How to Use Custom Fonts in TCPDF

What is TCPDF?

TCPDF is one of the most widely used open-source PHP libraries for generating PDF documents server-side. It supports UTF-8 text, images, barcodes, HTML rendering, and — crucially — custom fonts in TrueType format.

Unlike FPDF, TCPDF includes built-in support for multibyte character sets, making it the go-to choice for PDFs that need to handle Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, or other non-Latin scripts.

TCPDF ships with a set of core fonts, but for any real-world project you will almost certainly need to embed a custom typeface — whether it's a brand font, a system font not included by default, or a Unicode-capable font for multilingual content.

Font types in TCPDF

TCPDF supports three font types. Understanding the difference is important before you start:

For most modern projects, you want TrueType Unicode — use the -b flag when converting (this is what our tool does by default).

Step-by-step: convert and use a TTF font

What does the converter generate?

For a font named MyFont.ttf, the converter generates:

tcpdf/fonts/
  ├── myfont.php          # Font definition (metrics, encoding)
  ├── myfont.ctg.z        # Character-to-glyph map (compressed)
  └── myfont.z            # Font data (compressed)

All three files must be present in the same folder. The font name to use in setFont() is myfont (lowercase, stripped of special characters).

Using setFont() correctly

The setFont() method signature in TCPDF is:

$pdf->setFont($family, $style = '', $size = 10, $fontfile = '', $subset = 'default', $out = true);

A typical usage looks like this:

// Load TCPDF
require_once('tcpdf/tcpdf.php');

$pdf = new TCPDF('P', 'mm', 'A4', true, 'UTF-8', false);
$pdf->addPage();

// Set the custom font
$pdf->setFont('myfont', '', 12);

// Write text
$pdf->Cell(0, 10, 'Hello, custom font!', 0, 1);

$pdf->Output('document.pdf', 'I');

Using a custom font path

If your fonts are not in the default tcpdf/fonts/ directory, define the path before calling setFont():

// Define a custom fonts directory
define('K_PATH_FONTS', __DIR__ . '/my_fonts/');

require_once('tcpdf/tcpdf.php');

$pdf = new TCPDF('P', 'mm', 'A4', true, 'UTF-8');
$pdf->addPage();
$pdf->setFont('myfont', '', 12);

Bold, italic and font variants

TCPDF handles font variants differently depending on whether you converted them separately or whether you are using the $style parameter of setFont().

Option A: convert each variant as a separate font

This is the most reliable approach. Convert MyFont-Bold.ttf, MyFont-Italic.ttf, and MyFont-Regular.ttf separately. The converter will name them myfontb, myfonti, and myfont respectively.

// Regular
$pdf->setFont('myfont', '', 12);
$pdf->Cell(0, 10, 'Regular text', 0, 1);

// Bold (separate converted file)
$pdf->setFont('myfontb', '', 12);
$pdf->Cell(0, 10, 'Bold text', 0, 1);

// Italic (separate converted file)
$pdf->setFont('myfonti', '', 12);
$pdf->Cell(0, 10, 'Italic text', 0, 1);

Option B: use the style parameter

You can also pass 'B', 'I', or 'BI' as the second argument to setFont(). TCPDF will look for a font file with the corresponding suffix. This only works if you have converted and named the variants accordingly.

$pdf->setFont('myfont', 'B',  12); // looks for myfontb.php
$pdf->setFont('myfont', 'I',  12); // looks for myfonti.php
$pdf->setFont('myfont', 'BI', 12); // looks for myfontbi.php

Unicode and multilingual fonts

TCPDF has excellent Unicode support, but you need to make sure both the font and the document are configured correctly.

Requirements for Unicode rendering

• Use a font that actually contains the required glyphs (e.g. Noto Sans for broad language coverage)
• Convert with the -b flag (Unicode mode) — our tool does this automatically
• Pass 'UTF-8' to the TCPDF constructor
• Make sure your PHP strings are UTF-8 encoded

$pdf = new TCPDF('P', 'mm', 'A4', true, 'UTF-8', false);
$pdf->addPage();
$pdf->setFont('notosans', '', 12);

// Arabic (RTL)
$pdf->setRTL(true);
$pdf->Cell(0, 10, 'مرحبا بالعالم', 0, 1);

// Back to LTR for other languages
$pdf->setRTL(false);
$pdf->Cell(0, 10, '日本語テキスト', 0, 1);

Recommended Unicode fonts

• Noto Sans / Noto Serif — broad language coverage, open source (Google)
• DejaVu Sans — good coverage, widely used in open-source projects
• FreeSans / FreeMono — GNU free fonts, solid Unicode support

Common errors and fixes

Frequently asked questions