Free fonts similar to Benton Sans

The alternatives in detail

How to recognize Benton Sans

Begun by Tobias Frere-Jones in 1995 from Morris Fuller Benton’s News Gothic of 1908, then expanded by Cyrus Highsmith and released by Font Bureau in 2002 and 2003.

• The News Gothic skeleton: fairly narrow letters, a tall x-height and low contrast.
• Many widths of one design in use together, typically condensed headlines over regular text.
• A plain, newsy texture with slightly more warmth than Helvetica.

In a site’s CSS it may appear as BentonSans, Benton Sans Condensed, Benton Sans Compressed, Benton Sans Wide. Not sure what you are looking at? Identify the font on the live page first.

Is Benton Sans free?

Commercial, from Font Bureau. It is not preinstalled on any system.

The alternatives on this page are open source, so you can use them on commercial sites, self-host the files and ship them in products. Read more in font licensing in plain English.

Use Public Sans in your CSS

Put the free font first and keep sensible fallbacks behind it. Self-hosting the files is the most private and usually the fastest option.

@font-face {
  font-family: "Public Sans";
  src: url("/fonts/public-sans-400.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Public Sans";
  src: url("/fonts/public-sans-700.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-weight: 700;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Public Sans", "Franklin Gothic Medium", "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif;
}