The best free alternatives to Microsoft Office in 2026

TL;DR

You almost certainly do not need to pay for Microsoft Office. Microsoft 365 costs $99.99 a year for one person, and free suites do the same everyday work. The best all-round free replacement is LibreOffice, a full desktop suite that opens and saves Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. For collaboration and working from any device, Google Docs is the pick. Microsoft even offers its own free web version. The only real catch is that heavy, complex formatting can shift when moving files between suites, and there is a clean fix for that too.

Somewhere along the way, Microsoft Office stopped being a program you buy and became a subscription you rent. Microsoft 365 is now $99.99 a year for one person, or $129.99 for a family of up to six, and it renews forever. There is still a one-time-purchase version, Office 2024, but it starts at $179.99. For a lot of people, that is real money for writing the occasional document and keeping a household spreadsheet. The good news: you do not have to pay any of it.

Do you actually need to pay for Microsoft Office?

No. Be honest about what you actually do. If your life is writing documents, building spreadsheets, making the odd slide deck and opening files other people send you, every one of those jobs is covered, for free, by the options below. The paid subscription mainly earns its keep for heavy business users who need the full desktop apps, deep Excel features, and the Copilot AI extras. For everyone else, it is a habit, not a necessity.

Best free all-rounder: LibreOffice

If you want the closest thing to a full copy of Office installed on your computer, LibreOffice is the answer, and it is completely free.

It is open-source, maintained by the non-profit Document Foundation, and it is a genuinely complete suite: Writer for documents, Calc for spreadsheets, Impress for slideshows, plus Draw, a database tool and an equation editor. Crucially, it opens and saves Microsoft's formats, the .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files everyone else uses, so you can trade files with Office users without anyone noticing. It runs offline on Windows, macOS and Linux, it does not nag you to subscribe, and it does not send your documents to anyone's cloud. For most people who just want Office without the bill, this is the one.

Best for collaboration: Google Docs

If you work with other people or across several devices, Google Docs (with Sheets and Slides) is the better fit, and it is also free.

All it needs is a Google account, after which everything runs in your browser with nothing to install. Its real strength is live collaboration: several people editing the same document at once, comments, and a full history you can roll back, all of which made it the default for students and teams. It opens and exports Office files too. The trade-off is that it is cloud-first, so you are trusting Google with your documents and you want a connection to get the most from it.

The free option nobody mentions: Microsoft's own

Here is the one that surprises people. Microsoft gives away a free web version of Office. Sign in with a free Microsoft account at office.com and you get browser-based Word, Excel and PowerPoint, plus 5GB of OneDrive storage, at no cost.

Because it is Microsoft's own software, file compatibility is perfect, there is no risk of formatting drifting. The catch is that the free web apps are a stripped-back version of the full desktop programs, missing the more advanced features, and they need an internet connection. But for light, everyday use with flawless Office fidelity, it is hard to beat, and almost nobody realises it exists.

Best for perfect Office compatibility offline: OnlyOffice

If you need an installed, offline suite but also need documents to look exactly right when they go back to an Office user, OnlyOffice is the specialist pick. It is free, its interface deliberately mirrors Microsoft's ribbon so it feels familiar, and it has the best Microsoft-format fidelity of any alternative. A similar option, WPS Office, also mimics Office closely and has strong mobile apps, though its free version is ad-supported.

What about OpenOffice?

Skip it, and it is worth saying plainly, because it is the name a lot of people still remember. Apache OpenOffice was the original open-source office suite, but LibreOffice split off from it back in 2010 and has long since left it behind. OpenOffice's development has largely stalled since the mid-2010s, which raises real questions about timely security fixes, and it carries one dealbreaking flaw: it can open Microsoft's .docx files but cannot save them, only export to older formats. In a world that runs on .docx, that alone rules it out. Whatever you wanted OpenOffice for, LibreOffice does better and more safely.

Best for Apple users: iWork

If everything you own is made by Apple, you already have a free office suite: iWork, meaning Pages, Numbers and Keynote. It comes free on every Mac, iPhone and iPad, it is polished, and it can open and export Office files. Non-Apple users can even reach it through the iCloud website. The limitation is the obvious one: it is happiest inside Apple's world.

At a glance

Suite	Best for	Type	Cost
LibreOffice	Full offline Office replacement	Desktop (Win/Mac/Linux)	Free
Google Docs	Collaboration, any device	Browser	Free
Microsoft 365 web	Perfect fidelity, light use	Browser	Free
OnlyOffice	Offline, exact Office formatting	Desktop	Free
Apple iWork	Apple-only households	Apple + iCloud web	Free
Microsoft 365 (paid)	Heavy business users	Desktop + cloud	$99.99/yr

The one real catch: file compatibility

The honest caveat with any Office alternative is formatting. For plain documents and normal spreadsheets, files move between suites perfectly. But a heavily designed document, a spreadsheet stuffed with macros, or a slide deck full of custom animations can shift or break when opened in a different program. If you regularly exchange complex files with Microsoft Office users, lean on the two options with the best fidelity: Microsoft's own free web apps, or OnlyOffice. For your own documents that stay in one suite, any of these is fine.

So which should you pick?

Want a full, free Office installed on your PC? LibreOffice.
Collaborate or hop between devices? Google Docs.
Need files to look exactly right for Office users? Microsoft's free web apps, or OnlyOffice.
All-Apple household? iWork, which you already have.

Whichever you choose, the takeaway is simple: the $100-a-year subscription is optional, and for most people it always was. For more tools worth using and not paying for, see the Software section, and our pick of the best free password managers.