Best Font for a Resume: 10 Safe Choices and the Sizes to Use
The best font for a resume is a plain, widely installed typeface that stays readable at small sizes: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Aptos, Georgia, Cambria, Garamond, Lato, Roboto or Times New Roman. Pick one, set body text at 10 to 12 points and headings at 14 to 16, and use it for the whole page. Any of those ten reads cleanly on screen, prints well, and survives an applicant tracking system. The font will not win you the interview. The wrong one can quietly cost you one, so the goal is to choose once, choose safely, and spend your time on the words.
This guide lists the safe choices and what each is good for, gives you the sizes and spacing that work, names the fonts to avoid, and covers the one setting most people forget: saving the file so the font you chose is the font they see.
What makes a good resume font
A resume is read in two passes. Software usually parses it first, pulling your text into fields. Then a person skims it, often on a laptop screen, sometimes printed. A good font serves both:
- It is installed almost everywhere. If the reader’s computer lacks your font, Word swaps in another one and your layout shifts. Fonts that ship with Windows, macOS or Google Docs avoid that.
- It has clear letter shapes. A lowercase l, a capital I and the number 1 should look different. So should 0 and O.
- It stays readable at 10 to 11 points. Thin, condensed or decorative faces fall apart at that size.
- It has a real bold. You will use bold for job titles and headings, so the family needs a bold weight that looks deliberate.
- It does not draw attention to itself. The reader should notice your results, never the typeface.
Serif or sans serif barely matters. Serif fonts (small strokes at the ends of letters, like Georgia) feel traditional. Sans serif fonts (clean ends, like Arial) feel modern and tend to read slightly better on screens. Both are fine. Match the tone of the field if you want a tiebreaker: a law firm or university leans serif, a tech company or startup leans sans serif.
The best fonts for a resume, compared
| Font | Style | Where you already have it | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calibri | Sans serif | Microsoft Office | Any role; the long-time Word default |
| Aptos | Sans serif | Recent Microsoft 365 | Any role; Word’s newer default |
| Arial | Sans serif | Windows, macOS, Google Docs | The safest choice when unsure |
| Helvetica | Sans serif | macOS | Design-aware, clean layouts |
| Lato | Sans serif | Google Docs | A friendly, modern look |
| Roboto | Sans serif | Google Docs | Tech and product roles |
| Georgia | Serif | Windows, macOS, Google Docs | Screen reading with a classic feel |
| Cambria | Serif | Microsoft Office | Formal fields, dense pages |
| Garamond | Serif | Microsoft Office, Google Docs (EB Garamond) | Academia, publishing, law |
| Times New Roman | Serif | Windows, macOS, Google Docs | Very formal applications |
Calibri and Aptos
Calibri was Word’s default font for years, which is both its strength and its weakness. It is soft, compact and readable, and nobody will ever think twice about it. Microsoft has since made Aptos the default in newer versions of Microsoft 365. Aptos is slightly wider and very clear on screens. Either is a sound choice; if you open a new document and it already says one of them, you can leave it.
Arial and Helvetica
Arial is installed on nearly every computer, so it is the choice that cannot go wrong. Helvetica is the design classic Arial was modelled on and ships with macOS. On a Windows machine without Helvetica, a document asking for it usually falls back to Arial, so the two are close to interchangeable in practice. If you send a PDF, the difference disappears entirely.
Lato and Roboto
Both are free and built into Google Docs, which makes them a good pick if you write your resume there. Lato has rounded, friendly shapes. Roboto is a little more mechanical and looks at home on a resume for an engineering, data or product role.
Georgia and Cambria
Georgia was designed to be read on screens, so it holds up well at small sizes while still looking traditional. Cambria is Microsoft’s serif companion to Calibri and fits a lot of text on a page without feeling cramped, which helps on a dense two-page resume.
Garamond and Times New Roman
Garamond is elegant and slightly narrow, and it suits academic CVs, publishing and law. It runs small, so set it a point larger than you would Arial. Times New Roman is perfectly legible but reads as the default from another era. It is fine for very formal applications. Elsewhere, Georgia or Cambria give the same serif feel with less of a dated look.
