Free alternatives for microsoft excel

And, while Microsoft Excel has been the go-to spreadsheet for years, there are other free alternatives you might like more. Thankfully, there are plenty of free alternatives available, many of which are just as powerful and easy to use. What to Look for in a Microsoft Excel Alternative Free spreadsheet software should be just as powerful as paid options and come stocked with all the tools you need to spreadsheet your heart out.

Google Sheets Free has become as well-known as Microsoft Excel. Google users already have access to this app, plus its ability to integrate with other Google products like Google Forms and Google Data Studio makes it easier for you to stay on track while working on your projects.

The software is easy to navigate and use with its clean and minimal appearance. Support for simultaneous collaboration is great for teams, and it even has a built-in group chat area wherein everyone on your team can talk about the document as they work. You can comment on cells and set specific user permissions for individual cells or the entire document. A robust Sheets Help section is also ready to help in case you have questions.

Sheets has tons of built-in formulas, as well as plenty of pivot tables, conditional formatting options, and templates that can save you time and effort. It contains robust customizable charts and graphs for visualizing your data, which update dynamically as your data does. Google Sheets also stores granular documentation of changes and supports versioning.

The app also supports real-time collaboration, showing you real-time edits, and lets you save and export documents as Excel files if you need to work with anyone using Excel. You can easily add charts, tables, and other content as needed, or choose a template with which to get started.

The kinds of features you need from your spreadsheet application can vary, though, with many users never coming close to needing the robust features of Microsoft Office's Excel.

For those of us who aren't accountants crunching numbers every day, Microsoft Office, which includes Excel, can be prohibitively expensive. If you don't have that kind of money, or don't need all of Excel's features, or simply want to save cash, there are plenty of viable alternatives to Microsoft Excel that are available in the cloud and installed on your computer.

Best of all, these alternatives to Excel are free. Google Sheets is Google's cloud-based answer to Microsoft Excel, and it's capable of doing the vast majority of what the average Excel user needs.

It's also hosted in the cloud and runs in a web browser, so it's platform independent and can be run on Windows, macOS, and Linux systems. You never have to worry about losing a single calculation, either--Google Sheets saves everything in Google Drive, making a crashed computer of no concern to your important data.

As with Google's other office tools, Sheets features real-time collaboration that allows multiple users to edit a document at the same time. Users can see the cursor position of other people in the document, see what they're doing as they're doing it, and chat right in the document window.

Advanced features that some Excel users need are missing, though, so if you're an Excel power user, it's a good idea to find out if the features you need are available before migrating. There have also been reported issues of formulas in Excel spreadsheets breaking when they're uploaded to Google Sheets, so be aware that you could run into issues moving.

Not to be outdone by Google, Microsoft has created its own online version of Office, which includes a stripped-down version of Excel that is closer to Google Sheets than to the desktop version of Excel.

It's not to say that Excel Online is unusable or not worth your time--it's definitely more like Excel than Google Sheets, so if you prefer a familiar interface, you may want to opt for Excel Online instead of going the Google route.

Recommending Excel Online to the average Excel user is fine--it does all the basics of the desktop version while adding automatic cloud saving in OneDrive, and it has real-time collaboration tools that Office and Office lack. Excel power users may want to steer clear of Excel Online. Other key features of this application are:. Used by millions of users from all around the world, and being in the industry for a while now, ThinkFree is a top star in many best spreadsheets applications lists.

This is open-source software available for executing a lot of functions collaboratively. The application is available on Windows. This is another very amazing option that looks very much similar to MS Office in looks.

The application is quite popular for its quick loading and simple to use interface. The application is very team-friendly and is absolutely hassle-free as compared to other free apps.

Some additional features of this application include:. A very simple to use and easy to edit spreadsheets application available in the market. The application is completely cloud-based and enables you to ease off your spreadsheets organization hassles. You can simply edit and update links and data in your sheets in Sheetgo.

The application is very lite and is used by a ton of different businesses around the world. As the name might be suggesting to you, this software is there to help you better organize your works and plans. This spreadsheets application is available on various operating systems like Windows Mobile, Windows, and Linux.

The software allows you to easily create and design high-quality worksheets. You also get a lot of calculation functions to perform. Key features include:. Airtable is one of the most simple and cleanest interfaces available out there. The application is being used by medium-sized and large-sized businesses from all around the world. The features offered for collaboration and organization is just amazing. Airtable also offers simple mobile-friendly table solutions.

Key features of Airtable include:. A name quite popular with the iOS world, Numbers has a very beautiful and simple interface that is beneficial for all kinds of businesses and users. The collaboration and customization features are pretty amazing in Numbers. You also get to use a lot of beautiful templates. You can also summarize your tables in just a few clicks.

All you need to do is to upload a PDF file and in a few seconds, you can download the spreadsheet version of the same. Data extFraction is pretty easy here and the interface is straightforward. Some other key features of this application are:. This is very unique and must try the application for all kinds of applications. The tool offers you a complete cell-based grid of AJAX-style.

The tool is packed with a ton of different and custom formula functions using which you can perform a lot of things in the spreadsheets. You can also manipulate single, or individual cell groups and cells for better organization or calculations. Some of the key features of this application are:. SSuite Axcel Professional is a very professional spreadsheet software that is being used by a lot of professional organizations from all around the world. One of the best features of SSuite Axcel Professional is the ease you can organize your dataset with.

Key features of this application are:. Azquao is another very feasible option as an alternative to Excel. This application is used by thousands of users from all around the world and has made quite a name for itself in the industry.