Best Font for Websites: Top 8 for Shopify (2027)

This post is for information only. You are responsible for reviewing and using this information appropriately. This content doesn’t contain and isn’t meant to provide legal, tax, or business advice. Requirements are updated frequently and you should make sure to do your own research and reach out to professional legal, tax, and business advisers, as needed. To sell products using the Shopify platform, you must comply with the laws of the jurisdiction of your business and your customers, the Shopify Terms of Service, the Shopify Acceptable Use Policy, and any other applicable policies.

Your website’s font appears on your product pages, navigation menus, and checkout buttons across your ecommerce website. It needs to be clean and legible so your customers have a positive user experience and can easily find things while shopping on your website.

A web font is a font file that a web browser loads when someone visits a website. Roughly 88% of websites use web fonts, with Google Fonts being the most-used web font service provider. Font files come with a license that dictates how and where a font can be used.

This guide covers how to choose fonts, compares eight of the best fonts for your website, and explains how to change or add fonts in a Shopify store.

What’s the difference between a font and a typeface?

A typeface refers to a family of related fonts that share a unifying design. A font is a specific weight or style within the typeface. For example, Arial is a typeface. Arial Bold and Arial Italic are fonts.

Fonts fall into broader categories based on how they look:

• Serif font. Serif fonts, like Times New Roman, have small strokes at the ends of letters to convey formality and tradition.
• Sans serif font. These clean, modern fonts, like Helvetica and Arial, don’t have those extra strokes. Sans serif fonts are widely used in digital interfaces for their readability.
• Geometric font. Geometric fonts, like Futura, are a subcategory of sans serif fonts, using clean, simple shapes for a modern look.
• Script font. Script fonts mimic cursive handwriting and work well for decorative headlines or logos.
• Monospace font. In monospace fonts, every letter takes up the same amount of space. They are often used in technical contexts or to create a utilitarian feel.
• Display font. These are highly stylized fonts designed for large text sizes and are best for eye-catching headlines, not body text.
• Humanist font. These are based on traditional handwriting fonts and feel warm, readable, and approachable.

How to choose the right font for your website

The best fonts for your website will reflect your brand personality while ensuring your target audience can easily read your content across different browsers and devices. Here are the criteria to guide your selection.

1. Prioritize readability and accessibility

The right fonts will be legible at all sizes, especially on mobile devices. To ensure your website visitors can easily read your web fonts, the US Web Design System recommends these settings for body text:

• Font size: Body text is at least 16 pixels for most uses.
• Text alignment: Body text is set flush left.
• Line length: Most lines run 45 to 90 characters, with 66 as a target for long texts.
• Line height: Longer text has a line height of at least 1.5.
• Font style: Long stretches of italic, bold, or uppercase text are avoided.

Web fonts must also follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) stating that website text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background. For example, your text needs to be dark enough to be clearly read on a light background and vice versa. Keep this in mind for areas of color on your website, like checkout buttons.

In general, look for open letterforms, generous spacing, and moderate contrast between thick and thin strokes. Avoid thin or decorative fonts for body text. Fonts such as Inclusive Sans and Noto Sans are web-safe fonts for many use cases, designed with accessibility in mind.

2. Align with your brand identity

Your font choice should reflect your brand voice and brand values. Your brand identity should guide your type decisions, helping you stay consistent across customer touchpoints. Certain fonts are known for conveying specific voices and tones.

Here are some common brand traits and how they translate into font characteristics:

• Elegant: Serif fonts such as EB Garamond or GT Alpina bring a sense of sophistication.
• Bold: Strong sans serif fonts like GT Standard project confidence.
• Playful: Rounder or more expressive fonts, such as ROM, communicate a friendly tone.
• Minimalist: Neutral, geometric fonts like Montserrat convey simplicity and modernity with clean lines that often define minimalist design.

Before deciding, try typing key brand phrases in different fonts to see how the tone shifts to find the right brand typography.

3. Consider performance

Fonts are separate files that a browser has to download before it can render text, which means using too many typefaces can slow down your site. Stick to one or two font families and use web-optimized formats such as Web Open Font Format 2.0 (WOFF2).

When you download a font, it’ll normally be saved as a .ttf or .otf file. If your font files aren’t already in WOFF2, you can convert them using free tools like Transfonter or Font Squirrel’s Webfont Generator. Shopify’s font library provides fonts in both WOFF and WOFF2.

Tools like Google Fonts let you preview and select fonts that balance design and load time. Many font libraries also allow you to customize the character sets and font weights you include, which can reduce file sizes and improve page speed.

When choosing fonts, opt for only the weights and styles you plan to use (for example, regular and bold) and avoid loading entire font families if they’re not necessary. This improves site performance and keeps your design more focused.

