Raleway
Matt McInerney & Pablo Impallari
Type specimen
The specimen uses the official Google Fonts subset when available, otherwise a font installed on this device. If neither exists the browser falls back to a system font, so treat the official download page as authoritative.
About this font
Born ultra-light and grew into a full geometric sans: Raleway began as a single hairline built for elegance - light, futuristic, tightly spaced - later completed to nine weights plus variable. Its narrow geometric proportions read as unmistakably 'designed'. More character than Roboto, softer than Space Grotesk: a natural voice for fashion, tech, architecture and arts brands. OFL, on Google Fonts. Raleway's edge is a full tonal range inside one skeleton: 200 featherweight and 800 bold share the same geometry, keeping multi-level hierarchies unified. When pairing with Chinese, its tall x-height means dropping the Latin 1-2px to balance the visual weight.
Where it works best
Fashion/tech/art brand headlines, site heroes, event collateral. Hairlines for atmosphere, 800-900 for impact; switch to a reading face for long body copy. Great for atmospheric long pages: hairlines for hero headings and white-space dividers, 700/900 for section accents; switch body copy to Inter or Open Sans.
| Weights | 9 |
|---|---|
| First release | 2012 |
| Designed by | Matt McInerney & Pablo Impallari |
| Rights holder | Matt McInerney & Pablo Impallari |
| Scripts | Latin |
| Licence | OFL SIL Open Font License 1.1 |
| Variable font | Supported |
Licence and commercial boundaries
Licence：SIL Open Font License 1.1
The dominant permissive licence for open fonts: free commercial use, modification, embedding and redistribution. Its core duties are that derivatives stay under OFL without the Reserved Font Name, the licence text travels with the files, and the fonts themselves are never sold standalone. Works typeset with them belong wholly to you.
SIL OFL 1.1: free for all commercial contexts, embeddable, modifiable and redistributable; no reserved-name reuse in derivatives, no standalone sales. Served via Google Fonts' official CDN.
Hard restrictions
- Derivatives drop the name.
- No standalone sales.
Commercial-use FAQ
Why is Raleway not ideal for long body text?
Its wide letterforms and hairlines trade legibility for style; the strokes crowd more than a plain grotesque at small sizes. Short UI copy is fine, but sustained paragraphs belong to a reading-face, leaving Raleway to headings.
Official channels
- Go to official download → https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Raleway
- Read the original licence → https://openfontlicense.org/
Last verified：2026-09-07
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