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What are the best Microsoft Office alternatives?

35

Options
Considered

788

User
Recs.

Nov 30, 2023

Last
Updated

31 Options Considered

Best Microsoft Office alternatives	Price	Platforms	Word processing
51 LibreOffice	Free	Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD	Yes
50 Google Drive	Free	Windows; OSX; Linux; Android; iOS	-
-- Corel WordPerfect Office	$249	Windows	Yes
-- Apple iWork	-	-	-
-- LaTeX	-	Windows, macOS, Linux	Yes

LibreOffice

Top Pro

Free and open source

LibreOffice is available for free with code available here. It's licensed under LGPL v3 with new contributions dual-licensed under MPL. See More

Top Con

No Android version

Linux coach s.p.'s Experience

Nw MUFFIN interface is awesome! It is supported in newest versions... See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD

Word processing:Yes

Spreadsheets:Yes

Presentations:Yes

Top Pro

The most popular FOSS Microsoft Office alternative

Out of all free and open source alternatives for Microsoft Office, LibreOffice is the most popular and with the most community support behind it. See More

Top Con

Poor stability

Consistently crashes while editing. Absolutely unreliable. See More

Tuvia Tuvia's Experience

it is a cross platform suite for mac, windows, linux. it is also free and does not lack in features. See More

Top Pro

Export to PDF

Has ability to export to PDF, epub, and many other formats. See More

Top Con

Needs a lot of system resources

It's a bit fat office package that needs a lot of drive space and system memory. See More

CaringNabia's Experience

Your cons are mostly rubbish. You sound like you get a commission for recommending Only Office which I've never heard of (IT engineer) See More

Top Pro

Comprehensive suite of applications

LibreOffice includes applications for word-processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and database management. See More

Top Con

Not fully compatible to MSOffice

It's not fully compatible to MSOffice and often breaks documents. See More

PowerfulPilumnus's Experience

Top Pro

High compatibility with MS Office

Possible to use in corporations. See More

Top Con

Documentation is out of date

Good luck turning off autocorrect, because the place that the documentation says that option is doesn't exist. See More

WonderfulYeongdeungHalmang's Experience

My daily driver for some years. It just work! Don't see any reason to use MSO See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

All major operating systems are supported, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux (Arch, Fedora, Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu, Suse). See More

Top Con

Libreoffice base requires Java

If you need to use Base, it requires Java. See More

PreciseLahamu's Experience

Some of the features, like the indentation of bullet points, have bugs. I used to use LibreOffice, and it wasn't the best program. See More

Top Pro

Multilingual

It is available in more than 110 languages. See More

Top Con

Poor desktop integration

Since it is written in java it does not integrate nicely with the operation systems theme, icons or dialogs. See More

Top Pro

The most user-friendly option

To attract new people to FOSS, having an office suite that is as user-friendly as LibreOffice is a must. See More

Top Con

Restricted license

Libreoffice uses a more restrictive license than OpenOffice which makes it almost impossible to backport features to OpenOffice. See More

Top Pro

Portable version

LibreOffice offers a version of the suite that does not require installation. It can be kept on a thumb stick to ensure that you have an office suite on whichever machine you choose to use. See More

Top Con

Does not support MS Office formatting

Most documents created in MS Office look different when opened in LibreOffice. See More

Top Pro

Encryption support

LibreOffice allows encrypting and password-locking files. See More

Top Con

Won't work with themes

It does not work with custom themes due all the different wrappers involved. See More

Top Pro

Good Zotero integration

LibreOffice works very well with Zotero. The integration of the Zotero plugin in LibreOffice is a breeze, citing while writing and generating the bibliography is just a click. Also good since you need to coop in an (MS) world: Libreoffice and Zotero cooperate very well to make sure your refs survive a "Save as" from one file format to another (e.g. docx to odt or the other way around). Basic (open and free!) tools is your in the market for this... See More

Top Con

Ugly interface

Ungly interface compared to others office solutions, like WPS office. See More

Top Pro

Continued development and maintenance

Top Con

Does not run as stable as onlyoffice

It runs fine until it crashes. Users have experienced multiple crashes when using the cursor to select text in writer, running in Kubuntu 18.04. See More

Top Pro

Font embedding support

Font embedding ensures that the document will display correctly whether or not the target machine has that specific font installed. See More

Top Con

No Quickstart

Quickstart was removed from the Linux application. Now every time you open a file it will take at least 2,5 seconds to open. See More

Top Pro

LibreOffice can take from OpenOffice, but not the other way around

Due to licensing each office suite uses, only a one-way transfer of code is possible, offering more long-term potential for LibreOffice over OpenOffice. See More

