<p>After having done several researches and having looked at your answers, I merged them and I finally got to a solution, that I will share.</p>

<p>Hanazono is undoubtedly the best free and commercial-use friendly font to display simplified Chinese yet its rendering is not perfect: it often gets blurry on desktop devices, while it's pretty sharp on mobile ones. So I found that the company Dynalab offers great S Chinese fonts for an affordable price (50 dollars), and this seems the best solution for people with a low budget. Their site is also available in English, which is great.</p>

<p>Since the topic also involved Japanese and Korean as we talked about it, I found out that there are some very, very wonderful fonts for these languages, all free and suitable for commercial use. For Japanese we got Aozora Mincho, which renders incredibly on all devices and screen densities, while for Hangul Naver itself developed Nanum Myeongjo, which is excellent on desktops and stunningly perfect on mobile devices.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-27T16:45:16.820Z
2014-08-27T16:45:16.820Z
Mastro Willis
<p>You may want to try WenQuanYi bitmap fonts.</p>

<p><a href="http://wenq.org/en/" rel="nofollow">http://wenq.org/en/</a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-26T23:38:59.333Z
Thanks very much! As soon as I got enough points I'll upvote. If I may ask, can you read chinese? If you can, what is more readable in your opinion between these fonts? http://www.scribd.com/doc/237814779/Lorem-Ipsum-SCH
Mastro Willis
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-26T23:55:44.657Z
@MastroWillis Both are equally readable for me. BTW: I did not noticed that you was not asking for free fonts. In this case, I would think any fonts marked as "宋体" or "Sun" or "Song" would be good.
Xiaoge Su
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-27T00:08:41.027Z
Thanks a lot! I am also interested into purchase fonts since I saw that those two Japanese don't work perfectly: the second one (aozora mincho) renders smoothly with high pixel densities and becomes blurry on low ones while the first font (Hanazono) does the exact contrary! Should I buy an Adobe Font? I heard that they work good both on Desktops and smartphones, which is what I am looking for.
Mastro Willis
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-26T23:13:42.863Z
2014-08-26T23:13:42.863Z
Xiaoge Su
<p>If you are using Windows (XP, Vista, 7, ....), you can install the Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese Support.  Then you will have fonts like MingLiU, Kai and SimSun.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-06T08:48:27.233Z
Moreover, Apple is offering different glyph variation (Mainland/HK/TW) for the same font face in IPhone.  On the contrary, Google is bundling one font in Android only, and it complies to Mainland glyph requirements.
Henry HO
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-26T14:38:40.057Z
2014-08-26T14:38:40.057Z
Henry HO
<p>Arphic has released several free Chinese fonts, and I particularly like the Kaiti style. In Ubuntu, they're available in the package manager; I'm not sure how to get them for other systems.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-06T04:00:12.907Z
2014-09-06T04:00:12.907Z
Don Kirkby
<p>Unsurprisingly the Japanese do this better.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.fonts.jp/hanazono/" rel="nofollow"><strong>Hanazono</strong></a> have an excellent, free, font:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>About Hanazono font</p>
  
  <p>This font is a free kanji font. The KAGE system<a href="http://www.fonts.jp/hanazono/" rel="nofollow">1</a>, Clipper<a href="http://sourceforge.jp/projects/hanazono-font/releases/" rel="nofollow">2</a>, FontForge[3]
  and TTX[4] are used to create this font. All glyphs in this font are from
  GlyphWiki[5].</p>
  
  <p>List of included characters</p>
  
  <p>This font contains about 90,041 characters (and spaces) defined
  in ISO/IEC 10646 standard / the Unicode standard.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>It's broken up into two files HanaMinA.ttf and HanaMinB.ttf and can be downloaded from <a href="http://sourceforge.jp/projects/hanazono-font/releases/" rel="nofollow">Source Forge</a>.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-26T15:23:46.293Z
Thank you very much! I'd give an upvote if I could. I got a few more questions though: is it commercial-use friendly? does it render well on a mobile device? Does it support also Korean?
Mastro Willis
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-26T15:52:38.073Z
I saw myself that Korean is not supported.
Mastro Willis
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-26T15:59:20.667Z
Wikipedia: [F] Hanazono Mincho (花園明朝)[2] Two ttf fonts HanaMinA (Japanese 花園明朝A) for BMP and HanaMinB (Japanese 花園明朝B) for SIP – covers all CJK, CJK Compatibility, CJK-Ext.A, CJK-Ext.B, CJK-Ext.C, and CJK-Ext.D. Dual licensed under its own Hanazono Font License or SIL Open Font License.
Mou某
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-26T16:01:33.830Z
Pleco dictionaries (iOS and Android) use this as their backup font - so that should answer your question about mobile devices.
Mou某
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-26T16:33:04.353Z
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge, it seems that my editor has problems in displaying Korean then...
Mastro Willis
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-26T16:52:41.583Z
Should be okay, I don't really understand how Korean works exactly but the font seems to include a ton (300-400) of Hangul Jamo characters which should be enough to cover all Korean characters, at least by my knowledge.
Mou某
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-26T17:38:05.343Z
Korean is made by the combination in syllables of several characters and these combinations are about 11'000, so I doubt it covers all CJK. Did Wikipedia got it wrong?
Mastro Willis
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-26T17:39:22.510Z
I mean maybe it's not full CJK and Wikipedia got it wrong but it seems weird. But you guarantee me that the Simplified Chinese is fully supported, right?
Mastro Willis
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-27T17:00:09.997Z
Yeah absolutely.
Mou某
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-26T13:51:33.923Z
2014-08-26T13:51:33.923Z
Mou某
<p>For the English alphabet there's a site, FontSquirrel, that provides great free fonts for commercial use, handpicked and tested. I haven't found anything similar for Chinese fonts, the only very good free font and commercial-use OK is Google Noto, but I'd need something more "traditional-looking", a type of font you'd find in school books. If there isn't anything good for free, I am also OK with purchasing something, but I haven't found online neither a store for Chinese fonts.</p>

