Free Microsoft Office Alternatives That Open Your Word Files

Three free desktop apps now look and work a lot like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. They open your normal .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files, they run on Windows, Mac and Linux, and they cost nothing. A small team called ArtCraft built them in a matter of days, with Anthropic's Claude listed as a co-author on the code.

The question everyone asks next is whether you can cancel Microsoft 365. For most businesses the answer is not yet, and the team that made the apps says so itself.

This guide shows you how to download and install the right file for your computer, how to test the apps on your own documents without risking the originals, what the team's own numbers say about how finished they are, and how they compare with the free Office alternatives that are already mature: LibreOffice, ONLYOFFICE, and the free web versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

What WordCraft, GridCraft and DeckCraft are

They are three open-source office apps from ArtCraft, a team that publishes its code on GitHub under the name storytold. Each one follows the layout and workflow of a Microsoft app: WordCraft for documents, GridCraft for spreadsheets and DeckCraft for slides. ArtCraft developer Brandon Thomas announced them in early October 2026, one week after the same team released free look-alikes of Adobe's creative apps.

The speed is real. The public repositories were created on 7 October 2026, and version 0.5.0 of all three apps was out by 11 October. The team may have started earlier in private, but the public part took days.

The team calls them clean-room builds. WordCraft's README says it was built from public specifications and observation. In plain words, they rebuilt the app from published file-format documents and by watching how the original behaves, without using Microsoft's code. Nobody independent has audited that claim yet.

The AI part is on the public record. The commit history (the log of every change to the code) lists Claude Opus 5.5 as a co-author on a large share of the early changes. The team's own list of gaps even estimates each remaining job in Opus 5.5 agent hours. All three apps are written in Rust and run as native programs, so there is no browser wrapper underneath, and they work offline.

The menus are close to the originals. WordCraft has commands for 97% of the ribbon and menu features in its own checklist, and DeckCraft covers 84% of its tracked features by breadth. Depth is what lags: the readiness figures above count file fidelity and stability, and that is where the gap sits.

People are paying attention. On 27 October 2026, WordCraft had more than 16,000 stars on GitHub (stars work like public bookmarks), three weeks after the repository went up.

Microsoft, Word, Excel and PowerPoint are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. We use those names only to describe what the free apps stand in for.

Before you start

• A Windows PC, a Mac or a Linux computer. There are builds for 64-bit Windows, Windows on Arm and older 32-bit Windows, one Mac build for both Intel and Apple silicon, and several Linux formats.
• Admin rights if you want the Windows installer, which puts the app in Program Files. On a locked-down work laptop, use the portable .zip instead.
• Copies of the files you want to test, in a separate folder. Never point an alpha app at your only copy of a client contract or a finance model.
• A way to see the file the way your clients will. Microsoft's free web versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint need only a Microsoft account, and they are the fairest check.
• Time for a proper first test: download, install, and a careful look at two or three of your own files.

Step 1: download the right file

All three apps are on GitHub. These are the official pages:

CopyWord copy (WordCraft): https://github.com/storytold/wordcraft
Excel copy (GridCraft): https://github.com/storytold/gridcraft
PowerPoint copy (DeckCraft): https://github.com/storytold/deckcraft

Prefer a one-click copy? The same links are on our free prompt page.

1. Open the page for the app you want.
2. On the right side of the page, click Releases, then open the newest version at the top. You can also add /releases/latest to the end of the page address to go straight there.
3. Scroll to the Assets list under the release notes. It holds one file per type of computer, plus a file called SHA256SUMS.txt.
4. Pick your file using the table below and click it to download. File names include the version number, so WordCraft's Windows installer today is wordcraft-0.11.0-windows-x64.msi.

Not sure which Windows you have? Open Settings, then System, then About, and look at "System type". It says whether the processor is x64-based or Arm-based.

Optional but sensible: check the download is the real file. SHA256SUMS.txt lists a checksum for every file in the release. On Windows, open PowerShell in your Downloads folder and run Get-FileHash .\wordcraft-0.11.0-windows-x64.msi. On a Mac, open Terminal and run shasum -a 256 followed by the file name. The long code it prints should match the line for that file in SHA256SUMS.txt. If it does not, delete the file and download it again.