Top Con

Ribbon is experimental

Top Pro

Lots of extensions and dictionaries

Has many extensions that can add aditional features to LibreOffice. See More

Top Con

Doesn't respect custom locale settings from OS

Top Pro

Great presentation screen when showing slides on an external monitor

Top Con

Track Changes needs to be improved

Collaborating on a single document is difficult. Track Changes makes the document hard to read as both edited and deleted text is displayed, it's not possible to print comments, tracked differences between document versions are sub-optimal and there's no system for accepting/rejecting changes. See More

Top Pro

The de-facto standard

Being able to tell new people that the FOSS community has an actual default office suite matters. It shows that, despite the bewildering number of options, there can be a clear winner. See More

Top Con

Master slide management in Impress not up to mark

As of version 6, the master slide management is not as good as PowerPoint in Windows. See More

Top Pro

Presentations can have 3D models embeded within them

Impress supports 3D models in gITF format. See More

Top Con

Master slide management in impress not up to mark

As of version 6, the master slide management is not as good as Powerpoint in Windows. See More

Top Pro

Is either preinstalled on distros, or available through official repositories

Distros like Fedora, Salix, etc.. come with LibreOffice preinstalled. If you're running another distro, there's almost certainly an official repository available to install LibreOffice in the easiest way possible. See More

Top Con

Very buggy and definitely not user-friendly

Top Pro

Multiple themes

Many icon themes available to customise the look and get consistent look with the OS. See More

Top Pro

Ribbon design

Since 5.3, LibreOffice offers a Ribbon design view (similar to Microsoft Office) (check here). See More

Google Drive

Top Pro

Real-time file sharing & collaborative editing

Google account holders and non-holders can be set to access and/or collaborate on files/folders in real-time. Additionally, you can find files you've shared not only by filename but by person you've shared the files with. See More

Top Con

Not a lot of advanced functionality compared to alternatives

It doesn't support mail merge, premade templates, and so on as these are shortcoming of being built on web. See More

GenuineChronos's Experience

If you have simple needs that don't require too much of the program, this is great. I can go to any computer or device and access all the files I need See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux; Android; iOS

Cloud Storage:Yes

Free storage size:15 GB

Top Pro

All your files are automatically synced between every device you use

No matter the device you use - whether it be a different computer, a tablet, or a phone - Google Drive has the ability to sync automatically between many different operating systems, ensuring you have access to your documents anywhere you want. See More

Top Con

No Linux desktop app

Google Drive on Linux is accessible only via web. See More

CheerfulPamola's Experience

I recommend this, because it has all the tools necessary to do your things See More

Top Pro

Simple

Google Drive offers only basic functionality for each of its office components and as such is easy to use. See More

Top Con

Data privacy not guaranteed

Data privacy is widely known as one of Google's weaknesses. Data shared through Google is most likely matched up with the user's profile inside other Alphabet inc. subsidiaries, and, due to the business model, used commercially. See More

Top Pro

No installation required

Top Con

Unusable for business in the EU

Cloud applications are mostly incompatible with the EU general data protection regulation. See More

Top Pro

Can be downloaded for offline use

Top Con

Your data (files, document, images...) is probably not stored in the country of your choice

There is no way to know and even less to choose where your data is stored, and where it is backed up. So it is possible that all your information is accessible to the NSA, even if you are not a US citizen. See More

Top Pro

Extended functionality via apps

Third party Drive applications running in Chrome can add functionality such as image/video editing, project management, flowchart creation, etc. See More

Top Con

Terms and Conditions allow Google to own anything on Google Drive

They can create derivative works, they can perform it, they can modify it, and they can publish it at will. There are many other specific rights they take over your product. Read the Terms carefully and compare with ANY others. See More

Top Pro

Mobile apps are fast/great

Top Con

No WebDAV, FTP or SFTP

It supports none of these common protocols used for access to network storage, which severely limits OS integration. You are forced to use the browser or a standalone client, which isn't possible on all systems. See More

Top Pro

Password protection not necessary

When sharing, simply use the targeted person's e-mail to share a folder with, and that person will be granted access. Alternatively, you can choose to share by using a link, which you can publish for all to access. See More

Top Con

No official client for Linux

Google as of yet has a client for Linux, leaving many who use the service forced to use third party apps or the webpage. See More

Top Pro

15GB of free storage

This space is shared across Drive, Gmail & Picasa. See More

Top Con

Can’t password protect publicly shared folders

Top Pro

Built-in office suite

Includes tools for writing, presentations and spreadsheets. See More

Top Pro

15GB free

This space is shared across Drive, Gmail & Google Photos. See More

Top Pro

Integrates with other Google services

For example, you can use search to search through both Drive and Gmail. See More

Top Pro

Revision control

By clicking Ctrl + Alt + G in Windows or Command + Alt + Shift + G is OS X you can access previous version of the file. See More

