Fonts that support Thai
Open-license Thai and Latin families, both traditional looped designs and modern loopless ones, for text, interfaces and headlines.
Sawasdee Bangkok
Thai is written without spaces between words, in an alphabet of 44 consonants with vowels and tone marks placed before, after, above and below them. Marks can stack two deep above a consonant, so the script is tall, and a Thai font must position every combination cleanly. The first thing readers notice, though, is something simpler: whether the letters have loops.
Traditional Thai letterforms begin with a small circle, the head of the letter, and several letters are told apart mainly by the direction of that loop. Looped designs are the standard for books, newspapers, official documents and long reading, and many readers find them easier at small sizes. Loopless designs drop or simplify the heads, which brings Thai visually closer to Latin sans-serif. They dominate advertising, branding and interfaces, and look modern, but similar letters become harder to distinguish in continuous text.
So choose by job: looped for paragraphs, loopless for headings and short labels, or a family that offers both. Give Thai generous line spacing for its stacked marks. Since words are not separated by spaces, line breaking depends on software with a Thai dictionary, so test real paragraphs in your target browsers.
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Sarabun
A Thai and Latin sans in eight weights with italics, known from official documents in Thailand.
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Kanit
Loopless Thai and Latin with flat-cut terminals, in nine weights with italics.
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Prompt
Latin with loopless Thai in a wide geometric design, nine weights with italics.
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IBM Plex Sans Thai Looped
Looped Thai with basic Latin in seven weights from Thin to Bold.
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K2D
Thai and Latin in eight weights with italics, keeping the loops of traditional Thai letters.
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Krub
Looped Thai letterforms with metal-type details, in six weights with italics.
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Niramit
A Thai and Latin sans in six weights with italics, keeping the traditional loops, with small hooks on some Latin letters.
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Anuphan
A loopless Thai and Latin sans, variable from Thin 100 to Bold 700.
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KoHo
A Thai and Latin sans with squared-off curves, six weights and italics.
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Athiti
An informal humanist sans with a loopless Thai companion, in six weights.
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Maitree
Long-serifed Latin paired with looped Thai, in six weights from ExtraLight to Bold.
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Pridi
A slab serif Latin matched with a looped Thai, in six weights.
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Google Sans
Thai among 25 subsets, in four weights with italics.
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Fahkwang
A wide, high-contrast sans for Thai and Latin, after old Thai newspaper headlines.
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Itim
Thai and Latin handwriting with a looped build, in one weight.
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Sriracha
A slanted Thai and Latin handwriting face with loopless Thai letters.
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Pattaya
A bold slanted script extended to Thai in an informal loopless style, with Cyrillic.
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 Thai
What is the difference between looped and loopless Thai fonts?
Looped fonts keep the small circular heads of traditional Thai letters and suit long text. Loopless fonts simplify them for a modern look and are used mostly for headings, branding and interfaces.
Why do Thai lines break in odd places?
Thai has no spaces between words, so software must find word boundaries with a dictionary. Results vary by browser and application; test with real text and adjust manually where needed.
Are these Thai fonts free for commercial use?
Yes. All of them are under the SIL Open Font License, which permits commercial use and embedding.