 free fonts, dingbats, ornaments, and extras are available. Fonts for purchase start at just $5. They also have a discount program, the more you buy, the more you save.
Digitanza – Lots of free SVGs and some mock ups, loads of SVGs starting at just $1. Fonts, SVGs, cut files, mock ups, graphics, patterns, clipart, bundles, and more, all with crafters in mind.
Dealjumbo: Free fonts, graphics, mock ups, photos and textures, with commercial use license. They also have cheap fonts and deals on bundles.
Missy Meyer: Creator of the super popular fonts Pinsetter, Garlic Butter and more. She generously offers a number of fun, free fonts, with commercial use on her site.
Harold’s Fonts: Loads of unique free fonts, including Pharmacy, a popular font among crafters (Pharmacy MMX is the updated version, the older version had issues).
FontBros: Lots of free fonts, and even some extras. Commercial use is allowed however, the license is rather restricted so make sure you read it carefully.
Typodermic Fonts: 300+ free fonts generously offered by Ray Larabie, lettering artist. Choose the free font you like and download it from FontSpring.
Font Shop: Part of the Monotype brand family. Some of the foundries offer a single style of their typeface family for free.
MyFonts: Also part of the Monotype brand family. Foundries offer a single, or demo font for free.
Fonts.com: Another Monotype brand site. This link takes you to browse all free fonts on their site.
Font Space: Close to 40,000 fonts free for download, but not all of them are free for commercial use. To find the ones that are, select a style, or browse alphabetically and under filter options, select “only show commercial-use fonts”. This is where I got Britany Signature font.
1001 Fonts: To see the free commercial use fonts, click the price tag icon next to the “your text here” box. Then scroll through, select, and download the fonts you like.
The Free Design Club: This is a brand new font site that offers a free font of the week as well as a list of curated freebies (free fonts from other sites that they recommend). Read the info for the free fonts, they have been offering personal use licensed fonts and fonts with commercial use license. You don’t want to accidentally download a personal use only font. They plan to offer thousands of free fonts, including a freebie of the day in the future.
Fontfabric: A digital type foundry that creates retail fonts, custom typography, and generously offers free fonts that include a commercial use license. The site features a type tester which is handy for viewing your text in the different fonts available.
Set Sail Studios: Sam Parrett creates eye-catching, distinctive fonts. He offers several free fonts on the FREE tab on his site, and more if you sign up for his newsletter. Click on the Typetester link to test drive any of the fonts available.
Dafont: Probably the most popular site for free fonts among crafters, but one I rarely download from anymore. There are over 39,000 fonts and dingbats that can be downloaded for free. Not all of them are commercial use though, and you will want to be careful using some fonts from this site. Some of the fonts are made illegally, especially in the case of dingbats (Disney, Hello Kitty, DC, brand logos, etc.) To help locate commercial use fonts, click on a category or style, on the line where you can type to preview, click “more options”, check the boxes next to Public Domain and/or 100% Free. You still need to make sure the font is legitimately free and available for commercial use by reading the license. Note: Only click the gray Download button to download the fonts, some ads on Dafont have a colored “download” buttons to trick you into clicking on them.
Adobe Fonts: Free, commercial use included for subscribers of Creative Cloud apps such as Photoshop, or InDesign. You can create a free Adobe ID account and download Bridge for free. Bridge is helpful for viewing files and graphics on your computer or external hard drive. You get access to about 175 font families with the basic library. These fonts aren’t downloaded like typical font files. All you need to do is activate them and then they are ready to use when you log into your Adobe apps and Microsoft Office tools like Word and Paint.
SVG Cuts: This site offers gorgeous cut files especially for paper crafters and scrapbooking. In addition to their beautiful SVG kits and files, they offer hundreds of free SVG files. You may create physical products to sell using the files, you just have to follow their simple rules and fill out a form.
Apex Cuttable Designs: Specialize in cuttable SVG designs, they also have some fonts and a sister site dedicated to embroidery designs.
Cutting For Business: Christine generously offers her cut files for free with commercial use. Also check out her site for helpful information on running a craft business.
Scarlet Rose Designs: She generously offers more than 30 cut files for Free which includes small business commercial use. Click on the Freebies tab to see them all. Her site is filled with hundreds of cute, trendy cut files for all occasions, available for purchase which include SVG, DXF, PDF, EPS, and PNG files.
