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Roboto Flex

A variable sans in one file with 13 axes, from weight, width and optical size to parametric stroke and height controls.

Sans Serif 20 styles · variable by Font Bureau, David Berlow, Santiago Orozco and others OFL

Download family 1.6 MB Type your own text

Roboto Flex is a variable sans serif that Google commissioned from Font Bureau as an extended version of Roboto. Roboto Flex has 13 axes in one file, including weight from 100 to 1000, width from 25 to 151 and optical size from 8 to 144. Roboto Flex is released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 and suits responsive interfaces.

Roboto Flex font preview card
Preview drawn by trendhub from the font files.
Designers
Font Bureau, David Berlow, Santiago Orozco, Irene Vlachou, Ilya Ruderman, Yury Ostromentsky, Mikhail Strukov
Classification
Sans Serif
License
SIL Open Font License 1.1
Styles
20 10 weights, slanted styles from the Slant axis
Variable font
Yes Optical size 8–144, Weight 100–1000, Grade -200–150, Width 25–151, Slant -10–0, Thick Stroke 27–175, Thin Stroke 25–135, Counter Width 323–603, Uppercase Height 528–760, Lowercase Height 416–570, Ascender Height 649–854, Descender Depth -305–-98, Figure Height 560–788
Glyphs
896
Languages checked
29 see the list
Last updated
version 3.200;gftools[0.9.32]
Used for
HeadlinesInterfacesTech

Official source: Google Fonts. Facts on this page were read from the font files and the source’s published data.

Try Roboto Flex

Sample text

Type over the sample to test your own words. The preview loads a Latin subset of Roboto Flex; the download contains the complete files.

Roboto Flex font specimen: alphabet, numerals and weights
Roboto Flex specimen: alphabet, numerals and weights. Image drawn by trendhub from the font files.

Weights and styles

  • Thin 100Roboto Flex Thin
  • ExtraLight 200Roboto Flex ExtraLight
  • Light 300Roboto Flex Light
  • Regular 400Roboto Flex Regular
  • Medium 500Roboto Flex Medium
  • SemiBold 600Roboto Flex SemiBold
  • Bold 700Roboto Flex Bold
  • ExtraBold 800Roboto Flex ExtraBold
  • Black 900Roboto Flex Black
  • ExtraBlack 1000Roboto Flex ExtraBlack

Roboto Flex is a variable font: the download holds the whole weight range in one file, and the named weights above are positions on that range. There is no separate italic file: slanted styles are set with the Slant axis.

About Roboto Flex

Roboto Flex is a sans serif that takes the Roboto design and widens it into a variable font with 13 axes. Five are the familiar ones: weight from 100 to 1000, width from 25 to 151, optical size from 8 to 144, grade from -200 to 150 and slant from 0 to -10. The other eight are parametric axes that control details such as stroke thickness (XOPQ, YOPQ), counter width (XTRA) and the heights of capitals, lowercase, ascenders, descenders and figures. According to the official notes, Google commissioned Font Bureau to rework Roboto with large screens in mind, and Cyrillic and Greek were developed with script specialists. Everything ships in one upright file of 896 glyphs covering Latin, Cyrillic, Greek and Vietnamese sets. The credits include Font Bureau and David Berlow among seven names. Roboto Flex is published under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Where Roboto Flex works

Responsive layouts
Width from 25 to 151 lets a heading narrow on a phone and widen on a large display without swapping fonts.
Dark mode text
The grade axis, from -200 to 150, makes strokes lighter or heavier for a dark or light background while the font stays the same.
Very large and very small type
Optical size from 8 to 144 adapts the drawing for footnotes at one end and wall-size titles at the other.
Expressive web headlines
Weight reaches 1000 and width 151, a range that allows animated or extreme display settings from one file.
Fine typographic tuning
Parametric axes such as XTRA and YTLC adjust counters and lowercase height, for example to even out justified text.

Glyphs

!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~¡¢

Latin and Latin Extended characters in the preview subset; the complete family has 896 glyphs.

