Best Fonts for Resume 2026: 10 ATS-Friendly Fonts

Direct answer: the best font for a resume in 2026 is a plain, widely installed font such as Calibri, Arial, Garamond, Cambria or Georgia, set at 10 to 12 pt for body text and 14 to 16 pt for your name. These are ATS-friendly fonts. Exported to PDF, they give applicant tracking software clean text to read and give the recruiter a page that is easy on the eyes. ResuFit tailors your resume to each job and exports a PDF with its fonts embedded, so the recruiter sees the page exactly as you saw it.

TL;DR: Pick one of the 10 ATS-friendly fonts below (Calibri, Garamond, Cambria, Helvetica, Georgia, Arial, Lato, Roboto, Palatino, Verdana), set body text at 10 to 12 pt, keep one font family throughout, and send a PDF.

What you’ll take away:

• The 10 ATS-friendly fonts in one table, with the body size for each
• What makes a font ATS-friendly, and what actually breaks parsing
• The size rules: 10 to 12 pt body, 14 to 16 pt name, nothing under 10 pt
• When to pick a serif and when to pick a sans-serif
• Five fonts to keep off your resume

What Are the Best Fonts for a Resume in 2026?

The 10 best fonts for a resume in 2026 are all ATS-friendly: plain designs that ship with Windows, macOS or Microsoft Office, or come free from Google Fonts, and that export to clean PDF text. The table is the short answer. The ranked notes below explain where each one fits best.

#	Font	Type	Body size	Best for
1	Calibri	Sans-serif	10.5 to 11.5 pt	Corporate, finance, administration
2	Garamond	Serif	11 to 12 pt	Academia, law, publishing
3	Cambria	Serif	10.5 to 11.5 pt	Government, healthcare, education
4	Helvetica	Sans-serif	10 to 11 pt	Design, marketing, tech
5	Georgia	Serif	10.5 to 11.5 pt	Media, nonprofits, education
6	Arial	Sans-serif	10.5 to 11 pt	Any industry
7	Lato	Sans-serif	10 to 11 pt	Startups, agencies, digital roles
8	Roboto	Sans-serif	10 to 11 pt	Tech, engineering, product
9	Palatino	Serif	10.5 to 11.5 pt	Legal, academic, cultural
10	Verdana	Sans-serif	10 to 10.5 pt	Dense, skills-heavy resumes

1. Calibri

Type: Sans-serif | Recommended size: 10.5 to 11.5 pt | ATS compatibility: Excellent

Calibri was the default font in Microsoft Office from 2007 until Microsoft named Aptos as its successor in 2023, so it is still the most familiar sans-serif in business documents. Its rounded letterforms read warmly without tipping into casual, and they hold up at small sizes on screens and paper.

Best for: Corporate roles, finance, consulting, administration. Any job where you want to look professional without trying too hard.

Why it works: Recruiters see Calibri all the time, so they never think about it. That is exactly what you want from a resume font. Aptos is a fine alternative. It is newer and less likely to be installed on every machine, so send it as a PDF.

2. Garamond

Type: Serif | Recommended size: 11 to 12 pt | ATS compatibility: Excellent

Garamond is the font of choice when you want elegance. Its thin strokes and classic proportions give a refined, editorial quality, and it runs slightly narrower than most fonts, so you fit more content on a page without shrinking the point size.

Best for: Academia, publishing, law, executive roles. Anywhere that values tradition.

Why it works: The design goes back to the 16th century and still looks fresh. It reads as taste without announcing itself.

3. Cambria

Type: Serif | Recommended size: 10.5 to 11.5 pt | ATS compatibility: Excellent

Microsoft commissioned Cambria for reading on screen and in print at small sizes. It has sturdier serifs and wider spacing than Times New Roman, which makes it easier to read on the monitors where most resumes are first reviewed.

Best for: Government, healthcare, education, traditional industries. A safe pick when you are unsure what the culture expects.

Why it works: You get the authority of a serif with none of the dated feel of Times New Roman.

4. Helvetica

Type: Sans-serif | Recommended size: 10 to 11 pt | ATS compatibility: Excellent

Helvetica is a graphic-design standard. Clean, precise, and everywhere from subway signage to corporate logos. On a resume it projects clarity.

Best for: Design, marketing, tech, architecture. Fields where visual awareness matters.

Why it works: Its spacing and proportions are close to perfect. One caveat: Helvetica ships with macOS but not Windows, so always export to PDF to preserve the rendering.

5. Georgia

Type: Serif | Recommended size: 10.5 to 11.5 pt | ATS compatibility: Excellent

Matthew Carter drew Georgia for screen legibility. Its large x-height (the height of lowercase letters) and generous spacing make it easy to read on a monitor, which is where most resumes get their first look.

