Type any Persian name or verse and see it in 22 fonts — led by IranNastaliq, the Iranian Nastaliq, then Naskh, Kufic, modern and display faces. Every one tested on گ ژ پ چ, Persian digits and the half-space. Copy in one click or export PNG, SVG & PDF. Or set it on your own photo, inside a round shamsa seal, or running behind you. Free, no signup.
22Persian-Tested Fonts
3Nastaliq Faces
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Style: IranNastaliq — Iranian Nastaliq
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22 Persian Fonts & Nastaliq Styles
Nastaliq first, then Naskh, Kufic, modern and display — click any font to set it as your preview
Famous Persian Verses & Wishes
Click any card — it loads instantly into the preview
How to Make Persian Calligraphy
1
Type or paste Farsi
Paste a line of Hafez or a Nowruz wish, or type a name in English letters — "Arash", "Shirin" — and the converter writes it with Persian letters: گ, not غ; ی, not ي.
2
Start with Nastaliq
IranNastaliq opens the page because it is the Iranian form of the script. Naskh faces follow for longer text, then Kufic for logos and display faces such as Lalezar for posters.
3
Copy, post or print
Copy the text, post a PNG to a story, or send an SVG or PDF to the printer — the outlines come from the real font, so a Nowruz card or a framed verse prints as sharp as it looks.
Beyond the Font: Nastaliq on Your Photo, Seal and Card
The same 22 Persian-tested fonts, set on your own picture, bent into a ring or a rayed shamsa, and saved at the size the occasion needs.
Photo
عکس
Your Name in Nastaliq on Your Own Photo
Choose a picture in the Photo tab and say what it is for — a profile photo, an Instagram story, a Nowruz or Yalda card, a wedding card or an A4 print — and one tap sets the frame, the export size and a finish. Nastaliq steps down diagonally, so the studio places the whole word by its ink rather than by its first letter. Your photo is edited inside the browser and never uploaded.
Behind
پشت
Letters That Pass Behind You
The movie-poster look: tap Person and an AI model running on your own device finds you — hair, shoulders and a scarf included — and draws you back over the letters, so the name runs behind your head. Tap Object to bring a teacup, a vase or a cat in front instead. The models download once — about 20 MB for Person, about 6 MB more for Object — and stay on your device.
Shamsa
شمسه
A Name Cut Like a Qajar Seal
In Qajar Iran names were cut into seals in Nastaliq — the Khalili Collections hold the first seal Naser al-Din Shah used after taking the throne, its inscription in nasta'liq. The Shamsa layout gives your own name that formal round: a phrase circling the ring, a crown of rays, and a name or an eight-pointed star at the centre.
Round
دایره
Round Text That Keeps Nastaliq Joined
Nastaliq's joins and its stepping baseline are the first things to break when a word is bent letter by letter. Arc and Circle bend the word after it has been shaped, as one outline, so every join and every long tail survives the curve — and a half-space stays a half-space. A short name repeats until the ring closes.
3 texts
۱ ۲ ۳
Up to Three Texts, Each in Its Own Style
A name in Gold Foil across the top, نوروز مبارک in Neon below it, a date along an arc in Persian digits — each text keeps its own words, font, finish and shape, from IranNastaliq to Jomhuria. Eight finishes in all, Gold Thread stitching and a Frosted Plate among them. Tap a text to select it; double-tap to change its words.
What Makes Calligraphy Persian
The same Arabic-based script — a different alphabet, a different hand, and details most software gets wrong
Thirty-two letters, not twenty-eight
Persian writes with the Arabic script but adds four letters for sounds Arabic does not have: پ p, چ ch, ژ zh and گ g. It also uses its own forms of two others — ک and ی, the yeh with no dots at the end of a word. A font drawn only for Arabic can lack all six, which is why Persian set in it falls back letter by letter into a different typeface.
Nastaliq, Iran's own hand
Nastaliq took shape in Iran in the 14th and 15th centuries, joining the clarity of naskh to the sweep of ta'liq. It reached what is widely held to be its highest elegance with Mir Emad Hassani, born in Qazvin around 1554 and active at the Safavid court in Isfahan until his death in 1615. Where Arabic Naskh sits on a level line, Nastaliq words step down diagonally, and the long horizontal strokes are stretched or shortened to give each line its rhythm.
Shekasteh, the broken hand
A faster, looser form — shekasteh, "broken" — grew out of Nastaliq in Safavid court circles and became the hand of letters and documents. Its most celebrated master, Darvish Abdol-Majid Taleqani, brought it to maturity in the 18th century. Its joins are so compressed that even fluent readers can struggle with it. This page offers no Shekasteh font: we found none under an open licence that writes Persian reliably.
The half-space
Persian needs a space that is not a space: the nim-fasele, or zero-width non-joiner. It keeps میخواهم as one word while stopping the می from joining the rest, and splits گلها from its plural ending without a gap. Software that drops it glues letters together that must stay apart. Every font on this page was rendered with it and keeps the break.