You’ll also need to check licensing for the fonts of your choice, especially if you’re not pulling your fonts from an online source like Google Fonts that ensures all of its options are available commercially.

If you’re purchasing a font file from a font site or directly from the designer, check these points:

• Web use. Confirm the license covers websites. Dinamo’s licenses, for example, require a separate web license.
• Pricing basis. Grilli Type bases web licenses on unique visitors per month across all your websites, while Dinamo prices its licenses by company size. Look at how licensing is priced so you have the information you need.
• Hosting. Note if you need to host the font files yourself, or pull from the font website. Grilli Type and Dinamo both require users to self-host their web fonts.
• Trial fonts. Some designers allow brands to use a trial font without paying for a full license to test how it looks on a website or in a design before launch.

To ensure your website appears how you want it to, opt for a web-safe font that’s available on all (or nearly all) operating systems. Some examples include Arial, Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Georgia, and Times New Roman. In Shopify, the font library’s System fonts category uses fonts already installed on each visitor’s device, so the browser doesn’t have to download a file before rendering any text.

4. Ensure screen compatibility

Fonts optimized for screens feature:

• A high x-height (tall lowercase letters)
• Wide apertures (more open spaces within characters)
• A clear distinction between characters like lowercase “L” (as in lady) and uppercase “I” (as in Idaho)

Fonts built for web environments will often specify this in their descriptions.

8 best fonts for your website

When choosing a font for your ecommerce site, it helps to start with trusted, high-quality options. The following list includes eight popular fonts, ranging from accessible open-source designs to premium, professional-grade typefaces.

These fonts offer a variety of tones and technical strengths to suit different brand needs and design approaches, whether you’re aiming for friendly and modern or more elegant and editorial.

Inclusive Sans

CAPTION: Google Fonts

Inclusive Sans is a sans serif typeface designed by Olivia King and released on Google Fonts in 2023. It’s a neo-grotesque font with a geometric touch, generous spacing, and open counters (the enclosed spaces in letters like c, o, a, and e). Letterforms that look alike, like the capital I, lowercase l, and the digit 1, are drawn so they can be told apart.

The font is free under the SIL Open Font License and comes with weights from 300 to 700. It isn’t in Shopify’s font library, so you’ll have to add it. You can download Inclusive Sans from Google Fonts.

Noto Sans

Noto Sans, also by Google Fonts, is a humanist sans serif font designed to support over 1,000 languages, making it ideal for website localization or global ecommerce. Noto Sans has a clean, neutral design with excellent consistency across scripts, helping to create a cohesive, multilingual site.

Noto fonts use the SIL Open Font License. Shopify’s font library includes Noto Sans, Noto Sans Display, and Noto Serif, so you can select them in the theme editor. You can also download Noto Sans from Google Fonts.

EB Garamond

EB Garamond is a classic serif font with a digital polish, ideal for businesses that want an elegant or literary feel. It’s great for long-form content and adds a touch of sophistication to ecommerce brands. The font retains historical charm while still offering enough clarity and structure for digital interfaces.

Its high contrast and finely sculpted serifs give it a refined, editorial quality, suiting brands in categories like publishing, luxury goods, or wellness wanting to evoke trust, depth, or heritage.

Shopify’s font library includes EB Garamond, so you can select it in the theme editor. You can also download EB Garamond from Google Fonts.

IBM Plex Mono

IBM Plex Mono is a monospaced sans serif font with a technical, modern feel. It’s part of IBM’s open-source type superfamily, which includes multiple coordinated styles, like sans, serif, mono, and more, designed to work together. This gives brands the flexibility to build a cohesive visual system using different font styles while maintaining a consistent tone.

Being a monospaced font, IBM Plex Mono is especially useful in UI-heavy ecommerce environments, such as online stores with complex dashboards, real-time product filters, or detailed customer portals. Monospaced characters’ equal spacing improves readability in technical contexts, such as code snippets, specifications, or product details.

Shopify’s font library includes IBM Plex Mono, IBM Plex Sans, IBM Plex Sans Condensed, and IBM Plex Serif so you can pair the monospace style with other Plex styles. You can also download IBM Plex Mono from Google Fonts.

GT Alpina

GT Alpina is a serif typeface from Grilli Type that blends traditional serif construction, balanced proportions, and high contrast between thick and thin strokes with modern, expressive features. The result is a font that feels both familiar and fresh.

Its subtle, unique character details include slightly exaggerated curves, sharp wedge-like serifs, and unexpected shapes in letters like the lowercase “A” and “G.” Its wide style range makes it versatile for headings and body text, and it makes a strong visual impact as a primary or secondary font. It’s well-suited for storytelling brands or any ecommerce business that wants to balance authority with creativity.

