Microsoft 365 keeps creeping up. The Personal plan now lists at $99.99 per year after the Copilot integration bump, the Family tier sits at $129.99 for up to six people, and the AI features that used to be the headline are pushed harder than the productivity apps they wrap. For households who already live in Google or have moved most of their work to the browser, the bundle is no longer the obvious default.
These seven Microsoft 365 alternatives cover the same surface area, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, mail, calendar, and cloud storage, without the annual subscription or the Copilot upsell on every screen.
Quick comparison
| Suite | Best for | Free plan | Starting price/mo | Standout feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Workspace | Cross-device collaboration | Yes (with Gmail) | $6 per user | Real-time co-editing across web and mobile |
| WPS Office | Most familiar Office UI | Yes (ad-supported) | $35.99/year | Identical ribbon to Word, Excel, PowerPoint |
| OnlyOffice | Open-source Office fidelity | Yes (web Personal) | Self-host free | Same engine on mobile, desktop, and server |
| Collabora Office | LibreOffice on mobile | Yes | Free | Native ODF plus DOCX round-trip |
| OfficeSuite | All-in-one with PDF tools | Yes (ad-supported) | $39.99/year | Full PDF editor and signing in the same app |
| Zoho Workplace | Business suite with mail and chat | Free for 5 users | $3 per user | Standard plus Mail, Cliq, Connect, and CRM hooks |
| Proton | Privacy-first Mail, Drive, Calendar, Docs | Yes (1 GB) | $4.99 | Encrypted Drive and Docs with no server-side index |
Why people leave Microsoft 365
The Copilot-driven price increase. The 2024 reset added Copilot to Personal and Family and pulled the price up by a third for users who never asked for AI in Word. Customers who already had Copilot Pro on the side felt double-billed; everyone else watched a monthly notification bar appear in apps they had paid for years.
Sign-in and OneDrive friction. The mobile apps push the Microsoft account modal on first launch, push OneDrive as the default save location, and surface a separate sign-in for Outlook even when the same account is already authenticated in Word. Users on Android describe the flow as three logins to open one document.
Heavy install footprint. A clean Office install is over 1.5 GB on Windows and over 200 MB per mobile app. On entry-level Android phones with 32 GB storage, that is noticeable.
Features that move behind subscription tiers. Designer in PowerPoint, advanced PivotTables in Excel, and full editing on tablets larger than 10.1 inches all require a paid plan. Users who only needed view-and-light-edit on mobile question why the free tier keeps shrinking.
The alternatives
Google Workspace — best overall replacement
Google Workspace is the cleanest one-for-one swap. Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Calendar, Meet, and Gmail cover everything Microsoft 365 ships, the mobile apps are first-class on Android, and the free personal tier with a regular Gmail account already includes 15 GB of storage and all the editors.
The collaboration model is what Microsoft has been chasing for a decade. Multiple cursors, comment threads, version history, and link sharing work the same way on desktop, web, and mobile. For households with kids on Chromebooks or anyone who already uses Gmail as primary mail, this is the default move.
Where it falls short: Heavy Word documents with custom styles, tracked changes, and SmartArt do not round-trip cleanly. Power-user Excel models with macros or complex pivot tables lose fidelity. Offline mode on mobile is workable but slower than Office offline.
Pricing:
- Free: 15 GB Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Gmail, Calendar.
- Workspace Individual: $9.99/mo for premium Meet and AI features.
- Business Starter: $6 per user/mo with custom domain Gmail and 30 GB.
- vs. Microsoft 365: cheaper for individuals on the free tier, comparable for business.
Migrating from Microsoft 365: Drive imports Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files directly and converts on open. Outlook contacts and calendar export via the standard Microsoft export to ICS and CSV. Mail forwarding from Outlook.com to Gmail takes minutes.
Bottom line: Pick Google Workspace if you want browser-first collaboration and you accept that complex Office files may need cleanup on the way in.
WPS Office — best free option that still feels like Office
WPS Office is the closest free Microsoft 365 alternative in look and feel. The ribbon layout, the shortcuts, the file dialogs, all of it sits where Word, Excel, and PowerPoint put them. Round-trip fidelity on .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx files is the strongest of any free suite we tried, including complex multi-section reports and pivot-heavy spreadsheets.
The app bundles a working PDF editor, scan-to-PDF, and a converter that handles .doc, .ppt, and image-to-text without sending files to a server. For users who stop paying Microsoft 365 because they only need the editing, WPS gets you to a finished document with zero learning curve.
