How do we know which comic/manga fonts are free to commercial use?

Fuya 2016-01-30 01:20:16 UTC #1

Hello,
I'm looking forward to make an original comic that will be posted on many sites like Tapastic and Tumblr. When I'd post it there, it'd be free to read, but I'm planning to include it in the Patreon rewards as early read, thus making it a commercial use (I mean, does this make it commercial use? Correct me if I'm wrong.)

My question is that, once it'd be commercial, I assume I'd need a good set of comic/manga fonts, but I don't really know which fonts are free to just personal use or completely free. I've googled some answers but yet to find the exact issue.

I don't mind paying for the fonts if I really like them, but I want to start off with some free fonts for the sake of experimental and I'm afraid if I purchase some fonts right away and I don't feel like it's suitable later on, the money would just go to waste.

So, how do we determine if a font is free to commercial usage or not? What kind of font policy should I need to know before I start?
Or perhaps, could anyone recommend a good free comic/manga/anime fonts that I could really use for commercial works?

Thank you in advance!

Kura 2016-01-30 01:29:21 UTC #2

http://www.blambot.com/

This is one of my favourite resources for free to use and paid comic fonts.

http://www.blambot.com/license.shtml for the free use licence. Hope that helps you out a bit.

dracoplato 2016-01-30 01:35:51 UTC #3

Most fonts come with a readme text of the license agreement for the font. I'm going to drop this link here as another resource for some free for commercial use fonts : http://www.fontsquirrel.com/

winglesscomic 2016-01-30 02:06:56 UTC #4

Blambot has many free ones, I bought two of them and just use the other free ones which are really nice.

Fuya 2016-01-30 03:49:12 UTC #5

wow this helps a lot. I know Blambot but never know their policy on supporting indie comics and free uses. Thank you!

AnnaLandin 2016-01-30 07:36:14 UTC #6

I choose a lot of fonts from dafont.com, where it's possible to filter fonts by 100% free, public domain or free for personal use. It's pretty neat, and there's a lot of good fonts on there.

niinasalmelin 2016-01-30 11:08:19 UTC #7

Cheers! I've been also wondering where to find some good ones so thanks a lot for these links 8) (my handwriting is simply just too bad for texting l'D)

shazzbaa 2016-01-30 13:53:16 UTC #8

Seconding the recommendation for dafont! I've gotten lots of fonts from there myself.

The thing is that dafont collects fonts that were created by a lot of different people, so there's not one single policy on what's free to use. You have to look at each individual font -- like Draco said, most of them will download with a folder that has a readme file from that font's creator, but if it doesn't, I've had a few times where I had to go look up the website of the fonts creator to find their policy.

Fuya 2016-01-31 01:20:48 UTC #9

Thanks for the info so we gotta spend some time discovering which fonts are usuable I guess.

Shanny8 2016-01-31 04:40:45 UTC #10

I get a lot of my comic style fonts from Blambot- some are free. A lot of my title/design style fonts I get from sites like 1001 Free Fonts & Dafont.

Shanny8 2016-01-31 04:42:09 UTC #11

Yeah, a lot of the ones that Blambot has for sale are really CHEAP. $20 bucks isnt bad.

Wolven_Sister 2016-02-01 11:32:41 UTC #12

There's also Google Fonts. It has a lot of free ones you can use and it has tons of filters for you to find the exact font you want for little to no price. That's what I use:
https://www.google.com/fonts

annuskabriar 2025-07-23 03:22:05 UTC #14

someone else mentioned this, but i get my fonts from dafont where you can filter public domain, free to use, etc. i made sure my fonts were either public domain or 100% free to use