Google’s web font service has become a go-to tool for web designers since it’s launch a few years ago. What some don’t realise though, is that each font you add to your website increases your load time and when you start adding variations of fonts (bold, italic, light etc) the weight of fonts can soon increase and become a burden on your site.
Disclaimer
A small disclaimer – this test was pretty unscientific. I’m basing the size on the regular version of the font – bold and light versions of fonts are usually + or – 10% of the file size of the regular font but this doesn’t always rings true – as a general rule, I like to think that adding a second version of the font is going to very roughly double the size. I have based the sizing on the .ttf version of the fonts – there are, of course other file formats that the font may be served in, but this should roughly translate in terms of file size.
The Fonts
- Karla (17KB) (Sans Serif)
- Squada One (19KB) (Sans Serif)
- Allerta (20KB) (Sans Serif)
- Allerta Stencil (20KB) (Sans Serif)
- Dorsa (21KB) (Sans Serif)
- Quantico (21KB) (Sans Serif)
- Homenaje (22KB) (Sans Serif)
- Graduate (23KB) (Sans Serif)
- Wendy One (23KB) (Sans Serif)
- Gudea (23KB) (Sans Serif)
- Acme (23KB) (Sans Serif)
- Quicksand (24KB) (Sans Serif)
- Share Tech Mono (24KB) (Mono Spaced Sans Serif)
- Galdeano (25KB) (Sans Serif)
- Imprima (25KB) (Sans Serif)
- Ruda (25KB) (Sans Serif)
- Spinnaker (25KB) (Sans Serif)
- Passion One (25KB) (Sans Serif)
- Trochut (25KB) (Serif)
- Sintony (26KB) (Sans Serif)
- Pathway Gothic One (26KB) (Sans Serif)
- Erica One (26KB) (Sans Serif)
- Unna (26KB) (Serif)
- Economica (27KB) (Sans Serif)
- Arapey (27KB) (Serif)
- Unlock (27KB) (Serif)
Observation: Mainly sans serif fonts are the smallest, but there’s some nice serif fonts to choose from too.
Most Popular Fonts
I’ve taken the top ten most popular fonts (according to the Google web fonts sorting) and listed the file sizes using the same rules as above.
- Open Sans (217KB) (Sans Serif)
- Roboto (145KB) (Sans Serif)
- Oswald (51KB) (Sans Serif)
- Lato (120KB) (Sans Serif)
- Droid Sans (41KB) (Sans Serif)
- PT Sans (443KB) (Sans Serif)
- Source Sans Pro (150KB) (Sans Serif)
- Open Sans Condensed (221KB) (Sans Serif)
- Roboto Condensed (140KB) (Sans Serif)
- Droid Serif (44KB) (Serif)
- Ubuntu (354KB) (Sans Serif)
- Raleway (176KB) (Sans Serif)
PT Sans is biggest of the 12 most popular I looked at by quite some distance. Droid Sans and Serif both came in at below the 45KB mark which makes them the most light weight of the most popular web fonts that were tested. I’ll try to keep this list updated from time to time and improve the formatting/possibly include examples of the fonts with a sortable table.