Switzer
Free neo-grotesque from ITF: 9 weights, matching italics, variable, 135 languages
Switzer is a Latin neo-grotesque by Jerémie Hornus for the Indian Type Foundry, released free on Fontshare in April 2021 (originally issued as Volkart in 2015). It ships 18 static styles — Thin through Black with a matching italic for each — plus two variable files (upright and italic, wght axis 100-900), covering 135 languages and carrying aalt, frac, liga, locl, ordn, salt and sups OpenType features. It is currently at version 1.2. Distributed under the ITF Free Font License, free for personal and commercial work in desktop, web and app contexts.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://api.fontshare.com/v2/css?f[]=switzer@1,2&display=swap">Use Switzer as the default free stand-in whenever a brief asks for Helvetica, Inter or a clean Swiss sans and you cannot license the real thing — it has the full 100-900 range plus true italics, which Inter's free italics and most Google Sans options do not match. Load it as a variable font via the Fontshare CSS API (f[]=switzer@1,2 gives upright + italic variable) rather than pulling nine static weights, and self-host the woff2 if you need reproducible builds, since the CDN URLs under cdn.fontshare.com are opaque hashes that can rotate. The product page is a JS-only shell — query https://api.fontshare.com/v2/fonts?q=switzer for machine-readable style, axis, feature and language data.
Why it is here. One of the very few free typefaces with a genuinely complete nine-weight range and matched italics, from a real foundry, under a licence that clears commercial work — it removes the usual excuse for shipping system-ui.
- 18 static styles plus 2 variable files
- wght axis 100-900 with true italics
- 135 languages
- ITF Free Font License, commercial use allowed
- queryable via the public Fontshare API
Verified 2026-08-15. HTTP 200. https://www.fontshare.com/fonts/switzer (200 but JS-only shell), https://api.fontshare.com/v2/fonts?limit=1&q=switzer (full metadata: 20 styles, wght axis, 135 languages, itf_ffl licence, designer, v1.2), https://api.fontshare.com/v2/css?f[]=switzer (all 20 @font-face declarations), web search for design history
