Comparing Four Different Sites To Help You Identify Fonts
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The Cliff Notes on my results - I had the best results from What Font Is (NOT the same as What The Font.) Fontsquirrel did a terrible job matching the font, however, it's the one app that always recommends FREE alternatives. Most of the identifiers only show you paid fonts.
Quick Links:
If you are on any cricut facebook groups, you have seen the daily question - What Is This Font? In some cases, like I Love Glitter, and Samantha, it can be obvious. But in most cases... it's pretty hard to tell! So many fonts have glyphs - which means the characters may look different. You can have two completely different versions of one letter in a font, if you use glyphs.
That said, there are sites that will help identify fonts. Tonight I took three different fonts from my collection and ran them through each site, to compare their results. What Font Is was the clear winner - it correctly identified all three fonts. What The Font came in second. Font Squirrel was the only site to offer free font suggestions.
And it's important to note that with Herina, the ligatures were not shown in the matched results. Had I not known that Herina was the correct font, I may not have believed the sites were accurate in their suggestion.
Here's a step by step of the fonts I used, and the results for each:
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THE FONTS
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These are the samples I started with. They were typed in fontlab pad and saved as pngs, so these are clearer and better quality than what is often used when trying to identify a font. I very purposefully chose a paid font, a font with ligatures, and a FREE font, for this experiment, as I was curious if paid fonts would have better results.
This font is not free - it's part of a font duo that is typically on sale at Fontbundles for around $6.
This is the free version, found here:
Note - these are not glyphs, this font has "ligatures". They appear automatically, no need for a character map. Not all fonts have ligatures, but if a font has them, they appear based on letter combinations. Design Space cannot read them and will never show them.
This is the free demo version of Dafont
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The Sites
I ran each font image through 4 different sites, so compare the results.
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The Results
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Test #1
This font is not free - it's part of a font duo that is typically on sale at Fontbundles for around $6.
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What Font Is correctly identified Amastery Hand. Clicking on the download button took me to Creative Market to purchase the font, where it costs twice as much as it would at Fontbundles [It seems to always be on sale at Fontbundles]. So if you are going to purchase the font, be sure to shop around and compare prices.
The other three sites did not have great results.
These are actually the best results I have ever gotten from What The Font. For some reason, I rarely have any success with this site, personally, even though it is by far the most recommended option.
It didn't identify the font, but the options it came up with are somewhat similar.
Font Squirrel didn't come close - however, it did offer a couple of free alternatives, which was nice - even if they really don't look much at all like Amastery Hand. :-)
This site was the most frustrating to use - I received a variety of errors before it finally worked. The results were not great, for this font.
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Test #2
FREE at Fontbundles:
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Again, What Font is got it correct on the first try.
But surprisingly, What The Font got it right too!
However, if I didn't know what this font is, I may not have thought either site got it right. Neither of these sites show the ligatures in their identifications. The only reason I am certain they got the identification correct is because I knew the font name before I started.
Also - both of these sites take direct you to a paid version. There's a really nice free version available at Fontbundles, the free version is what I used for my sample text.
Neither Font Squirrel Nor Fontspring came even close. It may have been helpful to use shorter samples, I could have cropped this down more maybe...
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TEST #3
This is a free demo version of the Watermelon Script Font, from Dafont
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What Font Is is 3 for 3. This time the font was on down the list, but the correct font was listed.
What The Font didn't get it - although I will say that Bromello is a fairly close match. There is a free version of Bromello - it's always worth checking to see if the font listed as a paid font has a free version.
Not even remotely close.
I completely gave up with this font on FontSquirrel. I tried several times but could not isolate any portion of the text that the site could work with.
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Free fonts that write in cricut, free Rae Dunn inspired fonts, free dual layer shadow fonts....
Where To Find Loads Of Free Fonts
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