The short answer, the story behind Pinterest Sans, and the free lookalike you can install for on-brand design work.
Pinterest's app, website, and branding run on Pinterest Sans, a custom geometric sans-serif commissioned from Grilli Type, a Swiss type foundry. It ships in four weights plus a separate small-size cut called Pinterest UI. Pinterest Sans is proprietary — made exclusively for Pinterest, not available for public download or licensing.
If you only need a font that reads as "Pinterest-ish" for a graphic or deck: design with Poppins, a free geometric sans on Google Fonts that carries the same rounded warmth.
Unlike some platforms that split logo and interface into two different faces, Pinterest built one custom family to cover both.
| Where | Typeface | Free lookalike to install |
|---|---|---|
| App & site interface | Pinterest UI — the small-size cut of Pinterest Sans | Poppins |
| Logo, marketing & branding | Pinterest Sans — full four-weight family | Poppins (Medium/SemiBold) |
| Already-installed alternative | — | Century Gothic (similar geometric shape, no calligraphic touches) |
Pinterest commissioned Grilli Type to build a typeface from scratch rather than license an existing one — a deliberate choice to make Pinterest's visual identity as distinct as the pinned imagery it sits next to. Pinterest Sans is a geometric sans-serif: every letterform is built from the same rectangles, circles, and triangles you'd expect from that category. What sets it apart are small hand-influenced flourishes — a spur on the two-story lowercase a, and an overhang on the lowercase f — that add warmth without tipping into decorative.
For the interface specifically, Pinterest uses Pinterest UI, a cut of the family tuned for small-size legibility: a taller x-height and vertically cut stroke endings let Pinterest set tight letter spacing in feeds, pin titles, and buttons without characters blurring together on a phone screen.
The Pinterest wordmark and marketing headlines are also set in Pinterest Sans, at heavier weights than the interface uses. Because the family was commissioned to cover branding and product together, there isn't a separate "logo-only" typeface the way some platforms maintain — one custom family does both jobs.
For logo-style graphics that feel close, Poppins in a Medium or SemiBold weight is the practical free choice — both share the rounded, geometric bones of Pinterest Sans.
If you landed here because you want your own pin titles, descriptions, or board names to look different — not because you're matching the brand — knowing the font name won't help. Pinterest has no formatting button anywhere in the app.
The workaround is Unicode styled characters: they look like a different font but are treated as ordinary text, so Pinterest displays them everywhere. Generate them in seconds, then paste.
Type any text and copy it back in bold, cursive and 50+ Unicode styles — free, instant, no sign-up.
Open the Pinterest Font Generator →Use styled text for a headline or call-to-action, but keep your main keywords in plain text — Pinterest's search may not index styled Unicode characters the same way. Read Is fancy text bad for SEO? before styling a whole description.
Pinterest's app, website, and branding run on Pinterest Sans, a custom geometric sans-serif typeface commissioned from the Swiss foundry Grilli Type. It ships in four weights plus a separate UI-optimized cut, called Pinterest UI, built for legibility at small sizes. Pinterest Sans is proprietary — it was made exclusively for Pinterest and is not available for public download or licensing.
Pinterest Sans is built from the same rectangles, circles, and triangles as other geometric sans-serifs, but it adds small hand-influenced flourishes — a spur on the two-story lowercase "a" and an overhang on the lowercase "f" — that give it warmth without looking decorative. It also uses a taller x-height and vertically cut stroke endings so Pinterest can set it with tight letter spacing at small sizes.
Poppins is the closest free match — it's a geometric sans on Google Fonts with the same rounded warmth Pinterest Sans has, and it's widely used in the mood-board and lifestyle-brand space Pinterest itself occupies. If you want something already installed on most systems, Century Gothic gives a similar geometric feel, though without Pinterest Sans's calligraphic touches.
Pinterest has no native font picker for pin titles, descriptions, board names, or your bio. The workaround is Unicode styled characters, which look like a different font but are still treated as ordinary text, so Pinterest displays them everywhere. Keep your main keywords in plain text so Pinterest's search can still read them, and save styling for a headline or call-to-action.