SVG icons vs icon fonts: which should you use?
Icon fonts (like the classic Font Awesome webfont) pack glyphs into a typeface. They were clever, but SVG icons now beat them on accessibility, crispness and control. Here's why the industry moved on.
Why icon fonts were popular
One font file delivered hundreds of icons, they inherited text color and font-size, and they were easy to drop in with a class name. For a long time that convenience was worth the trade-offs.
Where icon fonts fall short
- Accessibility — glyphs are read as random characters unless carefully hidden; failed font loads show tofu boxes.
- Blurry rendering — fonts are hinted for text, so icons can look fuzzy at small sizes.
- One colour only — no multicolour icons.
- Positioning quirks — line-height and baseline issues are common.
- All-or-nothing loading — you ship the whole font for a few icons unless you subset it.
Why SVG won
Inline SVG is a real image element: pixel-crisp, multicolour-capable, individually tree-shakeable, and accessible with <title> and ARIA. Modern tooling (Iconify, SVG components in React/Vue) makes SVG just as easy to use as a font class, without the downsides.
Frequently asked questions
Are icon fonts deprecated?
Not officially, but they're considered legacy. New projects overwhelmingly use SVG.
Is Font Awesome an icon font?
It started as one and still offers a webfont, but it now also ships SVG — which is the recommended way to use it.