> Like to get a font to use in your app, you need to pay $5,000+ for any decent looking font.
There are many high quality open source fonts available. For example:
http://www.latofonts.com/lato-free-fonts/
Many foundries such as Grilli Type have free trials (https://www.grillitype.com/free_trials) and reasonable pricing for very high quality typefaces (https://www.grillitype.com/shops/gt-america <$1k for desktop + web)
And just so you know - app updates count as new installation in terms of font licensing. So in you example from GT America font, if you have an app that is installed on 5,000 phones (which is quite easily achievable on app store) you will have to pay $245,000 : https://cl.ly/21d48f64f529
And here is a mobile app licensing terms on fonts.com:
> LICENSES FOR MOBILE APPS A mobile app license permits the embedding of a font into the iOS, Android or Windows Phone mobile platforms for a single title and a set number of app installations. You can view and modify the installation limit from the cart. App installations can be spread out across the platforms your app is available for. A new license is not required to cover updates to an app, however installations of newer versions of your app do count toward your installation limit. Learn more about licenses for mobile apps
While every dev seems to fancy themselves a great designer, the reality is that apps end up looking like they were rejected from MySpace and Geocities for being too ugly. Custom widgets using non-system fonts (much like in the desktop and web sphere) often lose out on important accessibility baubles as well. I can certainly understand a desire for completely custom widgets on something like a full screen game. But to eschew the system fonts? Meh.
Meanwhile if your main use is branding you don't need to embed or subset the whole font. Include your logo or whatever as a sprite (vector or bitmap) and get a license for that sort of usage, it's cheaper.
If $50/seat is too much, the correct answer isn't "hey let's pirate it for my commercial app".
When did I say it was a correct answer?