Language support

The family contains the core letters these languages are written with:

  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Spanish
  • Portuguese
  • Italian
  • Dutch
  • Swedish
  • Norwegian
  • Danish
  • Finnish
  • Icelandic
  • Catalan
  • Turkish
  • Polish
  • Czech
  • Slovak
  • Hungarian
  • Romanian
  • Croatian
  • Slovenian
  • Lithuanian
  • Latvian
  • Estonian
  • Vietnamese
  • Russian
  • Ukrainian
  • Bulgarian
  • Greek

Writing systems with glyphs in the family besides Latin: Cyrillic, Greek. These are listed as scripts, not as a promise for every language written in them.

Character sets found in the files: cyrillic, cyrillic-ext, greek, latin, latin-ext, vietnamese. The language list is a check of required letters against the font, not a promise of typographic quality in each language.

License

SIL Open Font License 1.1Copyright 2017 The Roboto Flex Project Authors (https://github.com/TypeNetwork/Roboto-Flex)

What the license allows

  • Use the fonts in personal and commercial work, in print, on the web and in apps.
  • Modify the fonts and build new versions from them.
  • Redistribute the fonts, on their own or bundled with software, as long as the license text and copyright notice go with them.

Conditions

  • The fonts cannot be sold by themselves.
  • A modified version must stay under the same license and cannot use a Reserved Font Name without the copyright holder's permission.
  • The authors' names cannot be used to promote a modified version without permission.

This is a short summary, not legal advice. The license text decides: read the full OFL text. A copy is included in the download.

Fonts that pair with Roboto Flex

Baskervville Serif

Roboto Flex is sans serif and Baskervville is serif (4 weights): the difference in structure separates headings from text.

Bitter Slab Serif

Roboto Flex is sans serif and Bitter is slab serif (9 weights): the difference in structure separates headings from text.

Geist Mono Monospace

Geist Mono is a monospace family (9 weights) for code and figures next to Roboto Flex as the text face.

Suggestions come from simple rules on the records: a contrasting classification and enough weights to carry body text. They are a starting point, not a verdict.

Use Roboto Flex on the web

Download the family and host the files on your own site, then declare them in CSS. Please do not link to the files on trendhub.net: preview files here are subsets and their addresses change.

CSS, self-hosted
@font-face {
  font-family: "Roboto Flex";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/RobotoFlex-VariableFont_GRAD%2CXOPQ%2CXTRA%2CYOPQ%2CYTAS%2CYTDE%2CYTFI%2CYTLC%2CYTUC%2Copsz%2Cslnt%2Cwdth%2Cwght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 100 1000;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Roboto Flex", sans-serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Roboto Flex with this markup:

HTML, Google Fonts

Things to know

One file, no separate italic
Slanted text comes from the slant axis, which runs from 0 to -10, not from a second file.
Twenty named instances
The font names ten weights, Thin 100 to ExtraBlack 1000, each with a slanted italic instance; widths and the other settings are reached through the axes.
Parametric axes use capital tags
XOPQ, YOPQ, XTRA, YTUC, YTLC, YTAS, YTDE and YTFI are set with font-variation-settings.
Weight goes past 900
The weight axis ends at 1000, beyond the usual Black 900.

FAQs

Is Roboto Flex free for commercial use?

Yes. Roboto Flex is published under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, which allows use in personal and commercial work, modification and redistribution. The font cannot be sold on its own, and modified versions stay under the same license.

Who designed Roboto Flex?

Roboto Flex was made by Font Bureau on a commission from Google. The credits list David Berlow, Santiago Orozco, Irene Vlachou, Ilya Ruderman, Yury Ostromentsky and Mikhail Strukov.

How many axes does Roboto Flex have?

Roboto Flex has 13 variable axes: weight, width, optical size, grade, slant and eight parametric axes for stroke thickness, counter width and vertical heights.

What is the difference between Roboto and Roboto Flex?

Roboto Flex extends the Roboto design to far wider ranges, with weight up to 1000, width from 25 to 151 and optical sizes from 8 to 144, and adds grade and parametric axes.

Which languages does Roboto Flex support?

Roboto Flex includes the letters needed for English and other Latin-script languages such as German, French, Turkish, Polish and Vietnamese, as well as Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Greek.

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