Open Sans vs Lato : A head to head Comparison

Can't decide what to choose between Open Sans and Lato just like many other designers and developers ? Here is a brief article which would help you to pick up a font for your next web project.
Fonts were and are integral part of a website designs. In today's modern web designing world, there are thousands of font available and two of the most used ones are - Open Sans and Lato. Both these fonts are sans serif typeface and extensively used worldwide. Both of these fonts are free and resemble to each other in a lot of features, which pushes the designer in a state of dilemma. So here is a quick review so sort this problem out.

Direct Comparison

First of all we would see the two fonts together for almost same font weights. The sole purpose of fonts are to make text look good so lets see side by side comparison of these fonts.

Font Weight - 100 Hairline/Thin

Lato - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Open Sans - Not Available

Font Weight - 300 Light

Lato - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Open Sans - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Font Weight - 400 Normal/Regular

Lato - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Open Sans - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Font Weight - 600 Semi Bold

Lato - Not Available
Open Sans - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Font Weight - 700 Bold

Lato - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Open Sans - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Font Weight - 800/900  Ultra Bold / Extra Bold

Lato - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Open Sans - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Different people have different taste and opinion of one would surely not be what the other thinks. So I would try my best to judge it in an unbiased way. In the above comparison I think that Lato provides a bit more variety in look eliminating the need of other fonts. Moreover it include Hairline font weight which is not commonly found in fonts. No doubt Open Sans looks good but due to the above mentioned advantage. The winner of this stage is Lato.

Speed Optimization

When it comes to font, the second thing we look at is its speed. Today's websites need to be fast loading and one would never want to load tons of fonts for making a site look good. Sacrificing speed for fonts is not always a good idea.