Font size and spacing for a resume
The font is half the decision. Size and spacing do the rest.
| Element | Size | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Your name | 18 to 24 pt | Bold; the largest thing on the page |
| Section headings | 14 to 16 pt | Bold or small caps, same font as the body |
| Job titles | 11 to 12 pt | Bold, so a skimmer can find them |
| Body text and bullets | 10 to 12 pt | 11 pt is a safe middle |
| Contact line, dates | 10 to 11 pt | Can be one size below the body |
Keep line spacing between 1.0 and 1.15, add a little space before each section heading, and leave margins of about 0.5 to 1 inch. Use bold for structure and italics sparingly, and skip underlining, since it reads like a link.
Do not shrink the font to squeeze a second page onto one. Text at 9 points or below is hard to read and looks like a workaround. Cut a weak bullet instead. Our guide to an easy resume format shows a one-page layout that leaves room to breathe.
Fonts to avoid on a resume
- Script and handwriting fonts (Brush Script, Lucida Handwriting). Hard to read and easy for software to mangle.
- Novelty fonts (Comic Sans, Papyrus, Impact). They pull attention to the typeface and away from you.
- Condensed or very thin weights. They blur at small sizes and when printed.
- Fonts you downloaded and the reader lacks. In a Word file they get replaced with something else, often breaking your spacing.
- Monospace fonts (Courier) for body text. They waste width and look like a typewriter draft. A developer might use one for a short code sample; nobody needs it for bullets.
- More than two fonts. One family for everything is cleanest. If you want contrast, a serif name over a sans serif body is the most you need.
Do fonts affect applicant tracking systems?
Mostly no, as long as the text is real text. An applicant tracking system reads the characters in your file, not their shapes, so any standard font parses fine. What causes trouble is everything around the font: text inside images, icons standing in for words, and unusual characters from decorative fonts that do not map cleanly to letters.
Keep your text selectable, use standard section headings like “Experience” and “Education”, and stick to the fonts in the table above. If you want to check the rest of the file, our free ATS resume checker guide walks through it.
Save it so the font survives
The font you see is not always the font they see.
- Send a PDF unless the posting asks for Word. A PDF embeds the font, so the page looks the same on every machine.
- If you must send a .docx, use a common font. Word replaces any font the reader lacks, which can push a line onto a new page.
- Open the exported file before you send it. Check that headings, bullets and page breaks landed where you expect.
- Name the file plainly, like
firstname-lastname-resume.pdf.
InstaResume’s PDF export sets your resume in Helvetica, so you get a clean, standard face without picking one. The DOCX export leaves the font to your word processor’s default, which you can change to any font above in one step.
The font is settled; the words are not
Choosing a font takes five minutes, and you only do it once. What changes with every application is the content: which results you lead with, which skills you name, and whether your bullets use the same language as the posting. That is where most of the difference between a skipped resume and an interview lives.
InstaResume takes your existing resume and a job description and gives you a version tailored to that posting in a few minutes, ready to export as PDF or DOCX. Keep your font, keep your layout, and let the wording move. For doing it by hand, see how to tailor a resume to a job description, and for stronger bullets, our list of resume action verbs.
When any font is fine
If your resume already uses Calibri, Arial, Georgia or another common font at a readable size, changing it will not change your results. Leave it. Font advice matters most when the current choice is decorative, tiny, or one the reader’s computer will not have. Otherwise, spend the time on the first bullet of your most recent job, because that line gets read far more closely than the typeface.
Quick answers
- Best overall: Calibri, Arial or Aptos for sans serif; Georgia or Cambria for serif.
- Size: 10 to 12 points for body text, 14 to 16 for headings, 18 to 24 for your name.
- How many fonts: one, or two at most.
- File type: PDF, so the font travels with the file.
- Avoid: script, novelty, condensed and downloaded fonts.