Microsoft Office has long been the king of the office suite. Commonly used in the business and educational space, Microsoft Office is so ubiquitous that even non-tech people know what it is. Over the years Microsoft has evolved its office suite to include more programs and tools but also changing the way we use it.

The latest version of Microsoft Office, now known as Microsoft 365, has become a subscription service that you can pay for monthly or yearly. The cheapest Microsoft 365 Personal subscription will cost you $9.99 a month for access to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and the rest of the Microsoft suite of software. This is actually a 45% price hike for Microsoft 365, as Microsoft states that new AI integration into all Office apps through Copilot is the reasoning for the increase. This includes what Microsoft calls vibe working, an AI-driven way to help create documents for you.

If you want the classic Office experience, you can still purchase Microsoft Office 2024 and have lifetime offline access to the full office suite, but this version lacks regular feature updates. It also requires a hefty $149.99 fee, and while it's usually on sale, that's a lot to ask for tools that you can easily get for free. The following are some well-loved replacements for what Microsoft 365 charges an arm and a leg for, all of them completely free of charge.

LibreOffice -- The complete all-in-one solution

If you are looking for a complete replacement for the classic Microsoft Office suite experience, you don't have to look much farther than LibreOffice. This free and private office suite has become incredibly popular over the years in part by eschewing the paid and subscription model of popular office suites such as Microsoft Office.

LibreOffice, being open source, also means that anyone can share and modify the program. This allows the LibreOffice community to develop extensions to add new features for even the most niche of needs. The LibreOffice suite can handle all of the most popular file formats including those from Microsoft, making the program incredibly flexible.

The suite offers replacements for the most used elements that are common with Microsoft Office. This includes alternatives for Word (Writer), Excel (Calc), PowerPoint (Impress), and others that are unique to LibreOffice. If you are coming from the Microsoft Office world but don't want to add yet another subscription to your credit card bill, switching over to LibreOffice might be the best and easiest transition you'll make this year.

AbleWord - The Word alternative

One thing I've found over the years of using Microsoft Office is just how little I use all the offerings that Microsoft Office offers me. In school I would use the entire office suite, while in the office I relied on Word and Outlook a great deal, but I'd wager most people simply need a basic word processor so they can write and edit basic text documents

Read More: https://www.bgr.com/2047128/free-apps-replace-microsoft-office-subscription/