Best for: Media, journalism, nonprofits, education. A warm serif that never feels stuffy.

Why it works: It was designed for screens first and print second, so it holds up on the laptops and tablets recruiters use.

6. Arial

Type: Sans-serif | Recommended size: 10.5 to 11 pt | ATS compatibility: Excellent

Arial is the workhorse. It is installed on practically every Windows and Mac computer and looks the same across platforms. It will not win design awards, and it will not cause a problem.

Best for: Any industry. When in doubt, Arial is the safest possible choice.

Why it works: Reliable and ubiquitous. If you are applying somewhere that cares nothing about font choice, Arial answers the question.

7. Lato

Type: Sans-serif | Recommended size: 10 to 11 pt | ATS compatibility: Very good

Lato (Polish for “summer”) was designed to feel warm and stable. Its semi-rounded letterforms read friendlier than Arial while staying professional. It is a free Google Font.

Best for: Tech startups, creative agencies, freelancing, digital-first companies.

Why it works: Contemporary without being trendy. One note: it is not a system font, so embed it in your PDF to avoid substitution.

8. Roboto

Type: Sans-serif | Recommended size: 10 to 11 pt | ATS compatibility: Very good

Christian Robertson designed Roboto at Google, and it launched in 2011 as the system font of Android 4.0. Its skeleton is mechanical and geometric, but the curves stay open and friendly.

Best for: Tech, engineering, product roles, companies in the Google and Android ecosystem.

Why it works: It signals that you live in the modern digital world. Like Lato, it is a free Google Font, so embed it when exporting to PDF.

9. Palatino

Type: Serif | Recommended size: 10.5 to 11.5 pt | ATS compatibility: Very good

Palatino draws on Renaissance calligraphy and was designed by the typographer Hermann Zapf. It runs slightly wider than Garamond with more open counters, which keeps it readable at small sizes.

Best for: Legal, academic, literary, and cultural organizations. A sophisticated pick that stands apart.

Why it works: It keeps a calligraphic elegance that Garamond can lose when set small. In a field where the written word matters, it reads as care for detail.

10. Verdana

Type: Sans-serif | Recommended size: 10 to 10.5 pt | ATS compatibility: Excellent

Matthew Carter also designed Verdana for screen reading. Its wide letterforms and generous spacing make it one of the most legible fonts at small sizes. The trade-off is that it eats more horizontal space.

Best for: Digital roles, remote positions, and any resume dense with skills and certifications.

Why it works: Nothing gets lost in a crowded resume. Set it at the low end (10 to 10.5 pt) to offset its wider characters, but not below 10 pt.

Serif or Sans-Serif: Which Font Should You Choose?

Both work fine on a resume. This is a smaller decision than most articles make it.

Serif fonts (Garamond, Cambria, Georgia, Palatino) carry small decorative strokes at the ends of letters. They read traditional, authoritative, and literary. Think law firms, academia, publishing.

Sans-serif fonts (Calibri, Helvetica, Arial, Lato, Roboto, Verdana) have clean, stroke-free letters. They read modern, approachable, and tech-forward. Think startups, agencies, software.

The practical rule is to match the font to the industry. Conservative fields lean serif. Modern fields lean sans-serif. When you cannot decide, Calibri or Cambria are universally safe.

DIY Font Guessing vs. Building It With ResuFit

Most people pick a font by trial and error and only find out about a problem after a rejection. There is a faster path to the same clean result.

What you’re deciding	Guessing on your own	Building with ResuFit
Font choice	Trial and error, hope it parses	A curated set of fonts, embedded in the PDF
Size and spacing	Manual tweaking, guesswork	Set by the template
What the recruiter sees	A .docx can swap fonts on their machine	A PDF that looks the same on every screen
ATS check	You learn it failed after the “no”	Free CV analysis of layout, formatting and ATS compatibility
Consistency	Headings and body drift out of sync	One template, applied throughout

A font list tells you what to type. ResuFit tailors the resume to the job and sets it in a clean, embedded-font PDF. Upload your current resume as a PDF to the free CV analysis to see layout and formatting problems while you can still fix them. The free plan includes that analysis and a preview of the tailored resume. The full PDF needs Pro or a one-off purchase for that resume (Pro: $14.90/month).

What Font Size and Spacing Should a Resume Use?

Size and spacing matter as much as the font. Use 10 to 12 pt for body text, and scale the rest from there.

Element	Recommended size
Your name	14 to 16 pt
Section headings	12 to 14 pt
Body text	10 to 12 pt
Contact info	10 to 11 pt

These are editorial recommendations, and no standard fixes them. Fonts differ in how large they look at the same point size, so print one page and check it.

