Open Sans vs Lato : A head to head Comparison

Can't decide what to choose between Open Sans and Lato just like many other designers and developers ? Here is a brief article which would help you to pick up a font for your next web project.
Fonts were and are integral part of a website designs. In today's modern web designing world, there are thousands of font available and two of the most used ones are - Open Sans and Lato. Both these fonts are sans serif typeface and extensively used worldwide. Both of these fonts are free and resemble to each other in a lot of features, which pushes the designer in a state of dilemma. So here is a quick review so sort this problem out.

Direct Comparison

First of all we would see the two fonts together for almost same font weights. The sole purpose of fonts are to make text look good so lets see side by side comparison of these fonts.

Font Weight - 100 Hairline/Thin

Lato - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Open Sans - Not Available

Font Weight - 300 Light

Lato - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Open Sans - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Font Weight - 400 Normal/Regular

Lato - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Open Sans - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Font Weight - 600 Semi Bold

Lato - Not Available
Open Sans - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Font Weight - 700 Bold

Lato - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Open Sans - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Font Weight - 800/900 Ultra Bold / Extra Bold

Lato - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Open Sans - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Different people have different taste and opinion of one would surely not be what the other thinks. So I would try my best to judge it in an unbiased way. In the above comparison I think that Lato provides a bit more variety in look eliminating the need of other fonts. Moreover it include Hairline font weight which is not commonly found in fonts. No doubt Open Sans looks good but due to the above mentioned advantage. The winner of this stage is Lato.

Speed Optimization

When it comes to font, the second thing we look at is its speed. Today's websites need to be fast loading and one would never want to load tons of fonts for making a site look good. Sacrificing speed for fonts is not always a good idea.

From the above images its quite clear that Lato is a quite heavier font compared to Open Sans. Open Sans is more than 3 times faster and light weight than Lato. So here the clear winner is - Open Sans

Character Sets

Some sites would need multiple scripts like Cyrillic etc. but there are not many fonts which provide sub sets. Here is a list of character sets the fonts Lato and Open Sans have.

Lato -

Latin

Open Sans -

Cyrillic Extended (cyrillic-ext)
Greek Extended (greek-ext)
Greek (greek)
Vietnamese (vietnamese)
Latin Extended (latin-ext)
Cyrillic (cyrillic

This section does not need few more words. Winner - Open Sans

Font Rendering and Readability

I checked both the fonts in a couple of browsers and I found a minor issue in the readability of Hairline font weight of Lato. But font rendering and readability defers from browser to browser, site to site and background to background. It maybe be that the hairline font weight looks better in dark background or so. You can know more about this topic at Typekit's Blog. They have put detailed posts regarding this topic and I highly recommend to read those posts. So as I said one could not determine a winner is this section here there is No Winner

Conclusion

Both the fonts are frequently used and sometimes together too. They have become an essential part of Flat UI Modern designs. It would be great if in the near future machines are preloaded with these fonts. Would help millions to save a fraction of a MB :P Coming to the point the winner of this comparison is Open Sans. Lato is not bad either but a point behind Open Sans. Both these fonts load your webpage with awesomeness.
Please See - All the data above are only acquired from Google Fonts and no other source. Thanks for reading.

27 comments:

Sudheer Yadav26 April 2014 at 21:01
I want to say thanks for this you helped a lot to my blog http://guruofmovie.blogspot.in/

due to this article
Unknown9 May 2014 at 16:04
Nice information dude. keep it up
Unknown15 May 2014 at 14:04
Just came here to get a free backlink :3 Thanks dhiraj :v
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ag17 September 2014 at 13:15
fantastic Post thanks admin Mistabic.com
Mikee22 November 2014 at 14:48
Thanks i have installed open sans on my blog Coorms.com
The Barat Queen23 February 2015 at 11:55
Thanks for the comparison! I was thinking of changing my fonts but thanks to your article, decided to stick with Open Sans.
Garry Bernardy17 April 2015 at 08:05
Wow... these post really answer my question. I really need to think what font to use in my blog, whether Lato or Open Sans.... I already a little bit incline toward Lato, but after looking at the weight need to be load, I might need to reconsider and evaluate more...
Rahul20 October 2015 at 15:13
Thank you for this detailed article. It has been really helpful for my web design course.
Indian Income15 November 2015 at 14:59
Very useful comparison between sans and lato. I was looking for it and finally found it here.
Thanks a lot

Have a great day ahead !!

Regards,
Rohit
IndianIncome
ericaclayton14 December 2015 at 11:18
You comparison is useful for me, I had installed it. I made a blog with the help of it, you can check it with professional resume writing service. Thank you for your kind information.
Akshat20 January 2016 at 21:37
What about open sans vs droid sans. Which one is the best?
Ray3 February 2016 at 17:40
Lato has been expanded to include a great deal of character sets.
Anonymous18 March 2016 at 17:36
fantastic Post thanks admin
شركة الطيب افضل شركة تنظيف كنب بالرياض نقوم بتنظيف الكنب بالرياص بافضل الطرق التي تجعلنا دائما فب المراتب الاولي في مجالات التنظيف عزيزي
Unknown9 June 2016 at 04:03
افضل التصاميم من ديكورات شعبية مع مؤسسة السبيعي انت مختلف ولدينا خامات مميزة وعالية الجودة
3nod maka9 June 2016 at 04:50
افضل الخدمات المميزة من شركة تنظيف منازل بمكة باقل التكاليف واعلى الخدمات من شركة العنود باقل الاسعار
Unknown9 June 2016 at 06:14
اقل الاسعار واعلى الخدمات من شركة الفرسان افضل شركة نقل اثاث بجدة تقدم اقوى العروض والخدمات
maintenanceg9 June 2016 at 06:58
خدمة صيانة بقطع غيار اصلية من صيانة ال جي باقل الاسعار واعلى الخدمات المميزة
Unknown28 August 2016 at 19:12
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192.168.1.119 September 2016 at 15:21
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Roy Solo2 January 2017 at 17:02
Very useful information. I think open sans is really good. Thanks for sharing this comparision
obat perangsang murah24 March 2017 at 10:01
Thank you for sharing in this article Obat Perangsang Wanita I can learn a lot and could also be a reference
Vineeth Mungath4 May 2017 at 19:46
Lato font is comparatively smaller than Open sans. Both of them are good for professional websites, but i think Open sans fonts are much more readable and most used font than Lato
Gedexo15 July 2021 at 19:11
Open sans is so good! Thanks for this comparison. Expect more from you!
Sreeresh18 July 2021 at 14:04
Lato font is comparatively smaller than Open sans. Both of them are good for professional websites, but i think Open sans fonts are much more readable and most used font than Lato
Sreeresh21 July 2021 at 18:28
Thank you for sharing