Top Pro

File sharing & collaborative editing

Google account holders and non-holders can be set to access and/or collaborate on files/folders in real-time. Additionally, you can find files you've shared not only by filename but by person you've shared the files with. See More

Top Pro

Can translate text from within a document

Top Pro

Mobile integration

You can work from any device, especially mobile. See More

Top Pro

Cheap

$1.99 per 100GB, for up to 16TB. See More

Top Pro

Save files to drive directly from Gmail

Drive lets you save any file from your email. See More

Top Pro

Indexes images

You can search images by object, place, or face when they've been added to your google photos collection. Google Assistant also helps you find screenshots that could be archived, images that aren't in the correct orientation and pictures that would work well as animations or albums. See More

Top Pro

Cheap for extra storage

$1.99 per 100GB, for up to 16TB. See More

LaTeX

Top Pro

Lets you focus on the content

LaTeX handles the design so you can focus on the content See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

LaTeX is not what you'd consider easy to use, and while there's plenty of documentation out there, much of it is rather opaque unless you're a seasoned TeXnician. See More

William E.'s Experience

I have used TeX since I was in college a decade ago. I write probably 90% of my correspondence in it including letters, novels, short stories, and anything else that needs high-quality typesetting. I've used it on every major OS and that has been the biggest draw aside from its output quality. The learning curve is steep but rewarding especially if you work with large documents (I love maintaining my novels' manuscripts in LaTeX). By using XeLaTeX, you can write in any Unicode script and with any TrueType or OpenType font. I hold LaTeX in very high regard especially with the AUCTeX editing environment that runs in GNU Emacs. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

Word processing:Yes

Spreadsheets:Yes

Presentations:Yes (Beamer package)

Top Pro

High-quality typesetting by default

There's a reason that scholarly journals often require the use of LaTeX for articles printed in their pages, and it's because the quality of the output is that good. Universities often require, or at least encourage, the use of LaTeX for graduate theses and dissertations for this same reason. See More

Top Con

Single-threaded design

LaTeX is single-threaded by design, since it must necessarily work sequentially to produce each page as it is laid out by the typesetting engine. This makes it dependent on the power of just one individual core in your multi-core computer setup and so migrating to a machine with more cores won't necessarily make your LaTeX documents build faster. See More

Sebastian Wilke's Experience

LaTeX generates great looking documents for me since 14 years. I can focus on the content and LaTeX does almost everything right without having to micromanage typography. The learning curve is steep but even my little sister has done it. If LaTeX-code is too complicated, LaTeX can serve as a backend for simpler languages like Markdown. See More

Top Pro

Free open source software

Licensed under the LaTeX Project Public License See More

Top Con

Not a what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor

LaTeX uses the paradigm what-you-see-is-what-you-mean instead. See More

Top Pro

Editor-independent

You can edit LaTeX sources in any text editor. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Works on every major OS and gives exactly the same quality output everywhere you go. LaTeX on macOS, Windows, Linux, BSD, and even Mac OS 9 has exactly the same output for a given set of sources. See More

Top Pro

Effortless math input

The whole reason that TeX -- and, by extension, LaTeX -- exists is to give people an easy way (well, for some value of "easy") to produce high-quality documents with properly laid out mathematical expressions and text in them. As long as you know the language (or have a reference sheet handy), you can include mathematical expressions in your document with little to no extra effort needed on your part. See More

Office 365

Top Pro

Allows for real-time collaboration

Multiple people can work on the same document at the same time. See More

Top Con

Cloud dependent

Does not edit local files, they have to be synced first. See More

Specs

Platforms:Webapp; iOS; Android

Word processing:Yes

Spreadsheets:Yes

Presentations:Yes

Top Pro

No installation required

Office 365 is an online program, and as such there is no need to download anything. This is especially useful for computers which have limited storage, such as tablets or low end computers. See More

Top Con

Expensive

$35/user/mo. See More

Top Pro

Easy to transition from MS Office

Office 365 is laid out the same way with a similar ribbon interface that will be instantly comfortable to long-time Microsoft Office users. See More

Top Con

It's Microsoft office

They were asking for alternatives to Microsoft Office. See More

Top Pro

Excellent integration and compatibility with MS Office desktop applications

Top Con

Has only a fraction of Microsoft Office functionality

Office 365 is not a complete replacement for Microsoft Office. The most advanced functionality still can only be found on the desktop. See More