Line spacing: Set body text to 1.15 to 1.2 line height. Single spacing (1.0) feels cramped. Double spacing (2.0) wastes the page. The middle gives the eye room to track between lines.

Margins: Keep them between 0.5 and 1 inch on every side. Our resume margins guide explains why 1 inch is the default.

Consistency: Use one font family throughout. If you want variety, pair a serif heading with a sans-serif body (Georgia headings with Lato body, for example). Never use more than two fonts.

What Makes a Font ATS-Friendly, and Which Should You Avoid?

An ATS-friendly font is one that turns into clean, selectable text in your PDF. Applicant tracking software reads that text layer and ignores how the page looks, so a standard font rarely causes trouble on its own. Parsing problems usually come from three places:

• Icon and symbol fonts (phone, email and location icons), which can come through as stray characters
• Script and decorative fonts, whose letters some parsers misread
• Text inside images or graphics, which a parser can read only after OCR, and OCR can introduce errors

Font substitution is a separate risk, and it hits the human reader. Send a .docx in a font the recruiter’s computer does not have, and Word swaps in another font and your layout shifts. A PDF with embedded fonts avoids that.

Always safe (ship with Windows, macOS or Microsoft Office): Calibri, Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia, Cambria, Helvetica (macOS), Verdana, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Garamond, Palatino, Book Antiqua.

Usually safe (embed them in a PDF): Lato, Roboto, Open Sans, Montserrat, Raleway, Nunito. These Google Fonts work when embedded in a PDF but may not render correctly inside a .docx on the recruiter’s machine.

Never use: Script fonts (Brush Script, Pacifico), decorative fonts (Impact, Papyrus), handwriting-style fonts (Comic Sans, Kristen ITC), and display fonts (Lobster, Playfair Display at body sizes).

Large employers often screen applications in applicant tracking systems such as Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS and Taleo before a human reads them. What those parsers need from you is real text in a simple layout. Any font in the table above, exported from a word processor to PDF, gives them that.

Which 5 Fonts Should You Never Use on a Resume?

Five fonts to keep off the page:

1. Comic Sans. Designed in 1994 for the cartoon speech bubbles of Microsoft Bob. There is no industry where it belongs on a resume.

2. Papyrus. Best known from the Avatar logo, and mocked even there. On a resume it reads as a font picked for looking interesting without asking whether it fits.

3. Impact. A display face made for headlines and posters. Condensed, heavy, and exhausting in paragraphs. Your resume is not a protest sign.

4. Brush Script. Cursive is hard to read on a greeting card. On a resume it is slow to scan, and its connected letters are the kind some parsers misread.

5. Courier New. A monospaced typewriter imitation. It takes up a lot of space and makes even a strong resume look like a draft from another decade.

How Do You Pair Fonts on a Resume?

If you want a polished, designed look, one serif and one sans-serif gives you contrast without clutter.

Pairings that work:

• Georgia + Arial: traditional headings, clean body
• Garamond + Calibri: elegant headings, modern body
• Cambria + Lato: professional headings, friendly body

Rules for pairing: one serif plus one sans-serif, never two of the same class. Give the “personality” font to headings and the “readability” font to body. Keep the weight balance even.

You do not need two fonts. A single well-chosen font in different weights (regular for body, bold for headings) works perfectly and removes any risk of visual clutter.

Which Font Fits Your Industry?

Finance, law, government: Cambria, Garamond, or Georgia. These fields value tradition, and a serif communicates respect for established norms.

Tech, startups, engineering: Calibri, Roboto, or Lato. Clean, modern sans-serifs that read as forward-looking.

Healthcare, education, nonprofits: Calibri or Georgia. Readable and warm without going corporate.

Creative, design, marketing: Helvetica, Lato, or a well-chosen Google Font. These fields appreciate typographic awareness, but keep it restrained. Your portfolio shows your creativity, your resume font does not.

Applying across industries? Calibri is the universal safe choice. It works everywhere and lets your content do the talking.

The Bottom Line

Your font will not get you hired, and the wrong font can hurt you, either by giving an ATS unreadable text or by making a recruiter question your judgment. Pick one of the 10 ATS-friendly fonts, set body text at 10 to 12 pt, keep the formatting consistent, send a PDF, and spend the rest of your time on the content.

If you want the content tailored to each job and the formatting handled for you, ResuFit builds the resume in an embedded-font PDF template and its free CV analysis checks the layout of the resume you have now.

Related guides

Part of our resume fonts and formatting cluster. Keep going:

• Modern resume formatting: 5 design principles that make your resume stand out
• Do italics and bold formatting hurt your resume’s ATS compatibility?
• Is your resume format hurting your job search? Key formatting tips
• ATS-friendly resume: the complete guide to beating tracking systems