GT Alpina is a paid typeface. Grilli Type’s license terms for web use are based on unique monthly visitors across all your websites, and the font must be self-hosted on your servers. It isn’t in Shopify’s font library, so you’ll have to do a custom-font setup. You can purchase GT Alpina from Grilli Type. It’s $75 for each individual font weight or style, $450 for a full subfamily, or $945 for the entire font family.

ROM

ROM by the type foundry Dinamo is a sans serif font balancing a modern grotesque style with expressive details. Grotesque fonts, an early form of sans serif, are known for their relatively uniform stroke widths, tight spacing, and minimalist structure. Modern grotesques often refine these characteristics for digital use, adding slightly softer curves and a more consistent rhythm to improve on-screen readability.

What sets ROM apart is its expressive details, like tight apertures (the partially enclosed spaces in letters like “E” or “C”), unconventional stroke endings, and a compact, vertical stance that feels confident and energetic. Its unique characteristics include tall x-heights, narrow widths, and quirky shapes in characters like the lowercase “R” or “T,” which create visual intrigue without sacrificing legibility.

Available in a range of widths, ROM adapts well across different web design contexts, from narrow mobile menus to attention-grabbing headlines. This makes it a versatile choice for brands wanting to inject personality into their design while keeping things clean and functional.

Dinamo licenses fonts by company size and limited licenses need a separate web license, while an unlimited license is a flat one-time fee that includes web use. You can purchase ROM from Dinamo.

GT Standard

GT Standard is one of the best web fonts you can buy because it is the embodiment of form and function, optimized for clarity and flexibility. A clean, neutral geometric sans serif, it’s ideal for brands or websites seeking a minimalist, trustworthy visual identity that doesn’t look generic. The font family includes a wide range of weights and offers a strong typographic hierarchy, making it a versatile font.

GT Standard also stands out for its carefully engineered details, like consistent stroke widths and wide apertures, all of which contribute to its readability at small sizes and across devices. Its geometric foundation gives it a modern, structured appearance, while subtle humanist touches (like the curved tail of the “Y” or the open shape of the “G”) soften the overall feel. This balance makes it a reliable choice for ecommerce sites needing a professional look without feeling cold or overly clinical.

GT Standard is a paid typeface under the same license terms as GT Alpina. You can purchase GT Standard from Grilli Type.

Suisse

Suisse is a type superfamily from Swiss Typefaces with multiple styles, like sans serif, serif, and mono, all designed for consistency across platforms. It works well for scaling brands wanting to maintain typographic consistency and a visually appealing font with broad design utility.

Part of what makes Suisse such a visually appealing font is its precision and balance. Inspired by the Swiss modernist tradition, the letterforms are clean and highly legible, with refined proportions and consistent rhythm across weights and styles. The sans serif style, for instance, has crisp terminals and generous spacing, making it especially effective in UI design. Meanwhile, the serif and mono variants preserve the same design DNA, creating harmony across different typographic roles.

One Suisse license covers print, websites, and apps, and there’s no limit on the number of domains or website visitors. You can purchase Suisse from Swiss Typefaces.

How to change fonts on your Shopify store

Shopify stores can use fonts from Shopify’s font library or add custom fonts to their theme. While Shopify’s font library has a large selection of included fonts, you may choose to upload a brand font for your website. Follow along with the instructions below to select your preferred font.

Choose fonts in your theme settings

Shopify’s font library includes a selection of system fonts and Google Fonts, provided in both WOFF and WOFF2 formats. Of the fonts mentioned in this guide, Noto Sans, EB Garamond, and IBM Plex Mono are all included in the library.

To change fonts from your Shopify admin:

1. Go to Online Store > Themes.
2. Click Customize next to your theme.
3. Open Theme settings and select Typography.
4. Pick a font from the font picker for each text setting, then click Save.

The settings available depend on your theme.

Add a custom font to your theme

Fonts that aren’t available in Shopify’s library need a custom setup. Start by confirming the font licensing details and that you can use them on a website for commercial purposes.

Then you can use one of two ways to add the font files and customize your theme:

• Third-party hosting: A host like Google Fonts gives you a basic <link> tag to link to their font file.
• Self-hosting: You upload the font files directly to your website and host the fonts on your server.

If you’re uploading your own font files, follow these steps:

1. Go to your Shopify admin.
2. Open Online Store.
3. Click ... next to the theme.
4. Click Edit code.
5. In the code editor, right-click the assets folder.
6. Click Upload.
7. Select your font file.

Edit your theme’s CSS so it knows to use those font files. The Shopify Help Center can walk you through the full process. Or, the Shopify Partner directory lists Shopify Partners you can hire for theme customization.