comparison · LoupeKit vs WhatFont
LoupeKit vs WhatFont: which one should you install?
WhatFont is one of the most-installed design utilities there is, and deservedly: hover text, read the family, size, weight, line height and colour, done. No panel, no tabs, no decisions. If naming a typeface is the question, it answers it in less time than this extension takes to open, and that is not a small thing.
Naming the font under the cursor: WhatFont. Every face on the page, and whether each one loaded: LoupeKit.
WhatFont
Free · 2M+ users · Chromium and Safari
A single-gesture font inspector. Activate it, hover any text, and a small card names the family, size, weight, style, line height and colour of what is under the cursor. It has stayed deliberately small for over a decade and it is fast because nothing else is in the way.
LoupeKit
Free tier · nine surfaces · Chromium and Firefox
Typography as one reading among many: the full font matrix as painted, whether each declared face actually arrived or silently fell back, every `@font-face` with its `font-display` and `unicode-range`, and the recovered type scale as a file you can use.
Feature by feature
7 of 10 rows differ · they are the shaded onesWhere LoupeKit stops, and why
1 of the rows above · each one is a decision- Nothing of its own left on the page
- The panel and the page bar are drawn into the page, inside a closed shadow root so nothing of theirs reaches the page’s own styles or scripts. Both are dismissed from their own controls and neither survives a reload — but while they are up they are there, which a one-shot readout never is.
The same jobs, side by side
Name the font under the cursor
WHATFONT Hover. It is faster than anything else here and always will be.
LOUPEKIT Arm the Readout square on the page bar and hover. The panel can stay shut; the bar cannot.
See every typeface the page uses
WHATFONT Hover each one in turn and remember.
LOUPEKIT A font matrix of the whole page, read from what is painted.
Find out whether a font actually loaded
WHATFONT It reports the computed family, which is the fallback when one failed.
LOUPEKIT A diagnostic that names faces that never arrived and what stood in for them.
Check `font-display` and `unicode-range`
WHATFONT Not offered.
LOUPEKIT Every `@font-face` on the page, with both.
Try a different typeface across the page
WHATFONT Not offered.
LOUPEKIT Swap the family live, with a specimen and a metrics panel.
Take the type scale away as a file
WHATFONT Not offered.
LOUPEKIT Type steps as a Tailwind theme, a CSS sheet or a W3C token file.
Pick WhatFont if
If the only question you ever ask a page is what typeface that is. Its toolbar icon needs nothing on the page, where our readout is armed from a bar we draw on it - and it is free, it weighs nothing, and it has been reliable for over a decade. Installing something with nine tabs to replace one gesture would be a worse workflow, not a better one.
Pick LoupeKit if
If the typography question is bigger than one element - the whole matrix, whether the faces loaded, what the scale is - or if you have other questions about the page at the same time.
Run both
Very reasonable. WhatFont costs nothing, weighs nothing, and answers the quick question; reach for the panel when the answer needs more than a name.
TWO BUILDS9 browsers
Chromelisting in reviewFirefoxlisting in reviewBravelisting in reviewOperalisting in reviewEdgelisting in review4 moreChromium browsers: Arc, Vivaldi, Chromium, Opera GXthe Chrome buildCHECKED 17 AUGUST 2026
Every figure about WhatFont on this page was checked on that day against its Chrome Web Store listing and the publisher’s own page, and nothing here is quoted from a review. Where a fact is not published anywhere we can point at, the table says so rather than estimating it. Products change; if something above is out of date, write to [email protected] and it will be corrected.
WhatFont and every other product name on this site are the trademarks of their own owners. LoupeKit is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any of them.