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The best free office software makes it simple and easy to use office documents and spreadsheets without having to pay for a subscription.
Best free office software of 2024: Quick menu
For most users, Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Microsoft Office and Office 365) remains the original and best office suite. Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint remain key office apps.
However, over the years other companies have released rival office suites to help with productivity, some of which is paid-for and some of which is free - sometimes with the same company offering both.
All of these alternatives to Microsoft Office offer a similar range of software applications, mainly based on creating and editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
However, while most offer the ability to work with traditional Microsoft Office documents, do be aware that not all will preserve formatting when exporting to or from Microsoft Office, which can be a problem when sending documents between different programs.
Even still, for home users and new businesses, the idea of being able to create, edit, manage, and organize office documents without incurring immediate subscription costs can be very welcome.
Here below we'll list the best free office software apps currently available.
Google Workspace : Collaboration + productivity apps
There are many different office software suites but Google Workspace formerly known as G Suite remains the original cloud one and one of the best business office suites, offering a huge range of features and functionality that rivals can't match.
Try it free for 14 days.
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Our expert review:
Today's Best DealsThought you had to pay to use Microsoft Office? Yes, you do, if you want all the full features. But noting the threat from free rivals, especially Google Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) Microsoft has created its own set of free Microsoft Office online apps.
Microsoft 365 Basic looks and works just like its desktop equivalent, and although advanced tools like pivot tables aren't available, though they aren’t offered by Google either.
If you generally use Microsoft document formats, Microsoft 365 Basic is a brilliant choice. Unlike Google's free office suite, it doesn't need to convert your files before you can work on them, and you can share them easily through your Microsoft OneDrive account. Just log in using your Microsoft account (the same one you use to log into Windows 10) and you're ready to go.
There's a version of Microsoft 365 Basic for Chrome, plus mobile editions for iOS and Android.
Read our full Microsoft 365 review.
Our expert review:
Today's Best Deals Mail PremiumZoho Workplace is very good in its own right. It's certainly closer to a desktop office package, and it's strong enough to have attracted businesses like the BBC and Nike as regular users.
Zoho's new-look word processor (which ditches the classic Word-style interface in favor of a formatting sidebar) is very well-presented and capable of producing professional-looking docs, and it has a sterling spreadsheet and reasonable presentation package alongside it.
They're just the tip of the iceberg, however – Zoho Workplace includes a powerful site creation tool, a file management solution and many collaborative tools. Some are on the simplistic side, so they'll likely not replace anything you might already have in place, but if you're starting out as a small business Zoho is probably a good jumping-off point.
If you want to signup for the free version of Zoho Workplace you need to search the pricing page for the "Forever free" plan. However, there's no one-click set up or access, and instead you have to go through a sign up process that begins by providing details of an existing business domain.
Our expert review:
Today's Best DealsIf you own a Samsung phone, you might already be familiar with the mobile version of Polaris Office. This cross-platform free office software is available for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS, and comes pre-installed on some Samsung handsets. It’s compatible with all Microsoft document formats, and offers a slick ribbon-based interface with some basic customization options.
Take care if you choose to install Windows version, you’ll see various additional pieces of bundled software, which could potentially include a browser extension from McAfee called WebAdvisor, a market research tool called PremierOpinion, and antivirus software. You can decline all of these – just keep an eye out.
You’ll then need to sign in with Facebook or Google, or create an account. This is necessary because Polaris Office is a cloud-based service. Your free Polaris account comes with 60MB monthly data transfer, 1GB cloud storage, and can be used across three devices (one desktop and two mobile). If that’s not enough space, you can connect Polaris Office to Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft OneDrive and Amazon Cloud Drive – or save work locally to your device.
Upgrading to a premium Polaris account gives you access to extra features including a PDF editor, removes ads, and the ability to search within a document.
Everything you could want from an office suite, fully compatible with Microsoft formats and totally free to use – even commercially
Our expert review:
Today's Best DealsLibreOffice is compatible with all Microsoft document formats, and has almost every feature you'll find in the latest versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel.
The suite contains six programs to cover every common office task: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. The last three are tools you won't find in many other free office suites, and are designed for vector diagrams, mathematical functions and databases, respectively. The latter is particularly useful; free alternatives to Microsoft Access are hard to find.
LibreOffice is an open source project maintained by a huge and enthusiastic community of volunteers constantly working to improve stability and add new features. There's a great selection of extensions and templates to make it even more flexible, and it's free for businesses as well as home users.
LibreOffice is a fork of Apache OpenOffice, and the two are extremely similar, but LibreOffice is the better overall product and properly supports file conversion that preserves existing formatting - so your Word .doc files should look the same in LibreOffice as they do in Word, and vice versa.
LibreOffice is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, but there are no official mobile versions available except for a document viewer for Android. It has some editing features, but they're experimental and we wouldn't advise relying on them.
Read our full LibreOffice review.
