FontMaker vs PixelForge

FontMaker turns handwriting, drawings, SVG files, and images into downloadable fonts. Users can photograph a handwritten page, draw characters with a mouse, finger, or stylus, or import files. It traces PNG, JPG, GIF, and WebP images into vector glyphs. Each glyph can be adjusted for baseline, size, and left and right spacing, with a live preview while typing. Export formats are OTF, TTF, and WOFF; the maker lists Photoshop, Word, Canva, Figma, and Procreate as compatible uses, and says WOFF is for websites. FontMaker says processing happens in the browser and that fonts and files are not uploaded to its servers. The free plan costs nothing and exports 26 lowercase or uppercase characters for personal use. FontMaker Pro Monthly costs $3.99 a month; FontMaker Pro for life costs $19.99, paid once. Both paid plans allow all characters and commercial use. FontMaker Studio is described as available for iPhone, iPad, and Android, with drawing, scanning, and TTF export.

PixelForge is a pixel font editor for creating and editing bitmap fonts, then exporting them from the app. Its glyph tools draw and erase pixels and can move, rotate, flip, or scale glyphs. A text preview updates as glyphs change, and multiple font projects can remain open with separate undo histories. The editor can work with glyphs through U+FFFF, including unassigned ranges. It imports pixel fonts into its editable format and exports TTF files with metadata support. PixelForge periodically saves open documents and offers recovery after a crash. Project files use plain text, which the maker describes as compatible with version control and diffs. The current 0.91b pre-release runs on Windows and Linux and is free to download until version 1.0; the maker says no licensing or payment system is set up yet. The app supports monochrome 1-bit bitmap fonts, with one size and one weight per font. Sergi Lázaro is credited as its maker.