8 Free SF Pro Alternatives for UI Designers (2026 Edition)

Apple's San Francisco is the most-viewed typeface on earth and you cannot legally ship it. Every iPhone, iPad and Mac since 2015 renders its interface in SF Pro: Apple drew San Francisco in-house, introduced it on the Apple Watch, then rolled it out with iOS 9 and El Capitan to replace the Helvetica Neue and Lucida Grande it had been licensing. Any designer who has stared at those interfaces wants the same crisp neutrality for their own product. Then they read the license: you may download SF Pro for free, but only to design and prototype apps that run on Apple platforms. Your website, your Android build and your brand system are not Apple platforms.

So here are the eight free fonts I would actually ship instead, with our own specimens, concrete settings and pastable stacks. The one everyone reaches for first is covered in our 12 Inter alternatives hub; if you are moving off a different classic, the free Helvetica alternatives guide has that side.

TL;DR: all 8 at a glance

1. Inter. The default UI grotesque of the decade and SF Pro's closest free cousin at interface sizes. Best for cross-platform products that must look identical everywhere.
2. Geist. Vercel's open source grotesque, the closest thing to a web-native SF Pro. Best for developer tools and modern web products.
3. IBM Plex Sans. The enterprise-grade pick. Best for B2B dashboards, data tables and dropdown-heavy settings screens.
4. Instrument Sans. A grotesque drawn specifically for interface work. Best when you want SF Pro's curves with a little more warmth.
5. Manrope. Semi-geometric with a tall x-height. Best for product marketing pages and numbers-heavy hero sections.
6. Figtree. Designed by a UI designer for UI work. Best for friendly SaaS products and onboarding flows.
7. Public Sans. The United States government typeface. Best for forms, tables and interfaces that must feel accountable.
8. Switzer. The warmest match of the group. Best when the brand needs Apple's polish with 5% more humanity.

Some links in this guide are affiliate links. If you buy a font through them, NewForm earns a small commission at no extra cost to you. Free options are always listed first.

What you're paying for with SF Pro

I cannot show you an SF Pro specimen because Apple does not allow redistribution, and I will not render a fake one. What the license buys you (beyond the legal right to be Apple-adjacent) is engineering: San Francisco ships with optical size variants that switch automatically, Text below roughly 20pt and Display above it, so labels and headlines are effectively two fonts drawn to agree with each other. That is the part competitors keep chasing.

If paid is on the table, the substitutes designers land on are Klim's Söhne, Christian Schwartz's Neue Haas Grotesk revival, or Helvetica Now , and an existing Creative Cloud subscription gets you a deep grotesque library on Adobe Fonts at no marginal cost.

If none of those fit the budget, the eight below do the job.

1. Inter

Specimen rendered by NewForm with the official Inter files.

Why it works: Rasmus Andersson drew Inter for screens in 2017 with the same brief Apple gave itself: maximize legibility at 11 to 16px. Tall x-height, sturdy terminals, spacing tuned for dense UI. Figma's interface runs on it: it survives exactly the environment SF Pro was built for. At UI sizes it is the cheapest route to the SF feeling.

Where to use it: product UI, design systems, dense dashboards. Anywhere users will read 12px labels on a 200dpi screen.

Settings that work: UI labels 14px to 16px at weight 450 to 500 with -0.2px letter spacing. Body copy 17px at 400. Use the optical size axis and pin it for text-heavy work.

font-family: "Inter", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, sans-serif;
font-feature-settings: "cv05", "ss01";

Watch out for: Inter melts a little at display sizes because its curves are optimized for small text. For big headlines, pin the opsz axis or pair it with a display face using our font pairings guide.

Where to get it: Free on Google Fonts, variable file included.

2. Geist

Specimen rendered by NewForm with the official Geist files.

Why it works: Vercel released Geist in 2023, opened the license, and Google Fonts now serves it. It is the closest in spirit to SF Pro among the free grotesques: restrained, slightly condensed, extremely comfortable in developer-facing products. Vercel ships it across its own product: terminal-adjacent dashboards, framework docs, deployment screens.

Where to use it: developer tools, API docs, technical marketing. Anywhere the product should feel engineered rather than designed.

