8 best monospace fonts for coding in 2021

By Tanya Combrinck 24 November 2020

These monospace fonts designed for programmers make code easier to read and understand.

So, why are monospace fonts good for coding? Well, these fonts allocate an equal space for each character, meaning a letter ‘i’ is given as much horizontal space as the letter ‘k’. It may be unnatural and doesn’t look right for other types of text and typography, but it’s ideal for coding.

Reading numbers and punctuation marks is so much easier when they’re evenly spaced. A monospace font makes it easier to achieve indentation and vertical alignment, which are critical for code legibility.

We’ve picked the best monospace fonts designed for coding. While some are paid-for, others are free fonts, but with all choices special care has been taken to ensure punctuation is larger than usual, glyphs are distinguishable and they can be comfortably looked at all day. You can even customise some (or, alternatively, our guide to font design will help you to make your own). All of these has its own personality so your favourite will come down to your individual preferences.

To make your coding life even easier, check out our posts on the best code editors and the best laptops for programming.

01. MonoLisa

Designed specifically to improve developers’ productivity and reduce fatigue, MonoLisa is a wonderfully clear font, which ensures all glyphs are the same width for readability but manages not to be boring. With a feature-set boasting increased character width, clear distinction and excellent reading flow, we think this is a winner.

02. Apercu Mono

Apercu Mono is part of the much larger Apercu font family. It was designed by The Entente and is part of the award-winning Colophon type foundry based in London (UK) and Los Angeles (US) that creates, publishes, and distributes high-quality typefaces for analogue and digital media.

The original concept behind Apercu was to create an amalgamation of classic realist typefaces such as Johnston, Gill Sans, Neuzeit and Franklin Gothic. The team created an extensive and usable family including a Mono version, ideal for displaying code.

The Mono version now includes four variations – Mono Light, Mono Regular, Mono Medium and Mono Bold. The standard font family includes upper and lower case, 72 accents and a couple of ligatures across all weights. The pro version adds in old style number glyphs, 100 symbols and more ligatures – more than enough for any coding aficionado.

03. Fira Code

Fira Code is an extension of Fira Mono, a monospaced font designed for Mozilla to fit in with the character of Firefox OS. The code variant of Fira includes programming ligatures – these are special renderings of certain character combinations that are designed to make code easier to read and understand. So, for example, the == and != combinations are rendered as proper equality glyphs, which are supposedly easier for the brain to process than two separate characters that have their own individual meanings.

How you feel about this of course depends on personal taste – if you’ve been reading normal code for years you might not want to make the change. But if this does appeal, Fira Code is a widely supported, popular programming font that makes code easy to read. It’s also free and open source. The GitHub page has coding samples from a range of languages so you can see how things look.

04. Input Mono

Input is a system of fonts designed specifically for coding by David Jonathan Ross that comes in both proportional and monospaced variants. As it has been designed with coding in mind, the proportional spacing is tailored to that application so it may be that you will consider it over the monospaced version.

There’s a range of widths, weights and styles, each with serif, sans and monospaced variants, resulting in a total of 168 different styles. So you really can get exactly what you want with this font set. It is described as having generous spacing, large punctuation, and easily distinguishable characters, and the size and positioning of symbols frequently used in coding has been given great consideration. You can also customise the forms of certain key characters including the letters ‘i’, ‘l’, ‘a’ and ‘g’.

Input is free to use for private, unpublished usage in your personal coding app. If you want to publish text using something from the Input font family, you can see the prices here (from $5).

05. Dank Mono

Dank Mono by Phil Plückthun, bills itself as being «designed for aesthetes with code and Retina displays in mind». Like Fira Code, it has the programming ligatures, and there’s also a cursive italic variant that’s useful for distinguishing different types of text within your code. Overall this font has been created for coders who have an eye for design, and the unusual lowercase ‘f’ is known for being particularly beloved among Dank fans.

Dank supports the Western, Eastern, Central and Southern European Latin character sets, and you can use it within CodePen.

To get Dank, you’ll need to pay – a personal licence is £24 and a commercial one is £60. But if you’re a type connoisseur and you’re smitten with that jaunty ‘f’ it might be worth treating yourself to some Dankness.

06. Gintronic

Creator Mark Frömberg describes Gintronic as «jovial» and «gentle», an antidote to what he sees as the overly technical and mechanical style of many programming fonts. Gintronic overall appears relaxed and easy to look at, with a few particular characters adding a special personality – check out the curly brackets, the question mark, the lower case ‘k’ and the numerals. Extra effort has been made to design glyphs that can be hard to tell apart – such as ‘B’ and ‘8’, ‘i’’ and ‘l’ and so on – in a way that makes them easy to distinguish at a glance.

In total there are 1174 glyphs, so Gintronic has a massive character set that includes Latin, Cyrillic and Greek characters as well as a full range of mathematical and technical symbols.

