Cyrillic support is not the same as Serbian support

What was tested

The check covered 103 Google Fonts with Cyrillic. It inspected Serbian characters ђ, ј, љ, њ, ћ and џ, Latin č, ć, đ, š and ž, and OpenType localised forms for б, г, д, п and т.

Full and neutral Serbian italics

Twenty-three fonts contained a full set of Serbian italic forms, including Noto Sans, Noto Serif, Open Sans, Source Sans 3, Source Serif 4, Piazzolla, Ysabeau and Ubuntu. Thirteen more used a neutral slanted form that avoids Russian handwritten shapes.

Where to start

Most websites need two typefaces, one for headings and one for text, or a single family in several weights. These are the fonts I would try first for a Serbian website. All of them have full Serbian italics and Latin č, ć, đ, š and ž.

• Body text: Source Sans 3, Open Sans and Noto Sans. All three are variable, so one file covers regular and bold text.
• Long reading: Source Serif 4, Lora, Merriweather and Noto Serif. Source Serif 4 was designed as a companion to Source Sans 3.
• Headings: Cormorant Garamond, Ysabeau and Spectral. Cormorant Garamond and Ysabeau share a designer, Christian Thalmann, so they pair naturally.
• Code and technical text: Cascadia Code, Ubuntu Mono and Victor Mono, the only three of 13 tested monospaced fonts with Serbian italics.
• Schools and readability: Andika, designed by SIL International for literacy work.

Fonts that look right but are not

PT Serif is often recommended for Serbian Cyrillic. Its upright style has every Serbian character, but its italic writes Serbian text with Russian shapes. Fira Sans, PT Sans, IBM Plex Serif, EB Garamond, Playfair Display and Literata behave the same way. Jost and Martian Mono have only the Russian Cyrillic set, without ђ, ј, љ, њ, ћ and џ.

Many popular fonts have no Cyrillic at all, according to Google Fonts data: Poppins, DM Sans, Outfit, Plus Jakarta Sans, Work Sans, Space Grotesk and others. Montserrat and Manrope give a similar geometric feel with Cyrillic.

Handwritten Cyrillic

Script fonts imitate handwriting, and Serbian and Russian handwriting differ in the same letters as italics. Of the fonts I checked, only Playpen Sans, Lobster and Great Vibes show Serbian handwritten forms when the text is marked as Serbian. Caveat, Bad Script, Marck Script, Comforter and Pacifico write п as n and т as m, as in Russian.

Traps found in real files

Some families lack required Serbian Cyrillic characters. Others provide a partial localised substitution. In Bitter and Geologica, Serbian language metadata can also affect upright forms in problematic ways in the tested versions. A file-level check and a browser sample are both necessary.

The complete filter

The full 103-font catalogue includes generated glyph samples, source links, licence data, weights and warnings. It is available on the paired Serbian catalogue; the specimen text is intentionally Serbian.