whatfontis

name	whatfontis
description	Identify fonts from images using the WhatFontIs API (990K+ font catalog). Use when the user wants to identify a font from a screenshot, image file, or image URL. Covers base64 upload and URL-based requests via curl.

WhatFontIs API

Identify fonts from images using the WhatFontIs.com REST API. Searches a catalog of 990K+ fonts (commercial and free). Returns up to 20 ranked matches with font name, type (free/commercial), and source.

API docs: https://ggp.whatfontis.com/API-identify-fonts-from-image.html

Auth

WHATFONTISKEY is already set in the environment. Just use $WHATFONTISKEY in curl commands. Free tier: 200 requests/day.

Identify font from a local image file

Encode the image as base64 and send it with IMAGEBASE64=1:

IMG_B64=$(base64 -i /path/to/image.png)

curl -s -X POST "https://www.whatfontis.com/api2/" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
  --data-urlencode "API_KEY=$WHATFONTISKEY" \
  --data-urlencode "IMAGEBASE64=1" \
  --data-urlencode "urlimagebase64=$IMG_B64" \
  --data-urlencode "limit=10" | python3 -m json.tool

Identify font from an image URL

Pass the URL directly with IMAGEBASE64=0:

curl -s -X POST "https://www.whatfontis.com/api2/" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
  --data-urlencode "API_KEY=$WHATFONTISKEY" \
  --data-urlencode "IMAGEBASE64=0" \
  --data-urlencode "urlimage=https://example.com/screenshot.png" \
  --data-urlencode "limit=10" | python3 -m json.tool

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
API_KEY (required)	str	Your API key from env var WHATFONTISKEY
IMAGEBASE64	int	0 = use urlimage, 1 = use urlimagebase64
urlimage	str	Public URL to an image (when IMAGEBASE64=0)
urlimagebase64	str	Base64-encoded image data (when IMAGEBASE64=1)
NOTTEXTBOXSDETECTION	int	0 = auto-detect text box, 1 = search whole image
FREEFONTS	int	0 = all fonts, 1 = only free fonts
limit	int	Number of results, 1-20 (default: 2)

Response shape

[
  {
    "title": "Red Rock Regular",
    "url": "https://www.whatfontis.com/NMY_Red-Rock-Regular.font",
    "image": "https://d1ly52g9wjvbd2.cloudfront.net/img16/...",
    "type": "Commercial",
    "site": "Myfonts.com"
  }
]

• title: font name
• url: font page on WhatFontIs (shareable link)
• type: Commercial or Free
• site: where the font is available

Tips

• For images with small or overlapping text, try NOTTEXTBOXSDETECTION=1 to scan the whole image.
• Use FREEFONTS=1 to filter results to only free fonts.
• Discord CDN URLs expire after ~24h. For Discord images, download the file first and use base64 upload.
• Present results as a table with font name, type, and source for easy scanning.