Gintronic is €50 for the single font, €100 for the Roman or Italic bundle and €150 for the complete family.

07. Monoid

Andreas Larsen set out a list of priorities when he designed Monoid – he wanted it to be legible, compact (the more code you can fit on one screen, the better), and «pretty». To achieve these ends he compared three other programming fonts – Fira Mono, Source Code Pro and Pragmata Pro – and took note of features that he likes and doesn’t like from each to inform the design of Monoid.

Like many programming fonts, Monoid has extra-large punctuation marks and operators; apertures are large to help make characters more distinguishable; and ascenders and descenders are kept short. Smart design decisions have been taken to make Monoid both compact and highly legible. It has programming ligatures, and there is also a special feature called Monoisome which enables you to see Font Awesome icons in your code.

Monoid is free and open source, so you can even tweak it to your tastes if you like.

08. Hack

Among the fonts we’ve covered so far, there are some with huge character sets and several variants, so it’s likely you’ll find something that’s just right. But if you have very specific desires, Hack could be the one for you, as there’s a whole library of alternative glyphs made by users that you can add to if you like. Hack is therefore highly customisable – you can get right down into the detail of each glyph and edit it yourself if no one else has done it exactly as you want.

Hack is free and open source. Head over to alt-hack, the alternative glyph library, to find out how to create your own custom version.

Monospace font pairings

Monospace fonts invoke a retro, tech-oriented vibe: their design style is ideally suited for programming fonts or for something like a vintage video game website.

IBM Plex Mono is an international typeface used to show code snippets.

The Ubuntu font family is a sans-serif typeface funded by Canonical.

Roboto is an open source, sans-serif font originally developed by Google for Android.

Monospace font pairings

Monospace fonts tend to evoke typewriters because of their blocky, non-proportional spacing and characters, but they’re a great choice for any designer who wants to create a sparse, minimalist feel.

Programming fonts

Early computers had limited graphical capabilities, so monospace fonts were used out of necessity: these days they’re widely used by programmers because they’re more readable than proportional fonts.

Monospace fonts uses

Proportional spacing allows monospace fonts to represent things visually, not just textually: they’re used in poetry, guitar tablature, and even biochemistry to create visual pictures or measure time.

Free monospace fonts

Many well-known fonts are monospace, including Courier, Courier New, Lucida Console, and Inconsolata. You can also download free monospace font pairings including Apercu, Roboto, and IBM Flex.

29 Best Monospace Fonts

Looking for an amazing monospace font for a new project? Well, we’ve put together 29 of the best monospace fonts around just for you.

Just one of the fabulous Monospace Fonts you’ll find at Envato Elements and GraphicRiver

I can hear some of you asking: «What is a monospace font anyway?» A monospaced font is a font whose characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. They are different from variable-width fonts, where the letters and spacings have different widths.

There are monospaced serif fonts, monospace sans serif fonts, condensed monospace fonts, and so on. Let’s take a look at some of the best on the market today.

Best Monospace Sans Serif Fonts

1. Lumber Typeface

Let’s kick things off with Lumber Typeface, a clean and simple monospace sans serif font that offers upper and lowercase characters, numbers, and over 40 glyphs. Lumber is a great choice for posters, branding, advertising, and other projects.

2. Laguna7 Font

Laguna7 is a gorgeous monospace sans serif font that is all about simple clean lines but with a much lighter touch than Lumber above. It’s intended for use in branding, advertising, and typography posters. Use Laguna7 when you want to bring a certain delicacy or refinement to your project.

3. Aldora Futuristic Font

Looking for the perfect font for a logo or business card or for product branding? Then try Aldora Futuristic font. The monospace sans serif font features clean lines with a rounded finish, offers both upper and lower case characters, numbers, and special characters, and comes in four styles: regular, italic, cutting, and outline.

4. System Code

All systems go with this technology-inspired font. This monospace sans serif font was designed specifically for posters, and you know what they say? Use the font as it was intended to be used. On the other hand, have a little fun and break the rules.

5. Odudo Mono

Be bold with Odudo, a terrific monospace sans serif font that commands attention. The collection includes light, regular, semi-bold and bold styles to make sure you’re ready for every occasion.

6. Bergen Mono

You won’t be able to resist Bergen Mono even if you try. This six-piece collection of monospace sans serif fonts is just the latest addition to the Bergen font bundle. It has Extended Latin, Cyrillic (including Bulgarian character set) and Greek language support included. What more could you ask for?

7. Hunters Font

A modern font inspired by geometry, Hunters was created for big things like logos, flyers, posters, and decorations. The bold monospace font comes in uppercase, numbers, and select glyphs. Try it—you may find you can’t do without it.

8. Looper

Get loopy with Looper, a monospace sans serif font that’s designed to stand apart from the crowd. Use it for titles, fonts, posters, or any projects where you want legibility coupled with impact.

