OLD-STYLE SERIF IN THE DUTCH TRADITION · FREE ALTERNATIVES

Free fonts similar to Freight Text

Freight Text is a warm, sturdy text face inspired by the 18th-century Dutch taste of Kis, Caslon and Fleischman. Its optical-size siblings let one design run from footnotes to billboards. It is a long-standing favorite for magazines, universities and editorial websites.

Short answer: the closest free alternative to Freight Text is Crimson Pro. Lora is also worth a look. All are open source and free for commercial use.

Freight TextTHE ORIGINAL

Freight Text is not installed on this device, so it cannot be drawn here. The free alternatives below are live. On a device that has it, this row shows the original and unlocks the overlay.

Crimson ProCLOSEST MATCH
Essays, features and footnotes
LoraFREE ALTERNATIVE
Essays, features and footnotes
MAKE IT YOURS
/* Crimson Pro is open source. Self-host it or load it from Google Fonts. */
font-family: "Crimson Pro", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;

The alternatives in detail

1. Crimson Pro

Why it works. A sturdy old-style text face with a full weight range and italics, made for comfortable long reading.

What differs. A little narrower and lighter, with a smaller x-height. Increase the size slightly to match Freight’s presence.

Open Crimson Pro on Google Fonts ↗

2. Lora

Why it works. A well-balanced text serif with calligraphic roots and a similar warmth in paragraphs.

What differs. Smoother and more contemporary, with softer serifs and a narrower weight range.

Open Lora on Google Fonts ↗

How to recognize Freight Text

Joshua Darden, 2005, first published by GarageFonts and now by The Freight Collection. Part of a superfamily with Display, Big, Micro and Sans cuts.

  • A warm, dark texture with moderate contrast and a generous x-height.
  • A lively italic with a clearly calligraphic rhythm.
  • The CSS name freight-text-pro, often next to freight-sans-pro or freight-display-pro.

In a site’s CSS it may appear as Freight Text Pro, freight-text-pro, FreightText Pro, FreightTextPro. Not sure what you are looking at? Identify the font on the live page first.

Is Freight Text free?

Commercial. It is included with Adobe Fonts, where its CSS name is freight-text-pro, which is how most sites serve it.

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 Crimson Pro 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: "Crimson Pro";
  src: url("/fonts/crimson-pro-400.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Crimson Pro";
  src: url("/fonts/crimson-pro-700.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-weight: 700;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Crimson Pro", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;
}
One rule per weight you host. Adjust the file paths to match. Pairing it with a second face? Try the font pairing playground.

Saw a font you can’t place, or can’t afford?

Font Inspector names the font on any website in one click. For popular paid and system fonts it suggests free look-alikes right in the panel.

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Questions & answers

What is the closest free font to Freight Text?+

Crimson Pro is the closest free alternative to Freight Text. A sturdy old-style text face with a full weight range and italics, made for comfortable long reading. Lora is also worth testing.

Is Freight Text free to use?+

Commercial. It is included with Adobe Fonts, where its CSS name is freight-text-pro, which is how most sites serve it.

What Google Font looks like Freight Text?+

On Google Fonts, the nearest matches are Crimson Pro and Lora. All are open source and free for commercial use. None is an exact copy, so compare them with your own text first.

How can I tell whether a website uses Freight Text?+

Inspect the text. Browser DevTools show the rendered font in the Computed tab, and the Font Inspector extension shows the family, the rendered font and free look-alikes in one click.