Pixel font generator

Type any text and turn it into pixel font art you can download as a PNG or SVG. This pixel font maker has three font sources. Four built-in bitmap fonts drawn pixel by pixel, four bundled open-license pixel fonts, and an importer that converts any font file you upload into pixel form. Add an outline, a drop shadow, or a full RPG text box, and everything renders live in your browser with no account. Every image on this page was made with this tool.

The four built-in bitmap fonts

Built-in fonts are true bitmap fonts, every glyph hand-placed on its grid, so they render identically at any scale. The 5x7, 8x8, and Blocky sets include real lowercase. The tiny 3x5 auto-uppercases, because nobody can draw a readable lowercase g in fifteen pixels.

Which one to use is mostly a size decision. 3x5 squeezes into HUD corners, 5x7 is the workhorse, 8x8 shouts, and Blocky reads like a crafting game.

Turn any font into a pixel font

The pixel font converter takes a TTF, OTF, WOFF, or WOFF2 file and rasterizes it onto a coarse pixel grid, in your browser, nothing uploaded to a server. Here's Lora, an ordinary serif, at three grid sizes.

Five settings control the conversion. Grid size is the pixel height of each character and does most of the work, as the sweep above shows. Width squeezes or stretches letterforms. Weight fakes a bold by thickening strokes before they hit the grid. Edge threshold decides how much of a letter's anti-aliased edge counts as a pixel, so low values fatten the result and high values thin it. Roughen randomly erodes edge pixels for a hand-drawn look.

Thing is, most fonts were never designed for a 10px grid, and thin serifs will break apart at small sizes. That's not a bug. Nudge the threshold down or the grid up until the letterforms hold, or lean into the decay for grunge titles.

Bundled pixel fonts, ready to go

The Pixel fonts tab ships four open-license classics so you don't have to hunt for files. Press Start 2P (the arcade standard), Silkscreen, VT323 (the terminal look), and Pixelify Sans. Each loads at its native design grid automatically, because sampling a pixel font off its intended grid is what shredded letterforms look like.

All four are SIL Open Font License, so the output is safe for commercial games and videos.

Outlines, shadows, and text boxes

Styling is what separates pixel text from a game asset. The style tab adds a one-pixel outline in any color, an offset drop shadow, and three background modes including a framed RPG text box. The quick-style chips set a whole look in one click.

Game title

Damage number

Multi-line text works everywhere. Line breaks in the input become lines in the output, with left, center, or right alignment and adjustable letter and line spacing.

From pixel text to game asset

The download is a transparent PNG at the exact pixel size you see, which is what a game engine wants. Keep the small version and let the engine scale it, or crank the scale slider for web and video use. The SVG export rebuilds every pixel as a vector square, so it scales to poster size with hard edges.

For anything beyond text, the same site runs a full sprite pipeline. Convert a photo with the image to pixel art converter, pack frames with the sprite sheet maker, or generate characters from a text prompt with the AI sprite generator on Sprite AI (sprite-ai.art), at anything from 32x32 to 512x512.

Tips for cleaner pixel text

Most bad pixel text comes from fighting the grid instead of picking the right one.

• Match the font to the space. A health bar label wants 3x5 or 5x7, a title screen wants 8x8 at a high scale
• Outlines double as contrast insurance. White text with a dark outline stays readable on any background
• When importing a font, bold faces survive small grids far better than thin ones
• 8 bit font look in one move, 8x8 arcade plus a hard single-color shadow
• Keep letter spacing at 1px for body text. 0px reads as a solid wall at small sizes