Persian digits are not Arabic digits
The year ۱۴۰۴ is written with Persian digits, and three of them — ۴ ۵ ۶ — are drawn differently from the Arabic ٤ ٥ ٦. Many Arabic-script fonts quietly substitute the Arabic shapes; every family we screened that did so was left out, and the page also marks your text as Persian, so fonts that carry both forms draw the Persian ones.
Practice that became art
Calligraphers trained on siyah-mashq, "black practice": sheets written over and over until they were nearly black with ink. Surviving examples date back to around 1600, and under the Qajars, in a revival led by Naser al-Din Shah, these dense, rhythmic sheets were collected, signed and dated as works in their own right. The tradition is still taught: the Iranian Calligraphers Association was founded in 1950, and the Nastaliq master Gholam-Hossein Amirkhani, long its president, was named a Living Human Treasure in 2020.
Which Persian Font Should You Use?
Matched to the things people actually write in Farsi
Nowruz and Yalda cards
IranNastaliq for نوروز مبارک, with Parastoo for any line of plain text under it. Nastaliq is what a Persian greeting is expected to look like; Parastoo keeps the small print readable without breaking the mood.
Hafez, Saadi and framed verse
IranNastaliq or Gulzar. A couplet set in Naskh reads like a newspaper. Keep each half-line, a mesra, on its own line with Enter — the studio lays out real lines — and export PDF for the framer.
Retro posters and covers
Lalezar revives the hand-lettered titles of 1960s and 70s Film-Farsi posters — bold, dramatic and made for the cinema billboard. For a heavier, blockier headline, Jomhuria reworks an Iranian stencil known as Shablon.
Wedding cards
The couple's names in IranNastaliq at a large size, the details in Mirza, a Naskh built to follow Arabic and Persian ligature rules. Add a frame, choose Story or HD, and send the press a PDF rather than a screenshot.
Logos and brand marks
Kufam or Fustat for a mark that survives being shrunk to an app icon; Vazirmatn or Estedad when the brand needs a clean Persian sans that matches its website.
Long text and captions
Vazirmatn for screens and Parastoo for anything printed. Nastaliq is a display hand for most Persian readers — a paragraph of it is slow going — so keep it for the line that should be admired.
Why IranNastaliq is served as-is
IranNastaliq is not on Google Fonts. It was designed by Hossein Zahedi with Iranian government sponsorship, and in 2022 the Information Technology Organization of Iran released it under the SIL Open Font License, reserving its name. Under that licence a subsetted or optimised copy would be a modified font that may not carry the name — so this page serves the original file, untouched, with its licence beside it.
Screen versus press
For a printer — a card, a frame, a shop board — export PDF or SVG: real outlines that keep Nastaliq's thin tails sharp at any size. For Instagram or a WhatsApp status export PNG at the Story or Square size, since the platform recompresses whatever it receives and a vector gains nothing there.
FAQ
Persian Calligraphy Questions
What is the difference between Persian and Arabic calligraphy?
They share a script but not a centre of gravity. Arabic calligraphy is anchored in Naskh, Thuluth and Kufic; Persian calligraphy in Nastaliq and its faster offshoot Shekasteh. Persian also adds the letters پ چ ژ گ and its own forms of ک and ی, so a font made only for Arabic often cannot write Persian at all.
What is Nastaliq?
The calligraphic hand developed in Iran in the 14th and 15th centuries, in which each word steps diagonally down towards the baseline. It became the main hand for Persian poetry and reached what is widely held to be its finest form with Mir Emad Hassani, who died in 1615.
Why does Persian text look wrong in some fonts?
Usually for one of three reasons: the font lacks a Persian letter and swaps in another typeface for it, it draws Persian digits with Arabic shapes, or it ignores the half-space and joins letters that must stay apart. Every font on this page was tested for all three.
How do I type a half-space?
On the standard Persian keyboard layout (ISIRI 9147) it is Shift+Space. You can also paste text that already contains one; the studio keeps it, on screen and in every download.
Is IranNastaliq free to use?
Yes. The Information Technology Organization of Iran released it under the SIL Open Font License in 2022, which allows personal and commercial use. The other 21 fonts here come from Google Fonts under the same licence.
Do I need a Persian keyboard?
No. Paste Persian from anywhere, or type a name in English letters and the converter writes it with Persian letters — گ for g, پ for p, ی for y. Common names come out spelled as Iranians write them.
Can I export for printing?
Yes. Besides PNG you can export SVG and PDF, which keep the real letter outlines, so Nastaliq's fine strokes stay sharp on a card, a frame or a sign.
Is this free?
Yes — every font, every layout and every export format, with no account. A small kactyl.com mark is on by default; switch it off with one tap.
Can I put my Persian name on a photo?
Yes. In the Photo tab choose a picture and what you are making — profile photo, story, Nowruz or wedding card, or wall print — and the size, frame and a finish are set for you. The photo never leaves your browser.
How do I make a round Persian name seal?
Under Layout choose Circle for a ring or Shamsa for a rayed seal with a second name in the middle. The word is bent after shaping, so Nastaliq stays joined; download SVG or PDF to print or engrave at any size.
How do I put Persian text behind a person in a photo?
In the Photo tab tap Person under Text behind. An AI model running in your browser finds the person and the letters pass behind them; for a teacup or any object, tap Object and then tap it on the photo.