Settings that work: body 16px at 400, UI labels 14px at 500, headlines at 600 with -1% tracking.

font-family: Geist, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", sans-serif;

Watch out for: its heavier weights come on strong: Geist 600 reads like other families' 700. Step down 50 wherever you were copying settings from Helvetica-era specs.

Where to get it: Free on Google Fonts, or the official files from Vercel.

3. IBM Plex Sans

Specimen rendered by NewForm with the official IBM Plex Sans files.

Why it works: IBM commissioned Plex from Mike Abbink and Bold Monday for its 2017 rebrand, then open sourced it. No other free grotesque matches its enterprise credibility: IBM's products, docs and marketing run on it, the tabular figures are excellent, and the Mono, Serif and Condensed siblings all agree with each other.

Where to use it: B2B dashboards, data tables, enterprise software, anywhere auditability is part of the brand.

Settings that work: body 16px at 400, table figures at 450 to 500 with font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums, section labels 13px at 600.

font-family: "IBM Plex Sans", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", sans-serif;

Watch out for: the family is enormous (a width axis, nine-plus weights, sibling families). Load only what you ship or your font payload quietly triples.

Where to get it: Free on Google Fonts.

4. Instrument Sans

Specimen rendered by NewForm with the official Instrument Sans files.

Why it works: the agency Instrument released Instrument Sans in 2022 as a grotesque for interface work. The curves are slightly more open than SF Pro, which keeps large text blocks from going clinical, and it is one of the few free fonts with a proper width axis, so you can compress headlines without loading a condensed family.

Where to use it: products that want Apple-level polish with a friendlier voice, and the marketing sites next to them.

Settings that work: body 16px at 400, hero at 600 weight with the default width. Constrain the width axis to 90 to 95 only for long editorial headlines.

font-family: "Instrument Sans", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, sans-serif;

Watch out for: at 12 to 13px the extra openness reads as softness. Give dense labels a +50 weight bump.

Where to get it: Free on Google Fonts.

5. Manrope

Specimen rendered by NewForm with the official Manrope files.

Why it works: Mikhail Sharanda released Manrope open source in 2018 and it became the free font of a wave of startups. The tall x-height and semi-geometric skeleton put it next to SF Pro in density, and the distinctive heavy weights give hero sections personality that neutral grotesques have to buy from a designer.

Where to use it: pricing pages, landing page heroes, numbers-forward fintech marketing. The 700 and 800 cuts are good at 80px.

Settings that work: body 16px at 500 (its 400 runs light), hero 88px at 700 with -2% tracking, numerals in stats blocks at 600.

font-family: Manrope, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", sans-serif;

Watch out for: the thin end of its variable axis (200) blurs below 14px on low-end displays. Keep UI text at 500 and above.

Where to get it: Free on Google Fonts.

6. Figtree

Specimen rendered by NewForm with the official Figtree files.

Why it works: Figtree was published in 2022 by Erik Kennedy, the designer behind Refactoring UI, and it reads like a working UI designer's answer to "what should friendly software look like". Extended x-height, low contrast strokes, weights from 300 to 900; the softest SF-adjacent option without tipping into the rounded-blob genre.

Where to use it: onboarding flows, consumer SaaS, empty states, products that talk to humans.

Settings that work: body 16px at 400, UI labels 14px at 600, buttons at 600. Excellent at 300 for large editorial quotes.

font-family: Figtree, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", sans-serif;

Watch out for: approachability is the brand it ships. If the product needs severity (security, finance, legal), reach one back to Public Sans or Plex.

Where to get it: Free on Google Fonts.

7. Public Sans

Specimen rendered by NewForm with the official Public Sans files.

Why it works: the United States government commissioned Public Sans in 2019 for its own design system, with the least glamorous and most valuable brief in free typography: forms, tables, long documents, accessibility rules. Federal sites across dozens of agencies ship it. If your product has dropdowns within dropdowns, this is your SF Pro stand-in.

Where to use it: fintech, insurance, healthcare, government, compliance-heavy dashboards.

Settings that work: body 16px at 400, all-caps section labels 12 to 14px at 700 with 8% letter spacing, dense tables at 450 with tabular-nums.

font-family: "Public Sans", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", sans-serif;

Watch out for: it has zero decorative ambition. For brand personality, follow the pairings guide and bring in a display face on top.

Where to get it: Free on Google Fonts or the USWDS site.

