Bitmap Font Editor vs FontLab 8
Bitmap Font Editor
github.com
FontLab 8
fontlab.comSide by side
| Figure | Bitmap Font Editor | FontLab 8 |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | $9.08/mo |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 0 | 6 |
| Spec score · Font Design Software | 7.8 (#14) | 8.1 (#9) |
| Drawing | Glyphs can be drawn in cells up to 32×32 pixels, with draggable font guides and pinned reference glyphs. | Drawing tools include Brush, Pencil, Rapid, Pen, Ellipse, Rectangle, Polygon and Star, with integer or fractional coordinate precision. |
| Font types | It supports variable-width and fixed-width fonts. | It creates, opens, tests and exports font families, variable OpenType fonts, color fonts and web fonts for Unicode writing systems. |
Plans
FontLab 8
- Starter — 3-months license$97, paid once
- Workshop 2-weeks$99, paid once
- Student 1-year$109 a year
- Course 4-months$249, paid once
- Student / teacher lifetime$335, paid once
- Pro — Lifetime license$499, paid once
In their own words
Bitmap Font Editor
Bitmap Font Editor is a free desktop tool for creating monochrome bitmap fonts, particularly for retro computers and embedded targets such as the SAM Coupe. It supports fixed-width and variable-width fonts, with adjustable advance width for each glyph. Users draw glyphs in cells up to 32×32 pixels by clicking or dragging to paint and erase; draggable font guides and pinned reference glyphs are also available. Editing tools include undo, redo, copy, paste, clear, invert, flip, and shift. An editable sample text preview offers three zoom levels and white-on-black or black-on-white display. Raw font bitmaps can be imported with settings for starting codepoint, geometry, and byte layout. Projects use the losslessly round-trippable .fnt.json format. Export produces a 1bpp bitmap plus JSON sidecar files for widths and character mapping. Release 0.1.3 offers Windows, macOS, and Linux builds, with SHA-256 checksums. The source is MIT-licensed. Windows and macOS builds are unsigned, and system-font filling is disabled because Canvas 2D lacks TrueType hinting access.