The font you choose changes how Urdu feels more than almost anything else. The same sentence can look like a newspaper headline, a school book or a government form. Here is what to know before you pick one.
Nastaliq and Naskh: the two main styles
Nastaliq is the classic Urdu style. Letters flow diagonally from top right to bottom left, and each word sits on a slant. It is what most readers think of as “proper” Urdu, used in newspapers, books, poetry and signs.
Naskh is more upright and horizontal, like Arabic print. It is easier for computers to draw and stays clear at small sizes, so it is common on phones, websites, forms and subtitles.
| Nastaliq | Naskh | |
|---|---|---|
| Look | Flowing, slanted, traditional | Upright, horizontal, plain |
| Best for | Headings, books, poetry, printed documents | Small text, forms, apps, subtitles |
| Line spacing needed | Large | Normal |
| Readability at small sizes | Lower | Higher |
You can compare both on your own text: the tools on this site have a Nastaliq / Naskh switch under the output.
Free fonts worth knowing
- Noto Nastaliq Urdu (Google): a carefully made, free Nastaliq font under the SIL Open Font License, which allows personal and commercial use, including on websites. It is the Nastaliq font used on this site.
- Noto Naskh Arabic (Google): a clean Naskh font under the same open licence, with full support for Urdu letters.
- Urdu Typesetting: a Nastaliq-style font included with recent versions of Windows, so it is already on many computers.
- Nafees Nastaleeq: a free Nastaliq font from CRULP (Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing), long used for Urdu on the web.
- Jameel Noori Nastaleeq: one of the most popular Urdu fonts in Pakistan. It is widely shared for free, but its licence terms are not clearly published, so check before using it in a commercial product.
How to choose
- For a website: choose a font with a clear open licence (the Noto fonts are the safest choice) and host it on your own site for speed.
- For printed documents: Nastaliq for anything formal or literary; Naskh for tables, forms and dense information.
- For social media: you can’t choose the font readers see; their phone decides. If the look matters, share your text as an image. Our converter’s “Save as image” button does this for you.
Tips for good-looking Urdu text
- Increase line spacing for Nastaliq; 1.8 to 2.2 times the font size is comfortable.
- Use a slightly larger size for Urdu than for English next to it.
- Always set right-to-left direction so punctuation lands in the right place.