<simplified-characters><fonts>
Simplified Chinese font easily readable, suitable for documents and OK for commercial use?
# Simplified Chinese font easily readable, suitable for documents and OK for commercial use?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-08-26)

For the English alphabet there's a site, FontSquirrel, that provides great free fonts for commercial use, handpicked and tested. I haven't found anything similar for Chinese fonts, the only very good free font and commercial-use OK is Google Noto, but I'd need something more "traditional-looking", a type of font you'd find in school books. If there isn't anything good for free, I am also OK with purchasing something, but I haven't found online neither a store for Chinese fonts.

**Tags:** simplified-characters, fonts


---

## 5 answers

### Answer by username_0 on 2014-08-27. Score: 1 | Accepted answer

After having done several researches and having looked at your answers, I merged them and I finally got to a solution, that I will share.

Hanazono is undoubtedly the best free and commercial-use friendly font to display simplified Chinese yet its rendering is not perfect: it often gets blurry on desktop devices, while it's pretty sharp on mobile ones. So I found that the company Dynalab offers great S Chinese fonts for an affordable price (50 dollars), and this seems the best solution for people with a low budget. Their site is also available in English, which is great.

Since the topic also involved Japanese and Korean as we talked about it, I found out that there are some very, very wonderful fonts for these languages, all free and suitable for commercial use. For Japanese we got Aozora Mincho, which renders incredibly on all devices and screen densities, while for Hangul Naver itself developed Nanum Myeongjo, which is excellent on desktops and stunningly perfect on mobile devices.


---

### Answer by username_1 on 2014-08-26. Score: 4

You may want to try WenQuanYi bitmap fonts.

<http://wenq.org/en/>

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thanks very much! As soon as I got enough points I'll upvote. If I may ask, can you read chinese? If you can, what is more readable in your opinion between these fonts? http://www.scribd.com/doc/237814779/Lorem-Ipsum-SCH  
> **username_1**: @MastroWillis Both are equally readable for me. BTW: I did not noticed that you was not asking for free fonts. In this case, I would think any fonts marked as "宋体" or "Sun" or "Song" would be good.  
> **username_0**: Thanks a lot! I am also interested into purchase fonts since I saw that those two Japanese don't work perfectly: the second one (aozora mincho) renders smoothly with high pixel densities and becomes blurry on low ones while the first font (Hanazono) does the exact contrary! Should I buy an Adobe Font? I heard that they work good both on Desktops and smartphones, which is what I am looking for.  

---

### Answer by username_2 on 2014-08-26. Score: 1

If you are using Windows (XP, Vista, 7, ....), you can install the Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese Support. Then you will have fonts like MingLiU, Kai and SimSun.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: Moreover, Apple is offering different glyph variation (Mainland/HK/TW) for the same font face in IPhone.  On the contrary, Google is bundling one font in Android only, and it complies to Mainland glyph requirements.  

---

### Answer by username_3 on 2014-09-06. Score: 1

Arphic has released several free Chinese fonts, and I particularly like the Kaiti style. In Ubuntu, they're available in the package manager; I'm not sure how to get them for other systems.


---

### Answer by username_4 on 2014-08-26. Score: 1

Unsurprisingly the Japanese do this better.

[**Hanazono**](http://www.fonts.jp/hanazono/) have an excellent, free, font:

> About Hanazono font
>
> This font is a free kanji font. The KAGE system[1](http://www.fonts.jp/hanazono/), Clipper[2](http://sourceforge.jp/projects/hanazono-font/releases/), FontForge[3]
> and TTX[4] are used to create this font. All glyphs in this font are from
> GlyphWiki[5].
>
> List of included characters
>
> This font contains about 90,041 characters (and spaces) defined
> in ISO/IEC 10646 standard / the Unicode standard.

It's broken up into two files HanaMinA.ttf and HanaMinB.ttf and can be downloaded from [Source Forge](http://sourceforge.jp/projects/hanazono-font/releases/).

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thank you very much! I'd give an upvote if I could. I got a few more questions though: is it commercial-use friendly? does it render well on a mobile device? Does it support also Korean?  
> **username_0**: I saw myself that Korean is not supported.  
> **username_4**: Wikipedia: [F] Hanazono Mincho (花園明朝)[2] Two ttf fonts HanaMinA (Japanese 花園明朝A) for BMP and HanaMinB (Japanese 花園明朝B) for SIP – covers all CJK, CJK Compatibility, CJK-Ext.A, CJK-Ext.B, CJK-Ext.C, and CJK-Ext.D. Dual licensed under its own Hanazono Font License or SIL Open Font License.  
> **username_4**: Pleco dictionaries (iOS and Android) use this as their backup font - so that should answer your question about mobile devices.  
> **username_0**: Thanks again for sharing your knowledge, it seems that my editor has problems in displaying Korean then...  
> **username_4**: Should be okay, I don't really understand how Korean works exactly but the font seems to include a ton (300-400) of Hangul Jamo characters which should be enough to cover all Korean characters, at least by my knowledge.  
> **username_0**: Korean is made by the combination in syllables of several characters and these combinations are about 11'000, so I doubt it covers all CJK. Did Wikipedia got it wrong?  
> **username_0**: I mean maybe it's not full CJK and Wikipedia got it wrong but it seems weird. But you guarantee me that the Simplified Chinese is fully supported, right?  
> **username_4**: Yeah absolutely.  

---

