✉️ Free cover letter templates

9 free US and UK cover letter templates

Compare American month-first and British day-first formats alongside modern, classic and minimal layouts. Every template is single-column, uses real text, and is built for ATS readability. Preview it live, then export your finished letter to PDF or Word without a watermark.

Choose a template

Arrow keys move between them. The preview on the right is the real layout, not a picture of it.

Best for: Technology, product, marketing and most corporate roles.
Region: US & EU
ATS: Single column, plain text, no tables or images.

Jane Doe

jane.doe@example.com·+1 (415) 555-0134·Portland, OR·linkedin.com/in/janedoe

September 16, 2026

Ms. A. Whitfield

Greenfield SaaS, Inc.

Frontend Engineer — application

Dear Hiring Manager,

I am applying for the Frontend Engineer role at Greenfield SaaS. Your posting asks for someone who can take a feature from an accessible interface all the way to a released build, which is close to how I have spent the last four years.

At Northwind I rebuilt the customer dashboard in React and TypeScript, cutting first meaningful paint from 4.2s to 1.1s and lifting weekly active use by 18%. The work included a WCAG 2.2 AA pass across 40 components and a migration to a shared REST client that removed 6,000 lines of duplicated fetch logic.

I write the documentation that makes a remote team work: PR descriptions, runbooks and the contribution guide our three newest engineers used to ship in their first week.

Kind regards,

Jane Doe

Every template, and when to use it

Meridian

Modern

Technology, product, marketing and most corporate roles.

Single column, plain text, no tables or images. · US & EU

Atlas

Classic

Law, finance, academia, government and conservative US employers.

The most conservative layout here: no colour, no rules, serif text. · US

Boardroom

Executive

Director, VP and C-suite applications where scope matters most.

Colour is used only on the rule; all text stays black. · US & EU

Signal

ATS-first

Applications screened by an applicant tracking system, or a plain-text form field.

No rules, no colour, no alignment tricks — the safest layout for parsers. · US & EU

Kontor

European

UK, German, Dutch, Nordic and other European applications that use a day-first date and address block.

Address blocks are plain text lines; day-first date follows EU convention. · UK & EU

Prism

Modern

Design, brand, marketing and start-up roles that reward a little personality.

The band is a background colour behind real text — it is never an image. · US & EU

Aria

Classic

Editorial, hospitality, non-profit and traditional US applications.

Centered heading only; the body stays left-aligned for readability. · US

Ledger

Corporate

Consulting, operations, finance and large organisations.

The accent bar is a border on the heading block; text is untouched. · US & EU

Vellum

Compact

Longer letters, referral applications and anything that must fit one page.

Tighter type, still above the 10 pt floor that keeps text legible. · US & EU

US vs UK cover letter templates

Choose the market first, then the visual style. The words should sound like you; the date, address block and sign-off should look familiar to the employer reading them.

US cover letter templates

Recommended: Meridian, Atlas, Signal or Aria

Use a month-first date, concise American business English and a one-page US Letter layout. Pair the letter with a resume, not a CV, unless the employer uses different wording.

UK cover letter templates

Recommended: Kontor

Use a day-first date, British business English and the appropriate formal sign-off. Pair the letter with your CV; A4 is the customary paper size for a downloaded or printed application.

What makes a cover letter template ATS-friendly

These are the rules every template here follows. They are worth knowing because most templates online break at least two of them.

One column, top to bottom

A parser reads a document in the order the text appears. Two columns, sidebars and text boxes hand it the content in a scrambled order, and the letter is filed against the wrong job.

No tables, images or icon fonts

A table cell becomes an arbitrary string; an image becomes nothing at all. Contact details set as icons disappear entirely, so the recruiter never sees how to reach you.

Standard fonts and real text

Helvetica, Arial, Georgia, Calibri and Times New Roman render everywhere, including in a recruiter's preview pane. Custom web fonts fall back unpredictably and can change your line count.

Ordinary headings, no text boxes

Text boxes are often dropped by parsers. Bold text on its own line is read correctly and looks the same to a human.

Colour only behind text, never as text

A coloured rule or header band is decoration a parser ignores. Coloured text can vanish in monochrome printing and in low-contrast readers.

One page, 250–400 words

Recruiters spend well under a minute on a letter. Everything past the first page is usually unread.

Cover letter format at a glance

Font size: 10.5–12pt for the body. Smaller than 10pt reads as cramped; larger looks like padding.
Line spacing: 1.5 is the sweet spot. Single spacing makes a letter feel dense, and 2.0 pushes it onto a second page.
Margins: 0.75in–1in on all four sides. Below 0.6in most printers clip it.
Paragraphs: Three or four, of three to six lines each. Leave a blank line between them rather than indenting.
File format: PDF preserves the layout you chose. Send .docx only when the posting asks for an editable file.
File name: firstname-lastname-cover-letter.pdf. It is the first thing anyone sees in a download folder.

Cover letter template questions

What is the best cover letter template?

The one that matches the employer's own material. A serif classic (Atlas) suits law, finance and academia; a clean modern layout (Meridian, Signal) suits technology and product; the European format (Kontor) is what German, Dutch and Nordic recruiters expect. When in doubt, choose the plainest one — no recruiter has ever rejected a letter for being too simple.

Are these cover letter templates free?

All nine are free, with no sign-up and no watermark. Export the finished letter as a PDF, a Word document or plain text, as often as you like.

Are they ATS-friendly?

Yes. Every template is single-column with selectable text, no tables, no images and no icon fonts — so an applicant tracking system parses the same words a recruiter reads. The coloured-header designs keep the text selectable; only the background is decorative.

What format should a cover letter be in?

One page, 250–400 words, three to four short paragraphs, 10.5–12pt in a standard font, 1.5 line spacing and 0.75–1in margins. Your contact details at the top, the employer's details below, then the date and the letter itself.

What changes between a US and UK cover letter template?

A US template normally uses a month-first date and is paired with a resume. A UK template uses a day-first date, is paired with a CV and usually has a more formal sign-off: Yours sincerely for a named recipient or Yours faithfully when no name is given. Both should stay concise and fit on one page.

Do I need a different template for Europe?

For many EU applications, yes, slightly. A sender address block, the recipient's address and a day-first date are common, and 200–300 words is often enough. The Kontor template uses that layout and date format by default.

Can I download a cover letter template in Word?

You download your finished letter as an .docx file, styled with the template you chose, ready to edit in Word or Google Docs. We do not ship blank template files, because a letter with placeholder text is only the first of several drafts you still have to write.

Does switching template change what I wrote?

No. Templates restyle the letter only — typography, header layout, spacing, date format. Your words, your edits and your paragraph order survive every switch.

Pick the template. We will write the letter.

Paste the job description, add your details, and the generator writes a tailored letter in whichever template you chose — then exports it as a PDF, a Word file or plain text.

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