SmilyPixel: Hundreds of free vintage illustrations, drawings and designs in vector and PNG format.
Vectorian: Offers Victorian ornament vectors with limited commercial use, and links to a curated list of free Victorian style fonts.
Open Source and Public Domain Fonts and Graphics
Google Fonts: All Google fonts are released under open source licenses. You can use them in any non-commercial or commercial project. You can download them to your computer and install them, or add them to your website using code.
Font Library: 14,000 free commercial use fonts but you should still read the license with each file.
Openclipart: These images are all released into the Public Domain and free to use for any commercial purpose. The site can be a little hard to navigate. Click on a category heading and then on an image in the category to open the images in that category. Try to use search for a keyword.
As you can see, there are numerous, legitimate commercial use fonts and graphics available for free. Different sites have different arrangements with designers. That is how you can get a “paid” font for FREE or just $1. Some font sites will have special limited time or flash sales. I am always on the lookout for the latest free commercial use fonts and designs. Sign up for my newsletter to be notified of upcoming font deals that are too good to miss.
Premium Paid Fonts
There are some fonts that are always only available for purchase, however sometimes a deal can be found. Premium fonts are worth purchasing for many reasons. A few reasons are, they can set your work apart from designers that only use free fonts. Free fonts can sometimes be lesser quality; some won’t weld, or the spacing and kerning can be bad which makes it look “off”. And most importantly, it supports the designer so they can continue to offer high quality fonts.
Some deals I have found on premium fonts are:
Desire Pro by Borges Lettering was on my dream font list for a couple of years. He rarely had sale. This is a $99 font and it is worth every penny, however, that is most likely not in the budget for most crafters. Fortunately, it has been put on sale and is now 40% off (when I got it, it was 30% off and I thought that was an amazing deal). AND, to help even more crafters and designers be able to access the font, the designer created smaller groups of the alternate characters for even less. They still contain more than half of the glyphs as the original. There are three of these “lite” versions available, all with slightly different glyph options Desire Lite A, Desire Lite B, and Desire Lite C.
Samantha Upright Script by Laura Worthington. This has got to be the most popular paid font among crafters, I know it was my first purchased font back in 2014. Because this font is so popular with crafters, she released a special, extra thick version which is easier to cut with your Silhouette or Cricut. The new craft version also comes with frames. Get Samantha Craft here.
I bought the upright version which has been just fine for me. If you are interested in the craft version with the frames, you could do that one instead. You can also use Samantha Upright or Samantha Craft if you have a CreativeFabrica All Access Subscription.
A premium font I also wanted and just bought the license for recently is Limon by Typesenses Foundry. This font family includes 16 fonts including script, serif, outline, and dingbats, it is so beautiful.
Sabrina Lopez, the creator of Limon and several other gorgeous typefaces runs 50% off sales on her licenses occasionally. Follow her on Instagram @typesenses if you want to catch the next one.
Note: Limon is not PUA (Private Use Area) encoded so the glyphs will not show up in Character Map or in the Glyphs panel in Silhouette Studio. You will need a software like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop to access them. The characters you can access in Silhouette Studio or Cricut Design Space are still beautiful though.
Using fonts in Silhouette Software
As I mentioned earlier, you can use any fonts installed on your computer in Silhouette Studio Software. With the release of Silhouette Studio Version 4.1, any upgraded version of Silhouette Studio Designer Edition and above (the paid upgrades) allows you to access glyphs through the Text Style Tab. This is a big time saver when using glyphs in your design. You can access glyphs to use in any version of Silhouette Studio by using the Character Map on a PC, or by using the Font Book on a Mac, but it is an added step. I use and recommend Business Edition, but if you want to start with Designer Edition and upgrade in steps you can do that too.
If you have any questions about upgrading your Silhouette Software including where to get the best deal, what features are included in each edition, and most other FAQs check out my Silhouette Software Comparison Chart.
There are so many sites out there with free resources, it is impossible to list them all. If you know of a site that I have missed, leave a comment below, I would be happy to check it out and add it.
I will update this list as I find more sites that fit in with my criteria; free or cheap, with commercial (seller friendly) license, that are legitimate/legal.
Alternatively, if you see a site on this list that offers illegal downloads, please let me know!
Best,
Megan
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