WhatFont alternatives: 9 font finder extensions compared
Last updated 7 August 2026 · All figures taken from the official Chrome Web Store listings
Short answer
WhatFont still works, but it has not shipped a Chrome update since 4 March 2024, and its 4.0 rating is the lowest of any font inspector with over a million users. If you want a maintained like-for-like replacement, Font Finder by unixeco is the safest pick. If you want the smallest possible tool, Fontanello. If you also need contrast and accessibility numbers alongside the font, Fontlens is currently the only one that reports both WCAG 2 and APCA and warns you when the browser silently substituted a different font.
On this page
Why people look for a WhatFont alternative
WhatFont earned its three million installs. Reviews still call it "instant and 100% accurate" and credit it with removing "the headache of inspect element", and it is the tool most often recommended in front-end tutorials. Nothing below is an argument that it was bad software.
The problem is maintenance. Three specific things drive people to search for a replacement:
- No Chrome update since 4 March 2024. Version 3.2.0 is still current. The Firefox port was last touched in 2019 and the Edge build in May 2022.
- It stops working until you reload. This shows up repeatedly in reviews as "DOES NOT WORK" and "it has stopped working??". It is not unique to WhatFont, it affects most of this category, and the cause is explained in the FAQ.
- No onboarding. One public review exists purely to explain to other users how to pin the toolbar icon. When users have to document your product for each other, that is a gap in the product.
The developer, Chengyin Liu, works on it alone and does not visibly reply to reviews. That is a completely reasonable thing for one person to do with a free tool, and it is also why the alternatives below exist.
All nine at a glance
| Extension | Users | Rating | Last update | Price | Personal data |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WhatFont | 3,000,000 | 4.0 (2,100) | 4 Mar 2024 stale | Free | None |
| Fonts Ninja | 900,000 | 4.4 (891) | 10 Jul 2025 ageing | Freemium | Yes |
| CSS Peeper | 400,000 | 4.1 (475) | 4 May 2026 active | Freemium | None |
| Font Finder (unixeco) | 400,000 | 4.5 (228) | 3 Apr 2026 active | Free | None |
| What font (DevApps) | 100,000 | 3.8 (305) | 21 Jan 2025 ageing | Free | None |
| Font Picker | 90,000 | 3.2 (63) | 3 Mar 2025 ageing | Free | None |
| Fontanello | 60,000 | 4.6 (47) | 22 Apr 2024 stale | Free | None |
| What the Font | 30,000 | 4.0 (23) | 16 May 2026 active | Free, ads | Origin + ID |
| Fontlens | New | No ratings yet | Aug 2026 active | Free | None |
On the last row: Fontlens is ours and it launched in August 2026, so it has no install base and no reviews. That is a real disadvantage compared to every other tool on this page and you should weigh it. Everything else here is verifiable on the Chrome Web Store today.
Each extension in detail
WhatFont: the incumbent
Hover to identify, click for a detail panel, with Typekit and Google Fonts API detection and several colour formats. It does one job and it does it accurately.
Genuinely accurate identification, which reviews single out as its strength
Completely free, no upsell, no data collection
No Chrome update in over two years
Recurring reports of it failing silently until the page is reloaded
No in-product onboarding
Font Finder by unixeco: the closest maintained replacement
The most detailed pure font inspector in this comparison. Text and background colour in RGB and HEX, family including what actually rendered, size, line height, alignment, letter spacing, weight, style, variant, element type, class and ID, a remote-or-local origin marker, and an inline font swap for testing.
Actively maintained and free, with no paid tier at all
More raw detail than anything else here
Reviews report wrong detection on some sites, Facebook specifically
No way to save a font you found, a repeatedly requested feature
Fonts Ninja: the one with a marketplace
The most feature-rich option: a "Font DNA" matching algorithm, bookmarking, similar-font recommendations, filtering by shape, licence and price, and an optional desktop app that installs fonts for trial.