Step 2: install and open the app

Windows

1. Double-click the .msi file and follow the installer. It needs administrator rights and puts the app in Program Files. The project says its installers and programs are code-signed.
2. Or, for the portable version, right-click the .zip, choose Extract All, open the new folder and double-click the app's .exe file. Nothing is installed, so you can delete the folder later to remove it.
3. Open the app from the Start menu (installer) or the folder (portable).

If the app flashes open and closes straight away, the README describes a crash with some AMD graphics drivers and a fix: start the app with a different graphics setting. In PowerShell, from the folder that holds the app, run these three lines (shown here for WordCraft):

Copy$env:WGPU_BACKEND = "vulkan"
& .\wordcraft.exe
Remove-Item Env:WGPU_BACKEND

If "vulkan" does not help, try "dx12" in the first line. The README warns against "gl", which can bring the crash back.

Mac

1. Double-click the .dmg file to open it.
2. Drag the app into your Applications folder. If the window shows an Applications shortcut, drop the app onto it.
3. Open it from Applications or Launchpad. The README says the Mac build is signed and notarized, which is Apple's check that lets an app open without a warning about an unknown developer.

Linux

1. AppImage: mark the file as executable (in most file managers, right-click, Properties, Permissions) and double-click it. The README says the AppImage can update itself with AppImageUpdate.
2. .deb or .rpm: open it with your software center, or install it from a terminal with your package manager.
3. Flatpak: run flatpak install --user followed by the file name.

Step 3: test the apps on copies of your own files

This is the step that tells you whether the apps are ready for your work. A file that opens is not the same as a file that survives a save and looks right on your client's screen.

1. Make a test folder and copy in three kinds of file: a simple one (a one-page letter), a typical one (a proposal or a monthly report) and your hardest one (a long contract, a model with many sheets, a deck full of charts).
2. Open the simple file first in the matching app. If that looks wrong, stop there; the harder files will not do better.
3. Put the original next to it, open in Office or Microsoft's free web app, and compare page by page. Use the checklist below.
4. Make a small edit and save it under a new name, such as proposal-wordcraft-test.docx. Keep the original untouched.
5. Open the saved file in Microsoft's free web version. This is what your client sees. Check that nothing moved, broke or vanished.
6. Write down what failed and repeat with the typical and hard files. By the third file you will know which kinds of work the app can take today.

Why be this careful? Office Watch tested the apps on Windows with its own Microsoft 365 files. Everything opened and edited, apart from some Excel functions. Its warning is the one to remember: a complex contract or financial model can shift slightly after a save and then look different when your client opens it in real Office. Its advice was to stay with Office if your work depends on it.

Step 4 (optional): let Claude Code edit documents in WordCraft

WordCraft was built to be driven by AI agents as well as people. Every action in the app is a named command, 422 of them, and the same commands are open to a command-line tool called wordcraft-cli and to an MCP server. MCP is the standard way to plug a tool into an AI assistant. With it, Claude Code can open a document, make edits and save it, without anyone clicking through the ribbon.

The README gives the one-line setup for Claude Code, once wordcraft-cli is installed:

Copyclaude mcp add wordcraft -- wordcraft-cli mcp

There is also a mode that lets Claude drive the app window you have open, described in the README. On a Mac, the CLI is a separate download in the release Assets, wordcraft-cli-0.11.0-macos-universal.zip. This part is technical and suits people who are comfortable in a terminal. If you would rather have a workflow like that built around your own documents and reports, that is the kind of thing our AI automation team sets up.

Limits and gotchas

The apps are three weeks old. Here is what to know before you put a client file through them.

They are alpha software

All three are labeled alpha by their own team. WordCraft's roadmap says beta still needs testing against real-world .docx files, keeping charts and SmartArt intact through a save, closer page layout to Word, and a stability sweep. GridCraft's list starts with fidelity on real-world .xlsx files and very large workbooks.

Macros and collaboration

Office Watch found no sign in the documentation that any of the three runs VBA macros. WordCraft keeps the macros inside a .docm file when it saves, which is not the same as running them. There is also no shared cloud editing like you get in Microsoft 365 or Google Docs. These are desktop apps.

