There are thousands of free fonts on the web, but typically one must sift through abundant garbage to find a nugget of gold, so I spent several hours researching a number of free font websites in an effort to shine some light on those nuggets. In my research I came to the conclusion that quantity definitely does not mean quality when it comes to fonts. My recommendations below start with a few quality font resources then move on to larger font websites and a review of the features of each. So lets get to it:

These first three links are short lists of some of the best free quality fonts out there: 25 Best Free Quality Fonts, 19 More Free Quality Fonts, and last but not least, 5 Free Fonts You Shouldn’t Have Missed.

1.) dafont - This website is very well-organized with nine main font categories, each with quite a few sub-categories. I found that the “Top 100″ and “New Fonts” sections were very useful for finding some nice fonts quickly. Overall, this is a very nice collection of 7,222 interesting and useful fonts.

2.) urbanfonts - I almost made urbanfonts number one, but I found the organization of dafont to be just a little bit more user-friendly. However, the urbanfonts website is a much nicer design and is a slightly larger collection than dafont. It has 49 categories of fonts and like dafont has “Top 100″ and “New Fonts” sections which I highly recommend checking out. This collection contains a whopping 8,000+ freeware fonts.

3.) neatfonts - Of all the websites, neatfonts has the nicest user-interface and it has a feature that I absolutely love…the ability to change the font preview text. It uses Ajax technology which makes browsing fonts smooth and quick. The reason this site came in 3rd is because it mixes in shareware and demo fonts, but gives the user no indication of the license for each individual font, so I would be a bit wary of using these fonts for profit. I also thought the organization left a bit to be desired.

4.) adigitaldreamer freeware fonts - This is a relatively smaller collection of fonts with only a little over 250 fonts, but it appears to me that the person who collected these had very good taste…there are some really nice fonts here…even if there are only 3 categories.

5.) searchfreefonts - This website made it to my list because it is the largest collection that I know of with 13,000 fonts. But that is about all I have to say about it…okay, I should credit it for having a nice little rating system. But I wasn’t all that impressed with the organization and the lack of features…I also thought the font previews seemed a bit small.

BONUS: floodfonts - This site has six unique fonts that really grabbed my attention…they aren’t fonts you would use every day, but they could really add some character to a design project.

Disclaimer: I do not guarantee that any or all of the above websites contain only fonts that are completely free for commercial use, but to my knowledge, many are. Please exercise caution and check for licensing information before using fonts for commercial purposes.