Nothing else here helps you find and licence a similar font
Backed by a funded company rather than one person
The v8 redesign removed one-click copying, and multiple reviewers announced they were leaving over it
Declares collection of personal data, authentication data and location, the most of any tool here
Bookmarking reportedly fails for fonts it cannot identify
CSS Peeper: a design inspector, not a font tool
Extracts colours, typography and assets for a whole page rather than one element. Run by Sparkglare in Poland, the most professionally set up vendor in this comparison.
Page-wide asset extraction, including images, that no pure font tool offers
Actively maintained by a registered company
CSS copying, the contrast scanner and the typography hierarchy view are all paid
Overkill if you only wanted to know what font that heading is
Fontanello: the minimalist
Right-click any text, get its typography, plus contrast information for the selection. That is the whole product.
Highest rated pure font inspector here, at 4.6
Reviews call it "quicker than Fonts Ninja" and "the first extension I install on a new machine"
Chrome build last updated April 2024, though the Firefox version is newer
No copy-all, and the font name is not clickable to search it
What font: font finder (DevApps)
Hover and click identification with Google Fonts matching.
At least five of the ten most recent reviews report it not working, with other users answering in the reviews with the "reload the page" workaround
The developer is not visibly responding
Font Picker
Right-click context menu with a font detail popup. The lowest rated extension here with a meaningful user base.
The activation bug has been reported across 2021 to 2024 and the store description itself warns about it in capitals
Misdetection reports, including everything coming back as Roboto
What the Font: ad supported
Toolbar and context menu detection with a Shadow-DOM-isolated overlay, built on Manifest V3.
Actively maintained, and it discloses its monetisation openly
The only tool here that injects a sponsored banner into pages you visit
Transmits page origin and a random install ID
Fontlens: ours, and new
Built specifically around the gaps above. Hover for the font, click to pin, with size in px and rem, weight with its name, line height, letter spacing, the declared stack, and the web font file when there is one.
It tells you when the font is not the one the page asked for. Of fourteen extensions surveyed, none of the others show this
WCAG 2 contrast with AA and AAA verdicts, plus APCA, the WCAG 3 draft, which only one other extension reports
Whole-page report: every font used, every contrast failure grouped by colour pair and text size, and the page's colour palette
Handles oklch, lab and color(), and works inside Shadow DOM
Everything free, no paid tier, no account, and it makes no network requests at all
Built to survive the update-without-reload case that affects most of this category
No users and no reviews yet. Every other tool here has a track record and this one does not
No font marketplace, no similar-font suggestions, no image-based identification
No page-wide image or asset extraction, unlike CSS Peeper
Chrome Web Store listing → What Fontlens does →
Full feature comparison
| Feature | Fontlens | WhatFont | Font Finder | Fonts Ninja | Fontanello | CSS Peeper |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Identifies the rendered font | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Size, weight, line height, spacing | Yes | Partial | Yes | Yes | Partial | Paid |
| Warns on font substitution | Yes | No | Origin only | No | No | No |
| Colour with alpha compositing | Yes | Partial | Yes | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| WCAG 2 contrast, AA and AAA | Yes | No | No | No | Partial | Paid |
| APCA, the WCAG 3 draft | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| Whole-page contrast scan | Yes | No | No | No | No | Paid |
| Page colour palette | Yes | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Save fonts for later | Yes | No | No | Unreliable | No | No |
| Try another font on the page | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| Copy as CSS | Yes | No | Yes | Removed in v8 | No | Paid |
| Modern colour spaces (oklch, lab) | Yes | Partial | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear |
| Works inside Shadow DOM | Yes | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear |
| Font marketplace / similar fonts | No | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Page-wide asset extraction | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Identifies fonts in images | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Free, with no paid tier | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
"Unclear" is not a criticism. It means the store listing does not state it and we did not want to guess. Shadow DOM support and modern colour space handling are rarely documented, so several tools may well handle them.
Which one should you pick
- You just want WhatFont, but maintained. Font Finder by unixeco. Free, actively updated, more detail than WhatFont had.
- You want the smallest, fastest thing that works. Fontanello. Right-click, read, done, and the highest rated of the pure font tools.