Updates come fast

WordCraft shipped ten releases between 7 and 25 October 2026. That pace means bugs get fixed quickly. It also means a feature can change from one week to the next. WordCraft's README describes no automatic updater apart from the Linux AppImage, so check the Releases page now and then, and read the release notes before you update in the middle of a project.

The legal question is open

No lawsuit or takedown has been reported as of 27 October 2026. Commentators, citing Ars Technica, point to trade dress, the legal protection for a product's look and feel, as the main risk for apps that copy a famous interface this closely. The same commentary notes that rewriting features from public specifications is generally lawful, and that the look is the grey part. If the repositories ever came down, an app you already installed would keep running, because it works offline and the license lets anyone keep a copy of the code. That is our reading of the license terms, not legal advice.

Troubleshooting

• The Windows installer asks for an admin password you do not have: use the portable .zip for your processor instead.
• The app flashes and closes on Windows: use the graphics fix in step 2.
• You cannot find Releases: go straight to the latest one by adding /releases/latest to the repository address, for example github.com/storytold/wordcraft/releases/latest.
• A spreadsheet shows errors where Excel shows numbers: GridCraft does not yet support every Excel function. Check that cell's formula in Microsoft's free web Excel, and keep that file in Excel for now.
• A saved file looks different in Office: keep working on that file in Office or one of the mature alternatives below. You can report the problem on the app's GitHub page under Issues, with a copy of a file that shows it (never a client's real file).

Other free Microsoft Office alternatives, and when to pick each

The ArtCraft apps are the newest option. They are not the only free one, and some of the others have years of fixes behind them.

A simple way to choose. If you only need to open the odd Word or Excel file a client sends, Microsoft's free web apps are the most faithful, as long as you are fine with the files living in OneDrive. If you want everything offline on your own computer, install LibreOffice or ONLYOFFICE. Keep the ArtCraft apps next to them as a test bench and watch how fast they close the gap.

Who should skip them for now

• Anyone who swaps files with clients on Microsoft 365 every day and needs them to look identical after every save.
• Teams that depend on VBA macros or co-edit documents in the cloud.
• Anyone who cannot spare the time to test on copies first. In that case, LibreOffice or ONLYOFFICE is the lower-risk free choice.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free version of Microsoft Office?

Yes. Microsoft offers Word, Excel and PowerPoint for the web free with a Microsoft account, including 5 GB of OneDrive storage. Files are saved in and shared from OneDrive. The full desktop apps need a paid Microsoft 365 plan.

Did Microsoft make WordCraft, GridCraft and DeckCraft?

No. They are independent open-source apps from a team called ArtCraft (storytold on GitHub). They follow the layout of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but Microsoft has no part in them and does not endorse them.

Can WordCraft and GridCraft open my existing Word and Excel files?

Yes. WordCraft opens and saves .docx, GridCraft works natively with .xlsx, and DeckCraft opens and saves .pptx. Complex files can still change after a save, because the apps are in alpha, so always test on a copy first and check the saved file in Microsoft's free web apps.

Are the ArtCraft apps safe to download?

Download them only from the official GitHub Releases pages. The project says its Windows installers are code-signed and its Mac build is signed and notarized, and each release includes a SHA256SUMS.txt file to check your download. Open only copies of files while the apps are in alpha.

Are free Office look-alike apps legal to use?

The apps are released under the MIT or Apache-2.0 license, which allows free use, including at work. As of 27 October 2026 no lawsuit or takedown had been reported. Commentators name trade dress, a product's look and feel, as the open legal question. This is not legal advice.

What is the best free Microsoft Office alternative right now?

For daily business work, LibreOffice and ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors are the most mature free options and both handle Office files. Use Microsoft's free web apps when a client's file has to look exactly right. Try WordCraft, GridCraft and DeckCraft as a test bench.

Sources

• WordCraft on GitHub (README, roadmap, releases, commit history)
• GridCraft on GitHub
• DeckCraft on GitHub
• ArtCraft's list of apps
• Office Watch: Free Microsoft Office clones, should you try them?
• Futurism: Creator of free Adobe suite strikes again
• Pasquale Pillitteri: the trade dress question
• LibreOffice and its help page on Microsoft Office files
• ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors
• Microsoft 365 for the web, free
• Google Docs Editors Help: work with Office files