Originally created by in c. 1987 by Andrew Welch as an improved version of the Mac OS system font Monaco 9 and released as shareware (and later freeware, under the MIT License). Carl Osterwald contributed additional bitmaps for several larger sizes and an outline version, and extended the character set. Steve Gilardi provided knowledge of how to use ProFont as a replacement for Monaco 9. William I. Johnston made a web version. ProFont served as inspiration for AutoScape (Lineto, 1998).

“ProFont is unusual […] in that the outline version was designed to closely follow the original 9 pt bitmap version. More often, fonts are conceived as outlines and then rendered at the various point sizes.” — ProFont Distribution 2.2 Read Me, 1997