Free fonts similar to Lyon

The alternatives in detail

How to recognize Lyon

Kai Bernau, begun in 2006 as a degree project at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and published by Commercial Type in 2009. It is based on the 16th-century types of Robert Granjon.

• An old-style skeleton with smooth, modern curves and crisp, tidy serifs.
• Moderate contrast and a comfortable x-height, giving an even, medium-gray text color.
• A separate Lyon Display cut with finer details for headlines.

In a site’s CSS it may appear as Lyon Text, Lyon Display, Lyon Text Web, Lyon Display Web. Not sure what you are looking at? Identify the font on the live page first.

Seen on sites we inspected

These pages show the exact sizes, weights and spacing measured on the live site, for Lyon or the brand typeface that replaced it.

• What font does Notion use?

Is Lyon free?

Commercial, sold by Commercial Type. It is not on Adobe Fonts and 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 Source Serif 4 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: "Source Serif 4";
  src: url("/fonts/source-serif-4-400.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Source Serif 4";
  src: url("/fonts/source-serif-4-700.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-weight: 700;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Source Serif 4", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;
}