We do not set the prices of the fonts we sell. Rather, our partner foundries set prices for their own fonts, and also set up discounts (including timing and discount percentages for special offers). You can read more about discounting here.
Pricing in the type industry today
Pricing philosophies
Establishing “the right price” of a font is not easy. One reason is that, like any product that is distributed over the internet as digital files (apps, music, stock photos, movies, etc.), producing additional copies costs next to nothing. When selling a tangible product, the price of each copy is partly built around the cost of raw material and manufacturing for each copy. But when selling downloadable digital files, designers don’t have to worry about this.
However, one small font file may represent months or even years of dedicated hard work. Good fonts are, in fact, much harder to make than most users realize. How can the price of a small digital file reflect the lifeblood that went into its production?
To many type designers, the price of their typefaces is as much an emotional decision as it is an economic one. They feel that a relatively high price expresses appreciation for their work, and low or discounted prices degrade it. However, designers must consider the economic reality. Like any other business, designers must consider competitive factors, too. To make a living from fonts, foundries must find an audience that wants to pay for their work — and buy their typefaces rather than those offered by someone else.
Know your market and choose your strategy
In general, selling fonts online is a volume business. The more people that purchase your font, the more places it is used and the more popular it becomes, which in turn creates further demand for your fonts and increases the brand recognition for your foundry.
Pricing is often a question of choosing your niche in the market.
You may decide to adopt a high-price strategy with the hopes of creating a high-end brand which leads to larger offline deals and projects. When selling at a high price online, margins are larger and the profit-per-unit-sold increases; however, the number of units sold could decrease, and so could your total profit. This strategy could prove risky, as very few type foundries which adopt a high-end strategy end up becoming a well-known luxury type brand that then brings in the larger licenses and custom projects.
Many foundries see success by appealing to a broader customer base. Since the font market is so niche, you should create pricing that optimizes the number of potential customers that can afford your fonts. This means thoughtful and attractive pricing is essential. Quality and originality will always play an important part in convincing users to buy your fonts. Occasional font buyers are often persuaded to buy a font because the price is low enough for them to feel that the purchase carries little risk.
Our largest competition
Since the digital era began, computer and software companies have inadvertently shaped the public’s view of how much a font is worth. Companies bundled hefty packs of professional fonts with their design apps and devices, thus creating an environment where everyday consumers perceive the price of all fonts to be free. Free fonts with open source licenses are of course out there, and are higher-quality and more easily available than ever before. Further compounding the issue is that font piracy is rampant.
Today, collectively as a community of people who aim to make a living from selling type, our biggest competition is the free font market, not other designers selling fonts. Growing the number of customers who see the value in fonts and continue to pay to license them is something we can only do together.
In this rapidly changing market, establishing affordable retail prices can be a powerful tool to continue to sell great fonts.
Common prices for single styles
Below are some rough guidelines for font prices. This is the base price for a single Desktop font or Webfont, not discounted prices.
$0 (Free)
MyFonts is not a site for free fonts. Growing our number of customers, hosting, maintaining and improving the website, customer service, foundry support, running ads, and sending newsletters all cost money; we pay all that from the royalties on fonts sold. We welcome occasional free font families from foundries that sell their other fonts at normal prices; and we encourage the inclusion of single free font in a family to lure potential buyers.
In general, we do not market fonts that are under $9 in our email newsletters and do not recommend prices this low on our sites.
$20 – $35
This price range typically works for display fonts like scripts, casual fonts, or other highly decorative and specific faces. It brings your font collection within reach of beginner graphic designers, students, or hobbyist users who feel they cannot afford professional pricing. Highly specific font designs (like historical fonts, seasonal fonts, fonts that are more abstract or harder to read, fonts that can only be used at large sizes, fonts for very specific use cases like monograms) in general have a smaller market to begin with. Because of the smaller potential customer base, it’s very important to make sure your prices for these kinds of fonts are accessible and attractive to this audience.
$35 – $70
This price range is common for professional fonts. This price range works well for cases like these:
- Sophisticated script and display fonts with a large number of OpenType features, such as ligatures, alternates, swash characters — often amounting to between 1,000 and 2,000 glyphs.
