Fonts that support Cyrillic
Open-license families with Cyrillic glyphs beside Latin: text sans and serifs, a monospace, scripts and display faces.
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Cyrillic is used for Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Kazakh and dozens of other languages, and a font that supports it has to do more than add thirty-odd letters. Cyrillic text has a different texture from Latin. It has fewer ascenders and descenders and many more letters built from straight vertical strokes, so a line looks more like a row of small capitals. A design that works in Latin can turn monotonous or cramped in Cyrillic unless the letters were drawn with that rhythm in mind.
When you evaluate a family, look at a paragraph, not an alphabet. Check the letters that are specific to the script, such as those with diagonal strokes and the ones with tails and hooks, for even color beside their neighbors. Check the italic too: a true Cyrillic italic has cursive forms that differ considerably from the upright ones, and their presence is a good sign of care.
Coverage also varies by language. The basic set serves Russian; Ukrainian, Serbian, Macedonian and Central Asian languages need additional letters, and Bulgarian and Serbian readers prefer certain local letterforms. The language list on each font page shows which alphabets were checked against the font.
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PT Sans
From ParaType's public type project: Latin and Cyrillic in Regular and Bold with italics.
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PT Serif
A transitional text serif covering Latin and Cyrillic, drawn to match PT Sans.
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Golos Text
A sturdy sans for on-screen reading with Cyrillic, drawn for public service websites, in six weights.
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Rubik
Cyrillic, redesigned in 2016, alongside Hebrew and Arabic, variable from Light to Black with italics.
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Manrope
Cyrillic and Greek on a weight axis from ExtraLight to ExtraBold.
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Ubuntu
Cyrillic and Greek in four weights with italics, hinted by hand for screens.
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Nunito
Rounded terminals with Cyrillic, in eight weights with italics.
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Raleway
Cyrillic through all nine weights and their italics, in a sans its makers class as a display face.
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Lora
A text serif with brushed curves; its Cyrillic covers four weights with italics.
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Oswald
A condensed headline gothic with Cyrillic, variable from 200 to 700.
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JetBrains Mono
A coding monospace with Cyrillic and Greek, in eight weights with italics.
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Caveat
Handwriting with Cyrillic and a weight axis from 400 to 700.
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Arsenal
A narrow semi-grotesque for body text with visible stroke contrast, Cyrillic and four styles.
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Istok Web
Latin and Cyrillic, hand-hinted for LCD screens, in Regular and Bold with italics.
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Philosopher
A flared, contrasted sans in Regular and Bold with italics, covering Latin and Cyrillic.
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Oranienbaum
A narrow, high-contrast headline serif with hairline serifs for Latin and Cyrillic.
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Marck Script
Felt-tip lettering turned into a slanted script whose letters do not join, with Cyrillic.
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Ruslan Display
Wide, wedge-stroked display capitals for Cyrillic and Latin, based on 1970s lettering in the ustav manner.
Samples load a basic Latin subset of each family. Every family here carries an open license; its page states the terms and offers the original files.
Questions about fonts that support Cyrillic
Does Cyrillic support mean every Cyrillic language is covered?
No. A font may cover Russian and still lack letters for Ukrainian, Kazakh or others. Each font page lists the languages whose required letters were found in the files.
Why do some letters look wrong in Bulgarian or Serbian text?
Those languages prefer local shapes for a few letters, and Serbian and Macedonian italics differ from Russian ones. Fonts that include the variants switch to them through the OpenType locl feature when the text is tagged with its language, for example lang="bg" or lang="sr". A font without them shows the Russian shapes.
How do I load only the Cyrillic part of a web font?
Serve the font in subsets and declare each with a unicode-range in CSS. The browser then downloads the Cyrillic file only on pages that contain Cyrillic text.
Are these Cyrillic fonts free for commercial use?
Yes. All but one are under the SIL Open Font License, which allows commercial use and embedding; Ubuntu has its own Ubuntu Font License, which also allows commercial use.