How to ttf vs woff vs woff2: web font format comparison
- Step 1Compare file sizes — A typical Latin sans-serif weight: TTF 200 KB → WOFF 110 KB → WOFF2 70 KB. WOFF2 is ~35% smaller than WOFF and ~65% smaller than TTF for the same glyph data.
- Step 2Check browser support — WOFF2: 99%+ (everything since 2016). WOFF: 99%+ (everything since IE9, 2011). TTF: 100% but with no compression — only useful as a final fallback.
- Step 3Pick the right strategy — Most sites in 2026 ship WOFF2 only — the 0.5% missing support comes from IE11 and discontinued mobile browsers. Multi-format src lists are rarely worth the extra HTML weight.
Frequently asked questions
Should I ship WOFF as a fallback?+
Almost never in 2026. WOFF2 has 99%+ support and the missing 0.5% is browsers without modern security updates. Ship WOFF2-only and let those edge cases see the system fallback font.
Is TTF ever the right web format?+
Only as a desktop install. For web delivery, WOFF2 is always the right choice. If you need to support a niche browser without WOFF2 support, ship WOFF — TTF is too large to be worth the bandwidth even as a fallback.
Why does WOFF2 compress better than zip?+
Brotli has a 120 KB built-in dictionary tuned for web content, plus WOFF2's glyph-table preprocessing reorders glyf data into a format that compresses much better than the raw OpenType layout. Generic zip can't do either.
Does WOFF2 affect rendering quality?+
No. The decompressed sfnt is byte-identical to the source — same glyphs, same kerning, same OpenType features, same hinting. Compression is purely a wire-format optimisation.
Privacy first
Every JAD Font tool runs entirely in your browser using opentype.js and the wawoff2 WASM Brotli encoder. Your fonts never leave your device — verified by zero outbound network requests during processing.