Typography: 10 typefaces to use instead of AI's Inter

You can often tell an AI-built site before you've read a word. Much of the giveaway is in the typography: the same typeface, the same sizes and the same small habits repeat from one site to the next. This guide covers how to recognise AI typography, which free typefaces work in place of Inter, and how to set text so it doesn't look like a template.

How to recognise AI typography

ChatGPT, Claude and Codex, like site generators such as v0, Bolt and Lovable, build on the same starter templates, so they land on the same typographic choices. The most common tells:

• Inter or Geist for all text, from headings to buttons.
• One word in the headline set in a serif italic, usually Instrument Serif or Fraunces.
• A tracked-out capitalised label above every heading.
• Monospace for numbers, dates and small labels.
• Metadata strung together with middle dots, such as read time, date and category in a row.
• An arrow after every link.
• All text at nearly the same size and weight.

None of these is a mistake on its own, but together they tell a visitor the site came from a template. The easiest place to start is the typeface.

10 free typefaces to use instead of Inter

Everything below is on Google Fonts and free for commercial use. For a Finnish company the natural start is Finlandica, Finland's national typeface, drawn by Helsinki Type Studio.

If you want one recommendation: Host Grotesk drops straight into Inter's place, Finlandica gives a Finnish brand a voice of its own, and Newsreader or Literata carries long text such as a blog or a guide.

Setting text so it doesn't look like a template

Changing the typeface helps, but the look depends just as much on how the text is set.

• Make a clear difference in size and weight between heading and body.
• Tighten the letter spacing of large headings slightly, not of body text.
• Body text at 16–20 pixels, 45–90 characters per line, and line spacing of 130–150 per cent of the type size.
• Emphasise a word in a heading with weight or colour, not by switching typeface mid-sentence.
• Line up figures with font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums. You don't need a monospace face.
• Separate metadata with space or give each item its own place, instead of middle dots.
• Drop the capitalised label above a heading when the heading already says the same thing.
• Two families are plenty, as long as the second is clearly different, such as a serif paired with a sans.

Paid typefaces

When you want a look your competitors don't have, a paid typeface often costs less than people expect. Helsinki Type Studio prices its web licence by monthly visitors: a single style starts at €70, and the whole Allee family up to 500,000 visitors costs €1,050. The City of Helsinki's Helsinki Grotesk Pro costs €70 per style.

Other foundries in Finland and nearby include Typolar, Paavola Type Studio and Hurme Design, Sweden's Letters from Sweden, Iceland's Or Type and Norway's Monokrom. Among free Finnish faces, Jaapokki is an established headline choice.

Licences in short

• Google Fonts may be used commercially, but download the files to your own server. Loading from Google's servers passes a visitor's IP address to Google, and the Munich regional court awarded damages over it in 2022.
• Free of charge isn't the same as free to use. Fontshare's Satoshi and Switzer may not be modified or handed to an outside designer, and the licence is terminable.
• With a paid typeface, what matters is who holds the licence. An agency's licence may not run a client's site, so have the licence issued in the client's name.
• Subscription typefaces stop working when the payments stop. Adobe Fonts and annual web licences are poor choices for a permanent brand face.

The technical side

In Next.js, next/font downloads the fonts at build time and serves them from your own domain, so no request reaches Google. From a variable font only the weight axis comes along by default, so request optical size with the axes option. WordPress's bundled themes have served fonts from the theme directory since version 6.2. If a theme or page builder fetches a font from an external server, fix it.

How to choose

• Look at what your competitors use. If three in four are on Inter, you have an easy chance to stand apart.
• Choose a family with an italic and enough weights. Without an italic, emphasis in body text looks clumsy.
• Prefer a variable font: you get every weight from one file.
• Test headings with the longest real text, not lorem ipsum. Finnish compound words break many layouts.
• Read the licence before installing a font on a client's site, and always self-host the files.

Typography is only one of AI's fingerprints. The next part of the series covers colour, and why the violet gradient became the mark of AI-built sites.