Free fonts similar to Palatino

The alternatives in detail

How to recognize Palatino

Hermann Zapf, designed in 1949 and released in 1950 by the Stempel foundry, later Linotype. Named after the Renaissance writing master Giambattista Palatino.

• Visible pen logic: strokes swell and taper as if written with a broad nib.
• Wide, open letters with a larger x-height than most old-style faces.
• The CSS usually lists it as Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino to cover Windows and Mac.

In a site’s CSS it may appear as Palatino Linotype, Palatino LT Std, Palatino Nova, Book Antiqua. Not sure what you are looking at? Identify the font on the live page first.

Is Palatino free?

Palatino ships with macOS and Palatino Linotype with Windows, and Microsoft Office adds the lookalike Book Antiqua. None of them can be served as a web font without a license. Palatino Linotype is also in the Adobe Fonts library.

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", "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, "Book Antiqua", Georgia, serif;
}