This roundup features 18 free icon fonts that can be used in your commercial projects. The icon fonts in this post are perfect for your app user interfaces (UIs).


What are Icon Fonts?
Icon fonts are font files that have symbols and glyphs (e.g. arrows, folders, magnifying glasses) instead of standard alphanumeric characters.

Icon fonts are like dingbat fonts, but are designed specifically for UIs. Icon fonts, just like other web fonts, use the CSS @font-face rule to display icons in web browsers.

And because they’re treated like web fonts, icon fonts:

Have great cross-browser support (even IE6, for example, can render web fonts using the @font-face rule)
Can be scaled on-the-fly if the user adjusts their web browser settings
Can be rendered with different colors
Can embody font- and text-related CSS properties (like text-shadow and gradient)
See icon fonts in action by visiting my friend Chris Coyier’s icon fonts demo page.

To learn how to use icon fonts, read this tutorial on CSS-Tricks: HTML for Icon Font Usage.

Free Icon Fonts
Below are 18 excellent icon free fonts that have licenses that permit commercial use. I strongly recommend reading the license terms and conditions of any freebie you get online, just to be sure that you can use the free resource for your particular purpose.