Where it falls short: The free tier shows ads in the file browser and after closing documents. WPS Cloud routes through servers operated by Kingsoft in China, so privacy-sensitive users should keep cloud sync off and rely on local files. AI features are gated behind WPS Pro.
Pricing:
- Free: full editor with ads and a daily AI question cap.
- WPS Pro: $35.99/year, ad-free, full AI tools.
- vs. Microsoft 365: significantly cheaper, no AI subscription pressure.
Migrating from Microsoft 365: Open native .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx files without conversion. WPS reads them in place. Cloud users can sync OneDrive folders through the file manager rather than the WPS cloud.
Bottom line: Pick WPS if you want the familiar Office layout for free and you can ignore the ads. Skip it if you cannot keep cloud sync turned off.
OnlyOffice — best open-source Office fidelity
OnlyOffice runs the same document engine on Android, desktop, and self-hosted server, which is rare. The mobile editors handle .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx with the highest format fidelity of any open-source suite, including form fields, comments, and macros.
The combination of an open-source license, a self-hostable server (ONLYOFFICE Docs Community), and free mobile editors makes this the suite for users who want Microsoft 365 features without the data-residency questions. Teams running Nextcloud or ownCloud can plug ONLYOFFICE in as the editor and never touch a Microsoft server.
Where it falls short: The free Personal plan limits cloud document edits per month. The mobile UI is denser than Google’s and has a steeper learning curve. Real-time co-editing on the free tier is capped.
Pricing:
- Free: web Personal plan with 20 connections; mobile app free with a connected ONLYOFFICE Docs instance or DocSpace cloud.
- DocSpace cloud: paid plans for shared workspaces with collaborator caps.
- vs. Microsoft 365: cheaper for self-hosters, comparable for cloud teams.
Migrating from Microsoft 365: Direct .docx, .xlsx, .pptx editing without conversion. Mail and calendar are not part of ONLYOFFICE, so pair it with another mail provider.
Bottom line: Pick ONLYOFFICE if open-source and self-hostable matters more than mail and calendar in the same suite.
Collabora Office — best LibreOffice on mobile
Collabora Office brings the LibreOffice engine to Android with the same .odt, .ods, .odp, and Microsoft format support. It is fully free, fully open-source, and ad-free. No account is required.
For users coming from a desktop LibreOffice setup, the file behavior matches what you already know. Master pages, complex tables, embedded objects, and Calc formulas open and edit on the phone with no fidelity surprises.
Where it falls short: No cloud sync built in; you bring your own files from Drive, Nextcloud, or local storage. The UI feels closer to LibreOffice 7 than to mobile-first apps. Some advanced features (charts, mail merge) are easier on desktop.
Pricing:
- Free for personal use.
- Collabora Online: paid hosted version for businesses.
- vs. Microsoft 365: free, no subscription.
Migrating from Microsoft 365: Open .docx, .xlsx, .pptx natively. Export to ODF or keep editing in Microsoft formats.
Bottom line: Pick Collabora if you already use LibreOffice on desktop and want a matching mobile editor. Skip it if you want polished cloud sync out of the box.
OfficeSuite — best all-in-one with full PDF tools
OfficeSuite from MobiSystems combines document editing with a full PDF editor in the same app. Sign forms, redact pages, merge PDFs, and convert to Word or Excel without leaving the editor. For households who used Microsoft 365 plus a separate PDF tool, this collapses the two.
The cross-platform sync via MobiDrive includes 50 GB on the Family plan, which competes directly with the Microsoft 365 Family OneDrive allocation. The Windows companion is competent and the Android editor is the polished mobile experience in this list.
Where it falls short: The free tier is heavily ad-supported and shows full-screen prompts after document close. Some headline features (advanced PDF, OCR, signature workflow) are gated to Premium.
Pricing:
- Free: ad-supported editor.
- Personal: $39.99/year for one user with 50 GB MobiDrive.
- Family: $59.99/year for six users.
- vs. Microsoft 365: cheaper, includes the PDF editor most people pay extra for.
Migrating from Microsoft 365: Native .docx, .xlsx, .pptx, and PDF editing. Email attachments open in OfficeSuite without conversion.
Bottom line: Pick OfficeSuite if the PDF editing is the feature you keep paying for separately. Skip the free tier; the ads are aggressive.
Zoho Workplace — best business suite with mail and chat
Zoho Workplace is the only entry on the list that matches Microsoft 365’s full business scope: mail with a custom domain, calendar, docs, sheets, slides, video meetings, team chat (Cliq), and an intranet (Connect). For small businesses leaving Microsoft 365 Business Basic or Standard, this is the closest one-to-one swap.
