The right Nastaleeq font makes Urdu sing. The wrong one, or the wrong encoding, makes it look broken. Here are the faces worth knowing, and what each does best.
Jameel Noori Nastaleeq
The everyday default. Balanced, highly readable and widely supported, it is the safe choice for body text both in print and on the web. If you are unsure, start here.
Faiz Lahori Nastaleeq
Heavier and more traditional, with the flavour of the classic Lahori hand. Excellent for newspaper headlines, book titles and anywhere you want presence and weight.
Alvi Nastaleeq
A formal, tightly joined face strongly associated with the InPage era. Common in older publications and still useful where you want a classic, compact look.
Nafees Nastaleeq
One of the early open Nastaleeq families. Clean at smaller sizes and a good choice for dense text where legibility matters.
Noto Nastaliq Urdu
Google's open source Nastaleeq. Its strengths are broad device support and full Unicode coverage, which makes it ideal for websites and apps. The samples on this site use it.
Choosing the right font
- Body text: Jameel Noori or Nafees for readability.
- Headlines: Faiz Lahori for weight and character.
- Web and apps: Noto Nastaliq Urdu for reliability across devices.
- Classic print feel: Alvi Nastaleeq.
Preview these faces on our Urdu fonts page, and pair them with the converter when moving text into InPage.