- Professional text fonts may have a high glyph count because they contain small caps, various numeral styles, and ample language coverage.
Your brand will also determine the price your fonts can bear. Highly reputable brands positioned as luxury or high-end can justify higher prices. Keep in mind it takes a lot of investment, skill, and time to develop a reputable brand.
Some foundries choose to price even higher than these ranges and then do a steep limited time discount on their fonts to entice customers. However, as per MyFonts discounting policies, fonts must be sold at full prices for at least half of the time. (See our 45-day rule here.) We do not recommend this as this high price and steep discounting strategy often leads to drop-offs in sales once the discount ends.
Common prices for family packs
The philosophy behind family packs
As most font families include many different single styles, fonts are also sold as complete family packs. It’s a natural and common way of grouping fonts, and comes in handy when there are different weights and widths of fonts. The price you set for your family pack creates a great opportunity to upsell your fonts. Strategically pricing your family pack can entice customers to buy the complete pack rather than a single style, thus spending more money with your foundry. You want customers to buy your complete family pack, because it’s more likely they’ll use the fonts (and create the best work possible with your fonts) if they have all the styles you’ve thoughtfully designed to work together. The more your fonts are used by designers, the more places people see them, and the more popular they become, thus creating even more demand for your fonts.
Pricing complete family packs
We recommend pricing family packs between 3x and 10x the price of a single style. Many foundries have different strategies for this, and you can check out MyFonts.com to see what other foundries are doing. We see common price points of $49, $99, $149, and $199 working well for complete family packs.
Each year we conduct the Font Purchasing Habits Survey where we ask font users about their purchasing habits. We ask two questions about font prices people are willing to pay for two different categories of fonts. The questions and results are below.
Workhorse family
Imagine you want to purchase a typeface family that will be your go-to font for a variety of typographic uses - set in large and small sizes in documents, presentations, and more. It's probably either a sans or serif category, with many weights, italics, obliques, small caps, language support, and OpenType features. When asked what respondents would pay for a basic desktop license for a complete family, the average answer was $118USD in 2018.
Script family
Imagine a three-weight family of script typefaces. All of the letters connect smoothly, there are many alternates and ligatures, it contains well-designed diacritics, and it comes in three weights. When asked what respondents would pay for a basic desktop license of this family of three fonts, the average answer in 2018 was $55USD in 2018.
It’s great to get feedback from real customers about prices willing to pay. Keep in mind that these numbers should only be used as a guide when pricing your family packs. There are many strategies that work, so feel free to experiment and research. You can read more about the Font Purchasing Habits Survey research here.
Sub-family packs
You can also create a sub family pack that includes fewer font styles than the complete family pack. We only recommend this for font families that contain a very high volume of styles. We also recommend creating no more than three sub-family packs. Too many options can overwhelm customers. We make this recommendation based on user research conducted during our family page redesign.
The 45 Day Rule
This rule is to ensure that fonts are sold at their actual price a majority of the time and to prevent price manipulation.
- Discounts can last a maximum of 45 days.
- You must wait 45 days after your last discount before starting another discount or changing prices.
- You must wait 45 days after your last price change before starting a discount or changing prices again.
- You must wait to change the prices of your fonts 45 days after they are released.
- You cannot change prices while a discount is on your fonts.
Currencies on MyFonts
MyFonts users in many places around the world see and pay prices in their local currency. Currently, we support eight different localized currencies (and we’re gradually adding more):
US Dollar ($)
British Pound (£)
Euro (€)
Japanese Yen (¥)
Canadian Dollar (C$)
Australian Dollar (A$)
New Zealand Dollar (NZ$)
Brazilian Real (R$)
As a foundry, you have two basic options:
- Price fonts in United States dollars (USD), and leave conversion to our system. It regularly updates the conversion rate in accordance with internationally established rates.
- Establish fixed prices in some or all of the available currencies. In that case, it is up to you to monitor the fluctuations on the financial markets and change prices in response.
You can set prices for your fonts in the Foundry Platform.
Value Added Tax (VAT — called USt, TVA, IVA or BTW in other countries) is added during checkout, using the local percentage valid in the country the order is placed from where applicable.