Tired of Inter being everywhere? Two real criteria—cap-centered vertical metrics and a tall x-height—for choosing a UI font, plus 10 alternatives from independent foundries.

TL;DR, two things make a UI font easy to work with:

1. Cap-centered vertical metrics—the space above the cap height equals the space below the baseline. Result: labels center optically on buttons and align with icons, and you can use a single padding token instead of hand-tuned CSS.

2. Tall x-height—lowercase letters reach 70–75% of cap height. Result: the word nearly fills its box, so it looks evenly centered.