Commercial · Sans serif · Frere-Jones Type
Retina
Retina is a licensed font from Frere-Jones Type: $60, as printed on the foundry or reseller’s page on 2026-09-05. The 3 open-licence families below are suggested in its place, each with the basis for the substitution.
The name above is set in a fallback face. Retina is a licensed font and there is no file here to show it in; the foundry’s page has the real specimen.
- Designer
- Tobias Frere-Jones
- Released
- 2016
- Styles
- 72
- Classification
- Sans serif
- Price
- $60 (per font; complete family $900. Price fields read from frerejones.com’s GraphQL data (fontFacePrice / completePrice), which the font page renders as US dollar amounts.) — as printed, read 2026-09-05
- Trial
- The foundry offers a trial download.
Sans built for hostile media, first for newspaper agate and television: MicroPlus styles use deep notches and duplexed widths so weights can change without altering line length. Released 2016.
Free alternatives to Retina
Suggested, not measured
Typecase measures fonts from their outlines. Retina is not on this machine, so these were chosen by what is known about it — classification, lineage, common use — and each is labelled with that basis. Open one to see its measured character and neighbours.
Quiet luxury, approachable
The Atkinson Hyperlegible webfont did not load here — this is a fallback face, not Atkinson Hyperlegible.
same classification
A sans designed for legibility at small sizes with exaggerated distinguishing details, the same goal as Retina MicroPlus.
Quiet luxury, approachable
The Public Sans webfont did not load here — this is a fallback face, not Public Sans.
same classification
A neutral grotesque with a large x-height suited to small text.
Quiet luxury, approachable
The Inter webfont did not load here — this is a fallback face, not Inter.
commonly substituted
Screen sans with open apertures widely used for small UI text.
Own Retina? Point the app at the file and this list becomes measured: every open family ranked by how close it actually is, with the difference named. The file never leaves your machine.
Open the app →