Top Pro

Speech to text dictation

Linux never got it together See More

Top Con

Dependant on having an Internet connection

Top Con

Proprietary

Uses proprietary software. See More

Top Con

Unusable for business in the EU

Cloud applications are mostly incompatible with the EU general data protection regulation. See More

ONLYOFFICE

Top Pro

Free and open source

Top Con

Web app

It is a text editor that is running in a browser window, how can you trust this? Not to mention that it needs a lot more system resources than native apps. See More

Specs

Platforms:Web-based (Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Android-clients)

Word processing:Yes

Spreadsheets:Yes

Presentations:Yes

Top Pro

Available for Windows, Linux, and Mac

Top Pro

Available for Windows, Linux, MacOS, iOS, and Android

ONLYOFFICE offers desktop applications for Linux, Windows, and MacOS that can be connected to the web-based solution for document sharing and collaboration. See More

Top Pro

High MS Office compatibility

Top Pro

Collaboration capabilities

Top Pro

Integration with Nextcloud

Easy integration with Nextcloud for collaborative work. See More

Top Pro

Can be used as a web app

ONLYOFFICE offers a web-based office suite that can be deployed on your own server using various deployment options, including Docker script and virtual machines with the software pre-installed. See More

Top Pro

Has a portable version

ONLYOFFICE portable works on almost every Linux distribution. See More

Top Pro

Support for add-ons (plugins)

Top Pro

Advanced work with math equations

Apache OpenOffice

Top Con

Dead project

The project looks dead. They can't close even serious security vulnerabilities. You might want to use Libreoffice instead. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Licensed under Apache License. See More

PeterZ's Experience

The original openoffice See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; Linux; Android; WP

Word processing:Yes

Spreadsheets:Yes

Presentations:Yes

Top Con

Some big files (XLS) are hardly loaded or failing in error

Top Pro

Comprehensive suite of applications

Apache OpenOffice includes applications for word-processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and database management. See More

Top Con

Documentation is lacking

OpenOffice documentation is incomplete and language is highly technical. See More

Top Pro

Multilingual

OpenOffice is available in 170+ languages. See More

Top Pro

Full compatibility with Microsoft

Fully compatible with Microsoft formats - from the oldest to the latest. See More

Top Pro

No CopyLeft

Unlike LibreOffice, its Grandfather OpenOffice is real open software for anyome. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

OpenOffice is available on Windows, Mac OS, and *nix systems. See More

Evolution

Top Con

Outlook alternative only

Top Pro

Supports exchange servers

Evolution is one of the few Linux desktop e-mail clients that's supports exchange servers. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux

Top Con

Can't choose different settings for each mail account

Settings have to applied to all mail accounts. See More

Top Pro

Manages contacts, tasks, calendar and memos as well

Top Con

Only available on Linux

If you have to switch to another platform for whatever reason, you will need to search for a different email client. See More

Top Con

Poor integration in any non-GNOME desktop

It is written with GNOME in mind. See More

Top Con

RAM heavy

Very heavy on RAM usage. See More

Top Con

Limited configuration options

Cannot format date as preferred. See More

Top Con

Can be wobbly with EWS

Don't be surprised if you have to reboot it a couple of times during a working day, because error messages are piling up (e.g. connection lost, can't sync, can't store appointment, read only). Then again, is this Evolution, or what it connects to? And since such an occasional reboot is dwarfed by the fact that MS365 seems to make full IMAP/ SMTP access (close to) impossible (nice meeting invite, THX, but when is it?), just reboot and get some work done... See More

Top Con

No configuration messages

Although base functions like bullets, numbered, or pre-formatted text are possible, you can't select or set the font for your messages. Not even serif or sans serif. Which is a bit spartan. See More

OfficeSuite

WPS Office

Top Con

Chinese software

Might be a security problem for some end-users. See More

Top Pro

Excellent Microsoft Office compatibility

SharpGibil's Experience

Great support, some printing problems with Microsoft Fonts under Linux See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; Linux; IOS; Android

Word processing:Yes

Spreadsheets:Yes

Presentations:Yes

Top Con

Has ads

Ads appear as popups and in the introduction page and in system notifications if you dont use a firewall. See More

Top Pro

Good free version

RespectableShimegi's Experience

Microsoft Office's Word, has a capability called "Outline". This suite fully implements this. Some other office suites may claim that they have this, but really it is an [extremely] limited form of it. BTW, for the free version an unobtrusive small ad pops up no more than once a day. See More

Top Con

No support for MP4 files

To use a MP4 video file you have to convert it to a supported format as WMV. See More