8. Switzer

Specimen rendered by NewForm with the official Switzer files.

Why it works: the Indian Type Foundry's Switzer is the warmest free answer to the SF Pro look: same neutral chassis, slightly softer finishes, nine weights plus italics. It is the one I hand designers who love Apple's typography but keep rejecting every option as too techy or too corporate.

Where to use it: brand work that sits next to an Apple-polished product, landing pages, packaging-adjacent digital surfaces.

Settings that work: hero 88px at 600, body 16px at 400, UI labels 14px at 500. Needs no tracking surgery.

font-family: Switzer, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", sans-serif;

Watch out for: serve the variable cut from Fontshare and pin exact weights. Its 500 is prettier than most fonts' 600.

Where to get it: Free for commercial use on Fontshare. For more indie grotesques beyond the free tier, browse Creative Market or an Envato Elements subscription if your team buys families monthly.

How to switch from SF Pro without breaking your UI

Specimen boards rendered by NewForm with the official font files. SF Pro itself is not redistributable; Apple's font is linked in the intro section.

1. Keep the real thing where it is already free. On Apple devices, font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, sans-serif serves genuine SF Pro to every Safari and macOS user, legally, at zero bytes. Put a free grotesque in front of it and Apple users still see Apple typography in your fallbacks.
2. Decide what consistency is worth. If you accept per-platform fonts, the system stack alone gets you SF Pro, Roboto and Segoe UI across the big three. If your brand needs one voice, put Inter or Geist first and the system stack behind it.
3. Swap the voice, then tune the ramp. Move UI text to the new face and re-verify sizes against our typography sizes guide. You are losing SF Pro's automatic optical size switching, so check 12px labels and 72px heroes by hand: the free fonts hold in different ranges.
4. Pin weights explicitly. Free variable fonts default to their usual 400, but Inter's 450, Geist's 550 and Switzer's 500 are the values that feel closest to Apple's label weight. Numeric weights, not "bold".

FAQ

What is the closest free font to SF Pro?

Inter at interface sizes, Geist in overall spirit, Switzer for the same polish with more warmth. None of them is SF Pro: Apple's optical size system has no free equivalent, which is why all three need manual weight tuning.

Fonts similar to SF Pro: which free one should I try first?

Inter, and it is not close for UI work. Geist is the second pick if the audience is developers. The boards above show all eight with the same headline, paragraph, numerals and glyph row: a g R 1 I l 0 O.

Is SF Pro free to use?

The download from Apple is free, but the license restricts it to designing and developing apps that run on Apple platforms. A website, an Android product or brand typography is outside those terms. On Apple devices, the -apple-system CSS value serves real SF Pro within the license.

Can I use SF Pro on my website?

Not as a hosted font file. What Apple does give you is the system font stack: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont renders San Francisco for Safari and macOS users automatically. Everyone else gets one of the eight fonts above.

SF Pro vs Inter: which one should I ship?

If most users are on Apple devices and per-platform differences are tolerable, ship the system stack. If the product must look identical on Windows, Android and Apple, ship Inter: it was drawn for exactly that job and it is free.

Can I use one of these in a logo?

Yes: all eight allow commercial logo use without fee (Google Fonts uses the SIL Open Font License; Fontshare its own free commercial license). SF Pro in a logo would need legal review under Apple's terms, so the free eight are the safer start anyway.

Try the font in a real layout

A specimen on cream is an offline proof. Drop the type pairing into NewForm Mockup Studio and see it in a browser frame, on a phone, over a real screenshot in 60 seconds. When the type is set, ship the UI you just typeset with Base44, from prompt to working app.

Some links above are affiliate links. If you buy through them, NewForm earns a small commission at no extra cost to you.

More in the Fonts Similar To series

Every guide uses our own rendered specimens and the same structure, so you can compare fonts side by side:

• Fonts similar to Inter (the hub)
• Fonts similar to Helvetica
• Fonts similar to Futura
• Inter vs Geist
• Font pairings every designer should memorize
• Typography sizes for websites
• How to choose UI fonts by mood

Related on NewForm

• The Complete Guide to Spacing and Whitespace in UI Design
• 7 Typography Sins No One Talks About (But Every Designer Commits)
• Website Typography Sizes: A Practical Guide for Better UI Design