Free ligatures fonts

Carries a substantial set of ligatures beyond the usual fi and fl — most often the programming ligatures that join characters like != into one shape.

About ligatures typefaces

How to recognise it

  • In a coding face: type != or === and watch whether the characters merge into one symbol.
  • In a text face: set “ct”, “st” or “fi” and look for a joined form.
  • A long list of OpenType features in the font’s documentation.
  • Merged shapes that keep the same width as the characters they replace, in a monospaced font.

Where it works

Code editors and terminals, where merged operators are easier to scan, and fine typography where the historical ligatures add polish.

Where it does not

Screenshots used for teaching, and interfaces where the reader has to type exactly what they see. The characters on disk are unchanged, but a beginner cannot tell.

4 fonts

JetBrains Mono

Philipp Nurullin, Konstantin Bulenkov

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow

Monospace · Variable · 8 weights · OFL · Türkçe

Fira Code

The Mozilla Foundation, Telefonica S.A., Nikita Prokopov

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow

Monospace · Variable · 5 weights · OFL · Türkçe

Victor Mono

Rune Bjørnerås

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow

Monospace · Variable · 7 weights · OFL · Türkçe

Cascadia Code

Aaron Bell, Mohamad Dakak, Viktoriya Grabowska, Liron Lavi Turkenich

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow

Monospace · Variable · 6 weights · OFL · Türkçe

Questions

What is a ligatures font?
Carries a substantial set of ligatures beyond the usual fi and fl — most often the programming ligatures that join characters like != into one shape. In a coding face: type != or === and watch whether the characters merge into one symbol.
When should I use a ligatures typeface?
Code editors and terminals, where merged operators are easier to scan, and fine typography where the historical ligatures add polish. Where it does not work: screenshots used for teaching, and interfaces where the reader has to type exactly what they see. The characters on disk are unchanged, but a beginner cannot tell.
Are these ligatures fonts free for commercial use?
Yes. All 4 of them are published under licences that permit commercial use — the SIL Open Font License, the Apache License 2.0, the Ubuntu Font Licence or a release into the public domain — with no fee and no credit required. Every download on this site includes the licence file inside the zip.