Top Pro

Multilingual

WPS Office is available in more than 40 languages. See More

OpinionatedNanaya's Experience

Better than MS Office. That's all. See More

Top Con

Installing can be a hassle

A .deb file is offered, but missing fonts can be a problem. See More

Top Pro

Free version

WPS comes in three flavors: Free, Standard ($49.95) and Professional ($69.95). See More

kenso's Experience

GUI closest to Office See More

Top Con

No unicode support

Top Pro

View documents side by side

You can split the window allowing to view different parts of the same document, or open two documents for comparison, also imitating Microsoft Word. See More

ThoroughBenthesikyme's Experience

Found WPS adequate then tried to migrate to LibreOffice but the thing had horrible MS Office compatibility. After some months trying to go the LO way I gave up and felt so relieved to go back to WPS. It lacks somethings - especially Powerpoint Morph transitions - but for the most part it just works. See More

Top Con

Not open source

The source code isn't available for studying and tinkering with. See More

Top Pro

Tabbed interface

Instead of open up a new instance of the program for each document, WPS opens each document as a separate tab, allowing for easy switching between them. See More

ArtisticLahamu's Experience

All in One system, Word Procesor, Spreadsheet and Presentations - All in one Application See More

Top Con

Lacks ODF support

WPS Office does not support importing or exporting OpenDocument Format, the default file format of LibreOffice and OpenOffice. See More

Top Pro

PDF viewer

Has support to view PDF files. See More

Top Con

No HiDPI support

Problematic with 4K screens. See More

Top Pro

Encryption support

WPS allows you to encrypt and password-lock files. See More

Top Con

Only the basic office tools

WPS has software for word-processing, spreadsheets and presentations. No tools for database management, note-taking, graphics, etc. See More

Top Pro

Ribbon-like UI

WPS is the only Linux office suit to offer a Ribbon-like UI for better ease of use. Although, if you wish to keep using a classic drop-down menu style UI, you can. See More

Top Con

Default font styles are not pretty

Top Pro

Cross-platform desktop and mobile

Available on Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. See More

Top Con

The UI of the opening screen looks nice, but the actual documents' UIs are not user-friendly

Top Pro

Integrated backups

WPS will automatically save your document over time to prevent data loss. See More

Top Con

Presentation lack Powerpoint morph transitions

This is a really big deal if MSO compatitibility is important to you. See More

Top Pro

It is not owned by Microsoft

You can support linux & open source and leave Microsoft because of their greed and instability with updates etc. See More

Top Con

No Macro functionality

Top Pro

Change pdf documents to word

Top Con

Single user installation

Does not install for all users. See More

Top Pro

Pdf viewer

Has support to view pdf files. See More

Top Pro

Smooth integration with many different cloud services at the same time

WPS integrates with multiple cloud service's at once such as Dropbox, One Drive, Google Drive and more. See More

Top Pro

Clean edition when sharing your document

Text modifications can be verified at the margins, not mixed with the text, imitating Microsoft Word. On the other side, LibreOffice/OpenOffice don't have this very useful feature. See More

Top Pro

Available on snapcraft and flathub too

Scribus

Top Pro

Free and open source solution

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD, Unix

Exports:PDF, ePub 2 (via plugin)

License:LGPL-2.1-only

LyX

Evince

Adobe InCopy

Top Con

Word processor only

Calligra Suite

Specs

Platforms:Webapp; Windows; OSX; Linux; iOS; Android

Word processing:Yes

Spreadsheets:Yes

Presentations:Yes

SoftMaker Office

Top Con

Free version needs registration

The free version needs to be registered with a valid email adress. See More

Top Pro

EPUB export included

You can create high-quality e-books in EPUB format easily. See More

EarnestWeneg's Experience

My experience has been great with the word processor Text Maker and the Presentation program. I have not used the speadsheet much. The word processor can handle complicated formatting from Word and not mess it up. This is important to me as I use Linux as my main OS and do a lot of academic proofreading. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; macOS, Linux, Android

Word processing:Yes

Spreadsheets:Yes

Presentations:Yes

Top Con

The regular paid version is not free for students as it is for teachers

For students to use it, there needs to be a free student license for the regular (with . docx support) version. See More

Top Pro

Free technical support

If you face any issues, you can always use the technical support by developer SoftMaker, it's free. See More

Top Con

Breaks icon themes

On Linux it breaks all icon themes by modifying them. See More

Top Pro

Multi-platform

Works on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. See More

Top Con

No VBA support

As Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is proprietary software used in MS Office. See More

Top Pro

Great interoperability with Microsoft Office

SoftMaker office can open doc(x), xls(x), and ppt(x) files without messing up formatting. See More

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