I don’t know about you, but I’m always on the lookout for new fixed-width fonts to use while programming. There are standards out there like Ubuntu Mono, Consolas, and the granddaddy Courier. Maybe these just don’t cut it for you, or maybe you’re just a font geek and looking for something new.
That’s what this page is. I’ve gone through a font website called FontSpring and found a handful of fonts that look like they’d be great for writing code, but are not ones I’ve seen before.
One quick caveat. These are all affiliate links. What that means is that if you click through and purchase from FontSpring I’ll get a bit of that purchase. Doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it is something that I have to tell you.
That said, since these are all commercial fonts they tend to come in lots of different variants. In most cases you could purchase the entire set, but also can purchase each individual font. Some of the sets also include free fonts within the set.
I think my biggest issue with this one, and it’s pretty common with programming fonts, is that the lower case ell and one look too much alike. Here it looks like the ell has a straight bar across the top and the one is curved. But I can imagine that when the font is smaller that would be more difficult to see.
Calling Code is the first one that jumped out at me because of the lower cased ell. I’ve always preferred fonts where the ell and one are obviously different. I also like the zero with a dot rather than a slash.
And totally not quantifiable for any reason, but I really like the percentage sign on this one. That’s one of those characters that doesn’t get much love. They usually all look alike.
This one is a little too close to a normal font like Arial for my taste, but would work okay if that’s your thing. It does look like a couple of the characters may not be fixed width though. I’m looking at you lower cased i.
Code Saver would probably be my favorite on this page if it wasn’t for the slash zero. I like dot zeros better.
Codec is available in 2 different groups. Codec Cold and Coded Warm with a total of 44 different faces.
If nothing else, this one has the best name of any font on this page.
Klartext Mono looks like it started life out trying to mimic Courier and then went and did its own thing. This one seems like it would be really good while demoing code on a projector. It’s heavy enough to be noticeable and has easily identifiable characters.
This one is too heavy for me, at least to code with. But I do think it would make a good heading font when doing demos. I’m thinking more like the headers in a Power Point deck rather than the code itself.
This one also doesn’t look like a coding font, but would mostly work as one. Only real complaint I have is that the zero and capital O are way too close to each other. Not a problem if you’re typing, but could be an issue coding.