Thai font · PAID

DB ThaiText

ดีบี ไทยเท็กซ์

By Narongsak Chaiwong

Typography & Licensing Specialist, ThaiGraph · July 16, 2026 · Updated August 22, 2026

Information verified as of August 2026

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What DB ThaiText is

DB ThaiText (ดีบี ไทยเท็กซ์) is a paid Thai body-text typeface from DB Fonts, sold as a six-style family — Light, Regular and Bold, each with an italic — for 1,070 THB. It is not free, it is not on Google Fonts, and DB publishes no trial or personal-use tier.

The name states the job. This is the quiet face for documents, publishing and long-form Thai reading, and the foundry files it under the tags bodytext, official and text. It is the unshowy sibling to display faces like DB Adman X, DB Ozone X and DB Helvethaica X in the same catalogue.

DB is short for Dear Book Design, which Luc Devroye’s type reference records as the first Thai digital type foundry, established in the late 1980s and founded by Parinya Rojarayanond. The whole catalogue is indexed under DB fonts.

Where DB ThaiText came from

DB ThaiText was DB’s first Thai PostScript text font, and it is a redrawing of an existing face rather than an invention: the phototypesetting face พิมาย (Phimai), which itself preserved the metal type โมโนไทพ์กลาง cut by พีระ ต. สุวรรณ around B.E. 2500. Rojarayanond published the whole chain in his design notes of 1 September 2013.

His account of the changes is specific rather than atmospheric. He straightened the tail of ง, which in Phimai curled forward. He ran the necks of จ and ฐ straight to the back stroke. He flattened the curved middle zigzag of ผ and พ. He simplified the base corner of ม to match น, which then forced matching changes to ฆ and ฌ. ฌ was the only consonant in Phimai with a semicircular head, so it was made round like the rest. He shortened the front stroke of ธ so it no longer ran to the top line and read as a blot.

Two people other than the designer are named in the file. สุรพล เวสารัชเวศย์ built the Regular in Fontographer from Rojarayanond’s drawings and added a Bold and an Italic in the same pass, making four styles; he is also the one who put the DB prefix on the family, short for Dear Book. ปราสาท วีรกุล gave the face its name. Rojarayanond describes ThaiText as a very ordinary name that suits a face built to be read rather than shown off.

For where DB sits against the other Thai catalogues, see the Thai type foundries map.

Is DB ThaiText free to download?

No. DB ThaiText is commercial software at 1,070 THB per family, and the free TTFs circulating under this name are not a licensed release — they are the pre-commercial set, which the designer states was infringed for around sixteen years before DB put the family on sale.

That history has a practical consequence, and it is the strongest reason not to use a scavenged file even if you are unbothered by the legal one. Rojarayanond writes that the set sold commercially differs from the infringed set in two glyphs: ร was corrected so it no longer leans forward, and ไม้โท was corrected so it is not confused with สระอะ at very small sizes. Any copy predating the commercial release is therefore, by the designer’s own description, the older and worse drawing — and the tone-mark defect lands exactly where a body-text face has to work hardest, at small sizes in dense paragraphs.

The rest of the picture is the ordinary one for a paid Thai family. Installing an unlicensed file and then using it in client work, print, or an embedded webfont is unlicensed commercial use, and the liability sits with the agency and the brand owner. DB is also explicit about AI: a notice of 25 November 2025 signed by Rojarayanond as managing director states that images of DB fonts without proof of purchase may not be generated through AI and published, and that DB will pursue infringers.

If the budget is not there, use a Thai text face under the SIL Open Font License, which really is free for commercial work. Every one we have verified is listed under free Thai fonts, and the Thai font licensing guide explains what each licence actually permits.

Every DB ThaiText weight and style

DB ThaiText is three weights — Light, Regular and Bold — each with an italic, for six styles in one family. There is no Medium, no Black, and no condensed or extended width. The shop lists them under these names:

Three weights is a narrow range by modern standards, and it is worth knowing before you commit a document system to it: there is no intermediate weight between Regular and Bold for subheads. The design notes explain why the range is what it is — the family shipped with four styles at the DTP-era release and grew to six when the Light and its italic were added for the 2005 commercial launch. It was never expanded further.

Is there a DB ThaiText Extra?

No. DB does not sell a style called Extra. The DB ThaiText product page lists six styles and Extra is not among them, and the foundry’s design notes account for the family’s entire history — four styles at first, six at the August 2005 commercial release — without naming an Extra cut.

If you are holding a file called DB ThaiText Extra or DB Thai Text Extra, it did not come from DB’s current catalogue. We could not find any documentation published by DB describing what such a file contains, so we are not going to guess at it, and we would not recommend building a document on a file whose provenance you cannot establish. Buy the six-style family from the foundry and you know exactly what you have.

