Description
LibreOffice is a free, open-source office suite with a word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet (Calc), presentations (Impress), drawing (Draw), a database (Base) and a formula editor (Math). It replaces Microsoft Office or Google Docs without a subscription, an account or a cloud owned by someone else.
It started in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org. The Document Foundation, a charitable foundation under German law, runs the project with thousands of volunteers and developers paid by partner companies, and it is funded by donations. The code is under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. LibreOffice runs on Windows, macOS and Linux in 120 languages; in November 2026 the current versions were 26.8.2 and, for users who prefer fewer changes, 26.2.7.
Its default format is OpenDocument (ODF), an ISO standard, and it opens and saves Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. Public bodies use it to depend less on Microsoft: the German state of Schleswig-Holstein has been moving its roughly 30,000 workstations to LibreOffice, aiming to drop Microsoft Office on 70 % of them by October 2025. The foundation doesn’t run an online version. Web editing and full mobile apps come from partners such as Collabora, which sells Collabora Online, and the foundation advises companies to buy support from them.
Strengths
- Free for everyone, with no subscription, account or advertising, and it works offline on Windows, macOS and Linux.
- Saves in ODF, an open ISO standard, so documents stay readable without depending on one vendor.
- Developed in the open by a non-profit foundation and a large community, with a new major version twice a year.
Weaknesses
- Complex Word, Excel or PowerPoint files can lose part of their layout when they are opened or saved in LibreOffice.
- There is no real-time co-editing in the browser: that needs Collabora Online or another hosted service.
- The foundation offers no editing app for phones and tablets, only a viewer for Android and a remote control for presentations.
Who it is for
Households, schools, associations and small offices that write letters, spreadsheets and slides and want to stop paying for an office suite. Teams that edit the same files together every day will need an online service as well.