Incorporating free brush fonts into your designs will inject a human, playful edge to your work, plus they look fantastic when printed. The cherry on top is that they won't cost you a penny. But trawling through the mountains of brush fonts around will take time, so we've collected the very best ones and listed them here for you. Some are free for personal use and others for commercial use, too – just make sure you check the terms carefully before using them.
If none of these are quite right for you, head over to our roundup of top free fonts, which features a variety of styles. You could also dive into the best handwriting fonts for something with an extra flourish.
Keep reading for the best free brush fonts available to download today.
01. Reckless
Reckless is a bold font, which packs a punch with its simplicity. Its playful edge comes from the uneven style, with patchy density and moveable baseline. It's free for both personal and commercial use so it's a winner in our eyes.
02. Rosetta
Free for personal use, Rosetta is a sumptuous brush font featuring a gorgeous array of colours. Elegant and attractive, it comes in SVG colour (for which you'll require Photoshop CC 2017 or Illustrator CC 2018) – but comes in a solid version too. There's a fee if you want to use this font commercially.
03. Bathi font
Free for personal use (and a mere $4.99 for a commercial license), Bathi is an intricate script handlettering font, created using a brush pen and perfect for a range of projects. It's an authentic font, both elegant and casual with unusual flourishes that create a feeling of movement.
04. Oh Now!
The multi-talented Syaf Rizal has shared his handiwork for us all to enjoy with his free brush font, Oh Now! Don't let this font's exasperated sounding name put you off though. It's a beautifully textured brush font that will give your work an edgy attitude, especially when you layer your text in multiple colours.
Oh Now! would look perfect on posters, logos and branding. When you take into account that it contains uppercase, lowercase, punctuation, symbols and multilingual support, the potential of Ph Now! feels endless. And because it's free for both personal and commercial use, we expect to see a lot more of this font in the future.
05. The Cat Has a Hat
Taking the popular stories of Dr Seuss as its jumping off point, The Cat Has a Hat is a fun and playful font created by Lukee Thornhill. Having spent a weekend painting over 1,500 letters, numbers and symbols, Thornhill whittled down these characters and refined them into a polished set.
Even though this font packs plenty of humour, Thornhill made sure that it doesn't appear childish. This means that it's suitable for a variety of branding and marketing purposes, with happy downloaders pointing out that it bares an uncanny similarity to the Nando's typography.
06. Mustache
Brush fonts are a great way to give your lettering that handmade touch, and that's exactly what you get with Mustache. Designed by Joel Maker, Mustache includes a full set of uppercase and lowercase letters, plus a large range of punctuation and numerals.
What's more, Mustache comes with plenty of scope when it comes to personalisation. With the help of stylistic alternatives and opentype features, Mustache can be tweaked to look truly individual. Simply download it for free, activate Stylistic Alternatives and adjust to your heart's content.
07. Gallow Tree
Creator Simon Stratford wanted to capture a sense of horror mixed with grunge in his spooky display typeface, Gallow Tree. And having scratched it out with a Faber Castell brush pen before scanning it and converting it with Glyphs App, we'd say he's succeeded.
The full set includes 370 glyphs, including uppercase letters, numbers and punctuation marks, is yours to download for personal use for free in an .otf and .ttf format. Commercial use will cost you a mere £5.
08. Besom
The beautiful Besom font was designed by Gatis Vilaks. Originally designed as part of an art project, this relaxing and fun font would be perfectly suited to travel media thanks to its scratchy and textured finish.
09. Fjord
Unsurprisingly, the stunning Fjord typeface takes its inspiration from Norway's natural landscape. Created by painter Krisjanis Mezulis, the font was originally drawn with a thick brush on plastic to achieve its unique distorted look. Both beautiful and chilling at the same time, this font has a lot of flexibility.
10. Brux
Bold, full of life, and hard to miss, meet Brux, a coarse, all caps font designed by Marcelo Reis Melo. Even though this font has some stylishly distressed brush work going on, it still remains easy to read. Available with Swedish, German and Spanish characters, this font is sure to find a wide audience.
11. Odachi
We love this beautiful Japanese-inspired design Odachi, by UI and type designer Mehmet Reha Tugcu. One of many stunning typefaces created by Tugcu, this has got to be our favourite of his brush fonts designs, not least because he's made it available for others to use in any project, even commercial endeavours.
12. Salted Mocha
If the name isn't enough to whet your appetite, the design of this gorgeous Salted Mocha free brush font will. Created by Stephanie Arsenault on the iPad Procreate app (see here for amazing procreate brushes), Salted Mocha features authentic brush stroke textures. With loopy strokes and a bouncing baseline, Salted Mocha has a fun, playful feeling, making it perfect for branding, invitations, quotes, and prints
13. Takhie
Designer and illustrator Nantia is the woman behind this simple yet elegant free brush font Takhie. One of many beautiful fonts, Nantia's Behance page is full of free resources for designers and artists. Want more? You can purchase the pro version of Takhie over on Nantia's website for a very affordable $15.
14. Leafy
Leafy is a free handwritten brush font put together by Krisijanis Mezulis. It includes 95 characters, each of which is individual and unique. This all-caps font has a naive, neat feel that promises to 'make you feel warm inside'.
15. Brusher
Brush fonts don't need to be sketchy and rough – this one sports some lovely smooth curves and edges, and a calligraphic aesthetic. Brusher is an elegant, flowing font that's a little more controlled than many other brush fonts. Download it for free on Behance.
16. Macbeth
Macbeth is an SVG font that's gained plenty of attention and appreciation on Behance – and it's free for both personal and commercial use. The SVG format provides scope for plenty of authentic brush details in the hand-drawn characters. This brash and energetic font would be ideal for use on displays, clothing or music artwork.
17. Atmosphere
There are plenty of reasons to love Yasir Ekinci's brush font, Atmosphere, not least that it's free for both personal and commercial use. The font features both uppercase and lowercase characters, as well as numbers and all the punctuation and symbols you'll need, all of them hand-drawn with an authentic and wonderfully scratchy brush texture. Atmosphere's slightly dry brush texture really brings it to life, and as an added bonus, Ekinci has thrown in a set of 20 watercolour splotches to help liven up your work.
18. Rustico
Made by Hustle Supply Co, Rustico is a bold brush font that's designed to help you make an eye-catching statement, whatever you're creating. Free for both personal and commercial use, its all-caps letterforms are drawn at a slight italic slant, and the rough and realistic brush texture gives Rustico a lively and energetic feel.
19. Peomy
Handwritten brush font Peomy includes an upper and lowercase set of characters and multi-language support, plus a bumper selection of logos and mini illustrations – including floral elements – you can use you supplement your designs.
20. Westfalia
A hand-painted, free brush font, Westfalia was created by the team at Rambler Creative. Providing an authentic hand-drawn feel with its messy edges and varied line thickness, Westfalia is great for any outdoor and exploration-themed design work.
Next: More great free brush fonts