Name variants and spellings

All of these refer to the same typeface:

• DB ThaiText — the product name in DB’s shop
• DB Thai Text — the same name written as three words; DB writes ThaiText closed up
• thaitext — the family name on its own; in a Thai type context it still means this face
• DB ThaiText X — the OpenType generation, sold from April 2006; Luc Devroye’s reference lists the family under this name, and DB serves the catalogue PDF at /asset/catalog/DBThaitextX.pdf. Same design, newer file format.
• ดีบี ไทยเท็กซ์ — the Thai name DB uses in its shop
• DB Thai Text Extra — not a DB product; see the section above

Price and how to buy it

The shop shows a single-family price of 1,070 THB and requires you to choose a licence type before adding to cart: Desktop font 1-5 coms, or Webfont 1 domain. Payment is by bank transfer to Kasikornbank, Minburi branch, account 094-2-83326-3; you upload the transfer slip through the “Add payment” menu, and DB delivers the files after verifying payment within 24 hours. There is no card checkout and no instant download.

Check the scope before assuming 1,070 THB covers the job. DB’s FAQ states the Desktop font 1-5 coms licence installs on five machines and covers general communications material, and that magazines and journals with a publication cycle, packaging, applications, games, software, signage, webfont use, and any use aimed at establishing an identity — logo, slogan or tagline — each require an additional licence fee. For a body-text face this bites harder than it looks: a periodical with a publication cycle is one of the most natural jobs for DB ThaiText, and it is explicitly outside the desktop tier. Brand (one product or service brand) and Corporate (one organisation) licences are quote-on-request with no published price.

Two mechanical points from the same FAQ: a desktop licence is delivered as .ttf only, with .otf, .woff and .woff2 reserved for the webfont, Brand and Corporate tiers, and converting a desktop font into a webfont yourself is not permitted. Licences do not expire.

DB ThaiText also sits inside DB Font Vol. 1: eleven families, 44 styles, 5,885 THB, alongside DB Erawan, DB Fongnam, DB PatPong, DB Pradit, DB Private, DB Sathorn, DB SiamSquareText, DB Silom, DB Surawong and DB Template. If you need more than one of those, the bundle is the cheaper route by a wide margin.

What the letterforms actually do

DB ThaiText is a looped Thai text face built for continuous reading: even stroke weight, round consonant heads, and a neutral colour on the page. Rojarayanond’s stated aim was for the face to have no presence at all while someone is reading it.

There is one comparison worth correcting, because readers make it constantly. People tell the designer that DB ThaiText is the Thai Helvetica. He says that is not what the drawing does: the top terminals of จ, ล and ว are cut on a diagonal, like the a, c and s of Trade Gothic, where Helvetica cuts those terminals horizontally. If you are picking a Latin companion for bilingual setting, that detail is the useful one — Trade Gothic and its relatives sit closer to this face than Helvetica does.

The designer is also candid about his own share of the work. He writes that he is prouder of DB Fongnam as an original PostScript-era text face, and that with DB ThaiText he mostly preserved a good design philosophy that was already fully present in โมโนไทพ์กลาง. He credits the family’s success to พีระ ต. สุวรรณ, the engineer who cut that metal face.

Free alternatives to DB ThaiText

If you need a looped Thai body face and cannot licence this one, the open-licence options are genuinely good — Thai text type is the one category where the free field is as strong as the paid field. Three that cover different situations:

• Sarabun — the standard open-licence Thai text sans, with a wide weight range and italics; the closest working substitute for DB ThaiText Regular in a document system.
• TH Sarabun New — the Thai government document standard, and the right choice when a file has to open correctly on someone else’s official machine.
• Noto Sans Thai — the best-hinted option for screen and product work, with a full weight range.

None of them is a metric-compatible replacement. Character widths and tone-mark positions differ, so dropping one into a layout already set in DB ThaiText will reflow every paragraph. If an existing file has to match line for line, buying the licence is the only route. Compare all three against your own copy in the Thai font tester.

Best use cases

DB ThaiText is a body-text face, and the licence tier you need depends on where the text will be published. Under a Desktop 1-5 coms licence it fits:

• long-form Thai documents — reports, manuals, proposals, white papers
• book body text and one-off publications without a fixed publication cycle
• corporate collateral where a DB display face sets the headline
• bilingual Thai and Latin running text at small sizes

Requiring a Brand or Corporate licence instead: magazines and journals with a publication cycle, packaging copy including back-of-pack legal text, apps and software, signage, and any use that makes DB ThaiText a brand’s standard face. Requiring a webfont licence, bought as such: anything embedded with @font-face.

Where it does not fit at all: high-impact display work — use DB Ozone X or DB Adman X above it — and open-source projects, where Sarabun or Noto Sans Thai is the correct answer.

Licensing

DB ThaiText is proprietary software owned by DB Designs Co., Ltd. A licence must be bought before use, the listed single-family price is 1,070 THB for six styles, and no tier permits redistributing the files. Desktop covers five machines and delivers .ttf; webfont covers one domain and delivers .ttf, .otf, .woff and .woff2; Brand and Corporate are quote-on-request and are what periodical, packaging, signage, application and identity use actually require. Confirm current terms on DB’s licensing and FAQ page and buy from the DB ThaiText product page.

A file from a font-aggregator site transfers no rights, and by the designer’s own account it is also the older drawing with the uncorrected ร and ไม้โท. For an open-licence Thai body face with none of these constraints, see Sarabun and the Thai font licensing guide.

Information verified as of August 2026