Dan Benjamin:

Inconsolata is my favorite monospaced font, and it’s free. [… It] is designed to be used with anti-aliasing enabled, but it’s surprisingly legible even at very small sizes.

I’ve long been a 9pt Monaco—no anti-aliasing—guy. Yesterday, after testing the freely available fonts with a unique zero from the ten that Dan reviews, I came to the same conclusion: 11pt Inconsolata, anti-aliased, is roughly the same size as my old favorite and is just as readable, if not more so.

Unlike John Gruber, I did not find Consolas, or any others except for Inconsolata, to pass the “mm/ww” anti-aliasing test at small sizes.