Monospaced Serif Fonts

9. Furano Gyo Font

This vintage-inspired monospaced serif font is exactly what you need to bring an elegant touch to your next project. It would look great on business cards and other branding materials. The font has eight styles, including regular, italic, bold, and some really special ones like jitters and outline.

10. Alma Mono

A go-to monospaced serif font every designer should have in her pocket, Alma Mono is a beautiful round font that comes in five different weights so that you can use it in different areas of a project according to your need.

11. Iron Steel

Inspired by medieval tales, Iron Steel is the vintage monospace serif font you’ve been looking for. Perfect for logotyping, branding, posters, and much more.

12. Marvin Thin

A great example of simplicity done well, Marvin is an irresistible monospaced serif font for that special project you’ve been looking for just the right font for. The collection includes regular upper and lowercase, numbers, and a number of glyphs and accents for a wide variety of languages.

13. Arkibal Mono

I love fonts that offer loads of weights, and that’s exactly what Arkibal does. Because of that, this bold monospaced font will appeal to a wide range of users. The font features upper and lowercase characters, numbers, and tons of glyphs and accents used in a range of foreign languages.

Condensed Monospace Fonts

14. Matey

Looking for a cool condensed monospaced font to create an awesome logo or title text? Well, Matey here fits the bill. Use it to create gorgeous titles and eye-catching branding.

15. ONNIC Fonts

A wonderful condensed monospace font that offers a selection of styles that will make you very happy indeed. A modern display font, ONNIC is simple yet elegant and gives designers and others a great way to add some pizazz to branding, logotypes, stationery, business cards, flyers, brochures, and so on.

16. Zephyr Typeface

Zephyr is a tall display typeface in four different styles. This condensed monospace font features regular and grunge styles. It includes uppercase English letters and numbers that are ideal for big displays like signage.

Monospace Display Fonts

17. Portfolio

No doubt, Portfolio is a special font and one of the best monospace font around. With a number of styles and weights, no two projects need look the same when you use Portfolio—unless you want them to.

18. Gope Typeface

What’s not to like about this stunning and sophisticated font? Gope, a bold monospace font that offers uppercase characters and numbers only, is billed as a logo typeface font. One thing is certain: when you use this font in your project, no one will forget it easily.

19. Exomoon Display Stencil Font

Another uppercase display font, Exomoon uses a stencil style and comes in three wonderful versions: regular, letterpress, and lines. Use your favourite and make your titles and other display text pop.

20. System Glitch

System Glitch brings the look of. you guessed it, the glitch style to this display font. Use it for titles, headlines, and large text when you want to bring a vibe of edginess to your project. The font collection includes uppercase letters, numbers, and a selection of punctuation glyphs.

21. Raleigh Font

Why be ordinary when you can be awesome with this fun font that takes its inspiration from the language of stencil. Another standout display font with eight different styles to choose from.

22. Scoreboard Monospaced CAPS Display Type

Keep your own score with this bold monospace font. The perfect font to create a fresh display in any sport, travel or financial project where you need an eye-catching title, schedule, or itinerary. The collection includes foreign accents, border shapes, and other goodies. Have fun!

23. ALDITH Font

When you chose this collection of bold monospace fonts, you get an amazing quartet of fonts with their own personality: stylish handwritten script, vintage grunge, italic, and modern. An excellent choice for your branding, logo, photography, business card, stationery, signage, flyer, brochure, etc.

24. Verwalter Futuristic Font

The future is now. Capture its essence when you use this bold monospace font. Verwalter offers uppercase characters, numbers, and several glyphs, which is all you need to create standout titles and subtitles.

25. Eternal Font

What could be more eternal than this rock-and-roll-inspired font? Get it today and use it to create smashing T-shirt text and posters. You won’t regret it.

26. Smaq

Fonts should be fun, and nothing says fun more than Smaq, a pop-art-inspired font. Download this monospace font today and create brilliant posters and signage.

27. Addictive

Looking to create standout text? Addictive will do the rest. It features both upper and lowercase characters, numbers and glyphs, so you have everything you need to get the job done.

28. Tantra Trio

Tantra is a combination font you need to have in your life. The first is a wonderful monospace sans serif font, which would work best with titles and other text that needs to be bold and clear. The second is a script font that is best used for accents and subtitles. Used in combination, the two are a force to be reckoned with.

29. Squared Off

A font for contemporary living, this monospace pixel font borrows from the language of vintage computer games and digital photography to create a fun and unique font. Try it, you’ll like it!

Select Your Favourite Monospace Font Today

This is just a small sample of the terrific monospace fonts available at Envato Elements and GraphicRiver. So if you haven’t found just the right one for you here, head on over to both sites and have a browse to find one that suits your needs.

By the way, if you’re looking for other cool fonts, check out these great articles on the other kinds of font selections available.