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How sure can you be that the font you specify will be present on the end user's machine? This is the latest cross-platform snapshot of the Code Style font survey and should give you greater confidence in selecting a font.

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The most common fonts

The table below is a periodically updated listing of font survey results for all platforms, the cumulative total of all valid font survey submissions since April 2005.

These figures are calculated per platform and do not show how common the fonts are on other systems. Think of it this way: More Mac systems have the Helvetica font than Windows systems have Trebuchet MS.

FAQ: Can't you show a total frequency for all platforms?

New: Build better CSS font stacks, a quick start gallery of core Web font family declarations for the font stack builder

Most common fonts on all systems to 6 February 2010
Platform and font name Installed (%) Sample Image
Mac Helvetica 100.00% 100.00% Sample Image
Windows Microsoft Sans Serif 99.70% 99.70% Sample Image
Windows Verdana 99.61% 99.61% Sample Image
Windows Courier New 99.46% 99.46% Sample Image
Windows Tahoma 99.46% 99.46% Sample Image
Mac Lucida Grande 99.44% 99.44% Sample Image
Mac Monaco 99.44% 99.44% Sample Image
Windows Arial 99.22% 99.22% Sample Image
Windows Trebuchet MS 99.22% 99.22% Sample Image
Mac Geneva 99.15% 99.15% Sample Image
Windows Comic Sans MS 99.07% 99.07% Sample Image
Windows Lucida Console 99.07% 99.07% Sample Image
Mac Courier 98.87% 98.87% Sample Image
Windows Impact 98.78% 98.78% Sample Image
Windows Times New Roman 98.78% 98.78% Sample Image
Windows Georgia 98.68% 98.68% Sample Image
Windows Arial Black 98.54% 98.54% Sample Image
Windows Lucida Sans Unicode 98.39% 98.39% Sample Image
Windows Palatino Linotype 98.34% 98.34% Sample Image
Windows Franklin Gothic Medium 97.87% 97.87% Sample Image
Mac Arial 97.46% 97.46% Sample Image
Mac Verdana 97.18% 97.18% Sample Image
Mac Times 96.62% 96.62% Sample Image
Unix URW Chancery L 96.57% 96.57% Sample Image
Unix URW Gothic L 96.26% 96.26% Sample Image
Unix Century Schoolbook L 95.95% 95.95% Sample Image
Unix URW Bookman L 95.64% 95.64% Sample Image
Windows Sylfaen 95.54% 95.54% Sample Image
Mac Helvetica Neue 95.49% 95.49% Sample Image
Unix Nimbus Mono L 95.33% 95.33% Sample Image
Mac Georgia 94.93% 94.93% Sample Image
Mac Trebuchet MS 94.65% 94.65% Sample Image
Unix URW Palladio L 94.39% 94.39% Sample Image
Mac Times New Roman 94.37% 94.37% Sample Image
Mac Arial Black 94.08% 94.08% Sample Image
Unix DejaVu Sans Mono 93.81% 93.81% Sample Image
Unix Nimbus Sans L 93.22% 93.22% Sample Image
Mac Gill Sans 92.39% 92.39% Sample Image
Mac Courier New 91.83% 91.83% Sample Image
Mac Impact 91.27% 91.27% Sample Image

These are only the top forty fonts, see the full combined font survey results (about 150 KB) for a complete listing.

Font survey statistics

These figures are the cumulative total of font survey submissions since January 2007. Older submissions are archived to maintain a 3 year rolling sample. The table shows the average submission rate and totals for each operating system, and the the date the applet-based survey was introduced.

Survey Windows Mac Linux
Submissions per week 11 2 2
Total submissions 2050 355 321
Survey applet from 21 April 2007 12 May 2007 21 February 2009
Fonts surveyed 281 117 102

Font stacks for print style sheets

Our main interest is to build reliable font stacks for screen rendering, but CSS allows us to specify a different font stack to print Web pages. The most reliable way to apply print media style sheets is to use the media attribute on the style sheet link element. The selectors you choose and font-family declarations you add to this style sheet will only apply when the page is printed.

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
      href="/styles/print.css" media="print" />
    

What font combinations would you choose for print? Use the font stack builder to create a print font stack and submit your ideas.

CSS font family resources

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