Font Licensing

Now that you know how to include a font, you need to know where to get them from. Perhaps more importantly, you need to know what fonts you can use.

As with any content you find on the web that you want to use in your own projects, you must check its license to see if you are legally allowed to use it in the way you intend.

As with images, music, and video, fonts will fall under many different types of licenses. Some are very restrictive and require licensing fees, others will be given an MIT, GNU, or some other more open license.

However, even with these more open licenses, some fonts will still restrict what mediums they can be used freely on. This may include:

  • Personal-use only (This restricts you to using this font only on your computer for word processing or graphic design. But will typically allow the work to be published to hard copy.)
  • Web embedding (This allows you to use the font for a website.)
  • E-Book (This allows you to embed the font in digital content beyond the web.)
  • Applications (This allows you to embed the font in a stand-alone application.)