What is Monotype Fonts?

Learn more about what Monotype Fonts is and how a subscription provides more value than individual font purchases.

Supriya Bisht avatar
Written by Supriya Bisht
Updated over a week ago

What exactly is Monotype Fonts? How is it different from other online font libraries? Learn more about how a Monotype Fonts subscription provides more value than individual font purchases.

What is Monotype Fonts?

Monotype Fonts is a cloud-based subscription service designed to streamline font discovery, usage, licensing, and deployment. Subscribers get access to 150,000+ fonts from a multitude of foundries. These fonts may be used for prototyping and mockups as well as commercial distribution. Every subscription plan features universal licensing agreements that reduce the need to review individual licenses.


Why pay for a font subscription service?

A font subscription service simplifies the process of font discovery, use, and licensing. When you subscribe to Monotype Fonts, you’re getting a desktop license for all the fonts in the Monotype Library.

In addition, you’ll be getting licenses for a pre-negotiated number of fonts that can be used in web, app, and/or any other commercial distribution use cases. You can track, manage, and share fonts on easy-to-use app and web interfaces, facilitating collaboration and consistency. Subscribing to a plan allows you to control annual costs, ensuring that you only pay for the fonts that you need.


Can't I just purchase and license individual fonts?

You can, especially if you just need a font from time to time or for individual use. However, if your organization wants the freedom to prototype limitlessly to deliver flawless designs, or to use multiple fonts in a year, purchasing individual fonts could cost you more than a subscription to Monotype Fonts.

Individual font maintenance means purchasing a desktop license for every font you need to test (even if you don’t end up deploying the font into production). Once you’ve selected the font you want to use, you will need to purchase additional licenses for the fonts you need to use commercially and keep track of which licenses you have for each font.

Monotype simplifies this process by allowing you and your team to experiment with thousands of fonts. Every plan also comes with a pre-negotiated number of commercial licenses, streamlining the process from design to deployment.


What is the difference between Monotype Fonts and MyFonts?

MyFonts is one of Monotype’s digital commerce sites, offering 230,000+ individual fonts available for licensing. On the other hand, Monotype Fonts is a subscription-based font delivery and management platform that's perfect for agencies, SMEs, and large enterprises.


What about free fonts?

If you’re in the business of delivering high-quality designs, free fonts do not scale well. Free fonts might lack complete glyph sets, have kerning issues, render poorly, or offer only limited weights and styles. Additionally, high-quality free fonts run the risk of overuse, making it challenging to create a truly unique and distinctive brand.

Some free fonts are not actually “free”—while they may be free for personal use, they often require additional licensing for commercial use. These factors can put your organization at risk, and unfortunately, there’s no support team to reach out to with questions or troubleshooting requests. Free font files are also standard vehicles for malware injection, so unsuspecting users might unwittingly infect their devices through a fake free font download.

A premium font subscription like Monotype Fonts allows you to test and use high-quality fonts that have been hand-crafted and specially engineered to work perfectly in any language or script.

Every Monotype Fonts plan also comes with customer support, guaranteeing prompt resolution to any issues you might encounter.

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