Embedded, subset and referenced fonts in a PDF
Three ways a PDF can carry a font
The six capital letters before the plus sign are chosen by the software that wrote the PDF. They exist so that two different subsets of the same font in one file do not clash, and they carry no meaning of their own. The checker strips the tag to show the base name and lists each base name and type once, so two subsets of Helvetica in one file appear as a single row.
| State | How it looks in the list | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Embedded, full | Plain name, Embedded | The whole font program travels with the file. Pages render the same everywhere and text can be edited with any character the font has. |
| Embedded subset | Name with a six-letter tag, such as COMMLB+Helvetica, Embedded and Subset |
Only the glyphs used in the document are included. Pages render faithfully, but editing may need characters that were left out. |
| Referenced only | Plain name, Not Embedded | The file names the font and expects the viewer or printer to supply it. If the font is missing, a substitute with different widths is used. |
Measured: the same page exported two ways
A one-page PostScript file using Helvetica, Times-Roman and Courier was converted with Ghostscript's default settings and again with the prepress preset. A third file was built by hand to reference Arial as a TrueType font without embedding it.
pdffonts output and the checker's summary
Ghostscript default settings, 3,649 bytes pdffonts: Courier, Helvetica, Times-Roman - Type 1, Standard encoding, emb no, sub no Checker: 3 fonts, 0 embedded, 3 not embedded Ghostscript -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress, 8,260 bytes pdffonts: MQLPNL+Courier, COMMLB+Helvetica, DTWGTH+Times-Roman - Type 1C, WinAnsi, emb yes, sub yes Checker: 3 fonts, 3 embedded, 3 subsetted, all embedded Hand-built file pdffonts: Arial - TrueType, WinAnsi, emb no, sub no Checker: 1 font, 0 embedded; suggested free alternative: Arimo
Why referenced fonts are a print risk
Print preflight checks commonly flag fonts that are not embedded, because the output device may not have them. Helvetica, Times and Courier belong to the standard 14 fonts that PDF viewers have traditionally supplied themselves, so a file that only references them still opens; the viewer simply uses its own similar fonts. That is fine for reading, but line breaks and spacing can shift slightly and the printed piece will not match the proof.
Arial, Calibri and other fonts outside that set are a bigger risk. On a machine without them the viewer picks a substitute, and narrow columns, tables and form layouts can overflow. The fix is to export again with font embedding turned on, as the prepress run above shows: the same page grew from 3,649 to 8,260 bytes, the price of carrying three subset fonts.
Font types you may see
Type1: a PostScript font. pdffonts showsType 1Cwhen the embedded program is in the compact CFF format; the checker reports the dictionary type, Type1, for both.TrueType: the common desktop format, used by most office applications on Windows and macOS.Type0: a composite font for large character sets, used for CJK text and for Unicode exports. Its embedding is checked through its descendant font, which the list does not show separately.Type3: glyphs drawn with PDF graphics commands, often by older TeX workflows and some converters. They are always counted as embedded because the drawings live in the file.MMType1: a multiple master font, now rare.
Free alternatives the checker suggests
For each font the checker offers a link: the Google Fonts page when the font is published there, or a metric-compatible or similar free alternative for common commercial fonts. Metric-compatible fonts keep the same character widths, so swapping them in an editable source preserves line breaks.
| Font in the PDF | Suggested alternative |
|---|---|
| Arial | Arimo |
| Times | Tinos |
| Calibri | Carlito |
| Cambria | Caladea |
| Helvetica | Inter |
| Myriad | Source Sans 3 |
| Futura | Jost |
Downloading embedded font programs
The Download Embedded Fonts button packs every embedded font program into a ZIP: TrueType programs as .ttf, CFF programs as .cff or .otf, Type 1 programs as .pfb or .t1. Subset tags are removed from the file names. Subsets contain only the glyphs used in the document, so they are useful for identifying a typeface, not as installable replacements. Fonts are licensed software; extracting one does not grant the right to use it. A temporary copy of the PDF is kept so the download works, and copies older than four hours are removed by cleanup.
An empty list usually means the pages are scanned images with no text objects, or that the font objects could not be read.
Last updated . Classification rules are taken from the checker's source code. The sample was produced on 12 October 2026 by converting one PostScript test page with Ghostscript 10.08.0 at two settings and building a third file by hand, then running each through the checker's font extraction and through Poppler pdffonts 26.10.0.