The Standard plan at $3 per user per month is half the price of Microsoft 365 Business Basic and includes more storage. Zia, Zoho’s AI layer, is included rather than billed as a separate Copilot subscription.
Where it falls short: The mobile apps are split across many separate installs (Writer, Sheet, Show, Mail, Cliq) rather than one shared launcher. Power-Excel users find Sheet less capable on macros. Outside India and the US, support response times vary.
Pricing:
- Free: up to 5 users with 5 GB mail and 5 GB Workdrive each.
- Standard: $3 per user/mo with 30 GB mail and 100 GB Workdrive.
- Professional: $6 per user/mo with 100 GB mail and 1 TB Workdrive.
- vs. Microsoft 365: significantly cheaper for small business.
Migrating from Microsoft 365: Zoho’s mail migration tool pulls from Outlook/Exchange. Workdrive imports OneDrive folders directly. Document formats stay native.
Bottom line: Pick Zoho if you are a small business that pays for Microsoft 365 Business Basic mostly for hosted mail and a few editors. Skip it if you have heavy macro-driven Excel workflows.
Proton — best privacy-first replacement
Proton is the suite for users who left Microsoft 365 because of privacy rather than price. Proton Mail, Proton Drive, Proton Calendar, and Proton Docs run on Swiss-jurisdiction servers with zero-access encryption. Proton cannot read your files, your calendar entries, or your mail body.
Proton Docs (released 2024) is the closest privacy-preserving competitor to Microsoft Word in browser and now via the mobile Drive app. Real-time collaboration, comments, and shared docs work without Proton ever seeing the plaintext.
Where it falls short: No native mobile spreadsheet or presentation editor; for Sheets/Slides equivalents, you bring your own (Collabora, ONLYOFFICE) and store the files in Drive. The free tier limits Drive to 1 GB and mail to 1 GB.
Pricing:
- Free: 1 GB Drive, 1 GB Mail, Calendar, Docs.
- Mail Plus: $4.99/mo with 15 GB and custom domain.
- Unlimited: $12.99/mo with 500 GB across Mail, Drive, VPN, Pass.
- vs. Microsoft 365: more expensive on Unlimited, comparable on Mail Plus.
Migrating from Microsoft 365: Proton Easy Switch imports Outlook mail, contacts, and calendar. Drive accepts direct file uploads from OneDrive.
Bottom line: Pick Proton if data residency and zero-access encryption matter. Pair it with Collabora or ONLYOFFICE if you need a full spreadsheet on mobile.
How to choose
- Pick Google Workspace if cross-device collaboration with a family or small team is the daily use case.
- Pick WPS Office if you want the Office layout for free and only need editing.
- Pick OnlyOffice if open-source and self-hosting are non-negotiable.
- Pick Collabora Office if you already run LibreOffice on desktop.
- Pick OfficeSuite if a PDF editor is the feature you keep paying extra for.
- Pick Zoho Workplace if you are a small business mostly paying Microsoft for hosted mail.
- Pick Proton if privacy is the reason you left.
- Stay on Microsoft 365 if your work depends on power-user Excel macros, complex PowerPoint animations, or deep Outlook calendar features that no other suite matches.
FAQ
Is Microsoft 365 worth paying for in 2026? For households who genuinely use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and 1 TB of OneDrive across multiple people, the Family plan at roughly $22 per user per year is competitive. For solo users who mostly edit documents and email, Google Workspace or WPS Office cover the same ground for less or free.
What is the closest free Microsoft 365 alternative? Google Workspace’s free tier with a regular Gmail account is the closest full-suite replacement. WPS Office is the closest in look and feel for users who specifically want the Office ribbon. Both are free.
Can I open Microsoft Word files in these apps? Yes. Google Docs, WPS Office, OnlyOffice, Collabora, OfficeSuite, and Zoho Writer all open .docx natively. Round-trip fidelity is highest in WPS and OnlyOffice; Google Docs is the weakest on complex Word formatting.
Do these alternatives include email and calendar? Google Workspace, Zoho Workplace, and Proton include mail and calendar. WPS, OnlyOffice, Collabora, and OfficeSuite focus on documents only and pair with a separate mail client.
What is the best Microsoft 365 alternative for a small business? Zoho Workplace at $3 per user per month is the closest one-to-one swap for Business Basic. Google Workspace Business Starter at $6 per user is the better fit for businesses that already live in Chrome.
