A free-space optical communication system using non-mode-selective photonic lantern (PL) based coherent receiver is studied. Based on the simulation of photon distribution, the power distribution at the single-mode fiber end of the PL is quantitatively described as a truncated Gaussian distribution over a simplex. The signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), bit-error rate (BER), and outage probability of PL based receiver using selection combining (SC), equal-gain combining (EGC), and maximal-ratio combining (MRC) over Gamma-Gamma turbulence channels are analyzed and compared with the single-mode fiber (SMF) receiver and multimode fiber (MMF) receiver. We demonstrate that EGC is the most suitable combining for PL based receiver because the PL power distribution has limited influence on the BER and outage probability when EGC is used and can greatly affect the BER and outage probability when SC is used. Numerical results show that PL based receiver with EGC requires 6 dB less SNR than the SMF receiver and 5.5 dB less SNR than the MMF receiver at BER of 10−6in moderate turbulence.