Microsoft Word is the most common word processing app that lets you create and edit word documents. It is available as a standalone app or as a component of the Microsoft Office suite. You need to buy Microsoft Word or Microsoft Office/365 to get the full version of the Word app. If you don’t want to pay the money, you may try some free Microsoft Word alternatives which have similar features to Microsoft Word.
This post from MiniTool introduces the top 5 free alternatives to Microsoft Word. You can choose a preferred tool to create, edit, save, or print word documents on your computer.
Top 5 Free Microsoft Word Alternatives
1. WPS Office
WPS Office is the most popular free alternative to Microsoft Word. It is developed by Kingsoft Company. This free word processor program allows you to open, edit, and save documents of various formats like .doc, .docx, etc. WPS Office has a similar interface and functions as Microsoft Word.
The company’s cloud storage service WPS Cloud offers 1GB of free cloud storage to let you store files.
WPS Office supports Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, IOS, and HarmonyOS. It is available in more than 10 languages.
To download WPS Office, you can go to WPS official download website and click the Free Download button to instantly download its installation package to your computer.
2. Google Docs
Google Docs is the most popular free online document editor. It is also one of the best Microsoft Word alternatives for Windows 10/11. You can use Google Docs to easily create and collaborate on online documents. You can edit a document together online at the same time. It features seamless collaboration, from anywhere.
You can go to www.google.com/docs/about/ in your Chrome browser to easily access Google Docs. Then you can easily create a document and edit it.
Google Docs allows you to open and save documents in the standard OpenDocument format, Rich text format, plain Unicode text, zipped HTML, and Microsoft Word format.
3. Apache OpenOffice
You can also use this free and open-source office suite as an alternative to Microsoft Word. OpenOffice contains a set of free office tools including a free word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet tool (Calc), a presentation application (Impress), a drawing application (Draw), etc. You can use OpenOffice to easily create and edit word documents, spreadsheets, etc.
The default file format of this best free Microsoft Office alternative is ODF (OpenDocument Format). It can also open and read many other file formats including those from Microsoft Office.
This free MS Word alternative supports Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris.
4. LibreOffice Writer
LibreOffice Writer is a full-featured free and open-source word processing tool that is similar to Microsoft Word. It is capable of opening and saving a variety of file formats including OpenDocument (the default format), Microsoft Word formats, and more. It also offers many other tools like a spell and grammar checker, drawing tools, form building tools, etc. LibreOffice Writer is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
5. SoftMaker FreeOffice
FreeOffice is another good free Microsoft Word alternative. It is also a full-featured Office suite with word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software. It is fully compatible with Microsoft Office and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It is completely free. You can use it to create, edit, save, or print documents on Windows 10/11 with ease.
Best Free Word File Recovery Software
To recover deleted or lost Word documents, you can use a free data recovery program.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a professional free data recovery application for Windows. You can use it to recover any deleted or lost data from Windows computers, USB flash drives, SD/memory cards, external hard drives, SSDs, etc.
It features a very simple interface and lets you recover your data in a few simple steps.