- You check accessibility as part of your job. Fontlens, because the contrast numbers and the page-wide scan are free, and it is one of two tools that report APCA.
- You buy and licence fonts. Fonts Ninja, if you accept its data collection.
- You are rebuilding a page from scratch. CSS Peeper, if you are willing to pay for the parts that matter.
- You need to identify a font in a screenshot or logo. None of these. Use a web service like WhatTheFont by MyFonts or Fontspring Matcherator, because extensions read the DOM and cannot see inside an image.
Frequently asked questions
Is WhatFont still working in 2026?
Mostly yes. Its last Chrome release was version 3.2.0 on 4 March 2024, and it still identifies fonts accurately when it activates. The recurring complaint is that it silently does nothing until you reload the tab. Its 4.0 out of 5 across roughly 2,100 ratings is the lowest of any font inspector with more than a million users.
What is the best free WhatFont alternative?
Font Finder by unixeco is the safest like-for-like swap: 400,000 users, 4.5 out of 5, and a release on 3 April 2026. Fontanello is the best minimal option at 4.6 out of 5. Fontlens is the only one that also reports WCAG and APCA contrast and warns you when the browser substituted a different font, but it is new and unproven.
Which font extension does not collect personal data?
WhatFont, Font Finder, Fontanello and Fontlens all declare no personal data collection. Fonts Ninja declares that it collects personal data, authentication data and location, the most of any tool here. What the Font transmits the page origin and a random install ID to serve its sponsored banner, which it discloses openly.
Why do these extensions stop working until you reload the page?
It is a content script injection problem, not a bug unique to any one tool. When an extension is installed or updated while a tab is already open, the script already in that tab is orphaned, but the "already loaded" flag it set is still there. A freshly injected copy sees the flag and quietly does nothing. It is the most common complaint in this whole category and is why Font Picker sits at 3.2 out of 5 despite 90,000 users. The fix is for the new copy to tear down the old one before taking over.
Can a Chrome extension identify a font in an image or screenshot?
No. Every extension here reads the rendered DOM, so it only sees text the browser drew as text. Identifying a font inside an image needs image recognition, which is what web services like WhatTheFont by MyFonts and Fontspring Matcherator do. That is a different product category rather than a gap in these tools.
What is the difference between WCAG 2 contrast and APCA?
WCAG 2 gives a ratio such as 4.5 to 1 and is still what audits, contracts and legal requirements reference. APCA is the draft successor in WCAG 3 and measures perceived lightness contrast instead, with a minimum score that changes with font size and weight. APCA is still a draft and can change, so the sensible approach is to show both. Of fourteen extensions surveyed, only two do.
Do any of these work in Firefox or Edge?
WhatFont has an unofficial Firefox port with 32,661 users, last updated in 2019, and an Edge republish with over 22,000 users, last updated May 2022. Fonts Ninja has an official Firefox build with 9,736 users updated in July 2025. Fontanello has a Firefox version at 2,851 users updated November 2024, which is newer than its Chrome build. The rest are Chrome only.
How this comparison was made
Every user count, rating, version number and update date on this page was read directly from the official Chrome Web Store, Microsoft Edge Add-ons and Mozilla Add-ons listings in July and August 2026, not from aggregator sites. Complaint patterns come from the review text on those listings.
Three limits worth stating plainly:
- The Chrome Web Store does not expose a star breakdown per review, only the overall score, so complaint analysis is based on the wording of the most recent visible reviews rather than a filtered one-star sample.
- CSS Peeper's individual reviews would not load, so it has an overall score here but no quoted review text.
- Google itself shows slightly different scores on a listing's main page and its reviews subpage. The main page figure is used throughout.
Fontlens is our own extension and is listed last in the table on purpose. Where a competitor is better, this page says so: Font Finder is more detailed and has years of reliability behind it, CSS Peeper does asset extraction Fontlens cannot, Fonts Ninja can help you licence a font, and no extension in this category can read a font out of an image.
Comparison last updated 7 August 2026. If a figure here has gone out of date, it is worth checking the store listing directly, these numbers move.