Free fonts similar to Adobe Caslon

The alternatives in detail

How to recognize Adobe Caslon

Based on the types William Caslon cut in London from the 1720s. Adobe Caslon is Carol Twombly’s 1990 revival, drawn from Caslon’s own specimen pages.

• The apex of the uppercase A has a scooped-out hollow.
• A flamboyant italic ampersand, one of the most recognizable characters in typography.
• Moderate contrast, a smallish x-height and a lively, slightly uneven texture in paragraphs.

In a site’s CSS it may appear as Caslon, Adobe Caslon Pro, adobe-caslon-pro, ACaslonPro-Regular, Big Caslon, Caslon 540. Not sure what you are looking at? Identify the font on the live page first.

Is Adobe Caslon free?

Adobe Caslon is commercial and included with Adobe Fonts, where its CSS name is adobe-caslon-pro. Big Caslon, a display cut by Matthew Carter, ships with macOS. Other Caslons each have their own license.

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 Libre Caslon Text 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: "Libre Caslon Text";
  src: url("/fonts/libre-caslon-text-400.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Libre Caslon Text";
  src: url("/fonts/libre-caslon-text-700.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-weight: 700;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Libre Caslon Text", "Adobe Caslon Pro", "Big Caslon", Georgia, serif;
}