Raleway Font: Free Download, Preview and Alternatives

The Story of the Raleway Font

Raleway started as a single thin weight designed by Matt McInerney and published through The League of Moveable Type, a small group known for sharing quality open source fonts. Later it was expanded into a full family of weights by Pablo Impallari and Rodrigo Fuenzalida, and that complete version is what you get on Google Fonts today.

Because it began as a light, elegant display font, Raleway still shines most in large sizes: website hero titles, posters, book covers and portfolio headers.

What Makes Raleway Different

Two details give Raleway its personality:

• The "W": the middle strokes of the capital W cross over each other instead of meeting at one point. It looks a bit like two V letters overlapping. Designers either love it or avoid it.
• Old-style numbers: by default the numbers go up and down like lowercase letters, so a 3 or 9 drops below the line while a 0 sits small. This looks classy in a sentence but can look uneven in prices, phone numbers or tables.

If you need regular, same-height numbers on a website, turn on lining figures in CSS with font-variant-numeric: lining-nums;. Design apps that support OpenType features have a similar option.

Apart from these, Raleway has a clean geometric look with fairly round letters and a smooth, light texture.

Raleway Font Numbers and Weights

The Raleway font numbers are the first thing many people notice. Because they are old-style by default, a price like 1,980 looks lively in a heading but uneven in a table. Use lining figures (shown above) for invoices, phone numbers and data.

Here is how the main weights feel:

• Raleway light font (300): thin and airy. Lovely for large titles, quotes and fashion brands, but too faint for small text.
• Raleway regular font (400): the everyday weight for short paragraphs, captions and menus.
• Raleway medium font (500): a little stronger. Good for buttons, navigation and subheadings on phones.
• Raleway bold font (700): confident headings, posters and thumbnails. ExtraBold and Black go even heavier.

Raleway Font Family Free Download

Get it from the official Raleway page on Google Fonts. One click on download gives you the whole Raleway font family, from Thin (100) to Black (900), each with an italic. It is also offered as a variable font, so websites can use any weight in between from one file.

That means a Raleway font free download, a Raleway regular font free download, a "Raleway bold font free download" or "Raleway font download" for any other weight is the same zip. You do not need any other website. Font sites full of ads often carry old versions that miss the newer weights.

Licence: Raleway is released under the SIL Open Font License. It is free for personal and commercial use, including logos, client websites, printed products and videos. You may share it, but not sell the font files by themselves.

Google Fonts Raleway and Raleway Dots

Google Fonts Raleway is one of the most used families in the library, so it loads fast on websites and appears in many tools. People also search for "Google Raleway font" or "Google web fonts Raleway". Google Web Fonts was simply the older name of Google Fonts, so it is the same free font from the same page.

Raleway Dots font: a separate decorative family on Google Fonts in which the letters are drawn with dots. It is fun for posters, event titles and kids' designs, but it is a display font only, so never use it for paragraphs. It is free under the same open licence.

Best Uses and Weight Tips

Avoid Thin and ExtraLight for long paragraphs or small phone text. They are too faint. For body text, many designers pick a different font and keep Raleway for headings only.

How to Install Raleway

Windows: unzip, select the static .ttf files, right-click and choose Install. Mac: open the file and click Install Font. Canva: search "Raleway" in the font list; it is normally available without any download. Websites: paste the Google Fonts embed code and set font-family: 'Raleway', sans-serif;.

Raleway does not support Hindi (Devanagari). For a Hindi heading with a similar modern feel, try Poppins, which has Devanagari letters.

Alternatives to Raleway

If the crossed W or old-style numbers do not suit your project, try Montserrat (wider, bolder, lining numbers), Lato (warmer and calmer) or Futura (the classic geometric sans, a paid font). Browse more choices on our popular fonts page.