Guide to Office Software
Free and paid options for writing letters, spreadsheets and presentations, and which suits you best
DO YOU NEED TO PAY?
Office software lets you write letters, keep spreadsheets and create presentations. Microsoft Office, with Word, Excel and PowerPoint, is the best known, but it isn’t the only choice, and for many people a free alternative does everything they need.
FREE OPTIONS
IN YOUR BROWSER
Microsoft’s free web versions
Benefits: Word, Excel and PowerPoint, free in your web browser with a Microsoft account. They look and work much like the full versions, and open Word and Excel files perfectly.
Drawbacks: Some advanced features are missing, and you need to be online to use them.
IN YOUR BROWSER
Google Docs and Sheets
Benefits: Free with a Google account, simple to use and ideal for sharing documents with family.
Drawbacks: They work differently from Word and Excel, and complex documents may not look quite the same.
APPLE DEVICES
Pages, Numbers and Keynote
Benefits: Free on every iPhone, iPad and Mac, and simple to use.
Drawbacks: They’re not available on Windows, and documents need saving in Word format to share with others.
ON YOUR COMPUTER
LibreOffice
If you’ve heard of OpenOffice, LibreOffice is a more up-to-date alternative.
Benefits: A complete office suite that installs on your computer and works without the internet, entirely free and without adverts.
Drawbacks: It looks a little old-fashioned, and the layout of complex Word documents can occasionally shift.
PAYING FOR MICROSOFT OFFICE
If you need the full versions of Word, Excel and Outlook, you can either subscribe to Microsoft 365 or buy Office outright with a one-off payment.
| Price | Who and what it covers | |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Personal | £84.99 a year, or £8.49 a month | One person, on up to five devices, with 1TB of OneDrive storage. |
| Microsoft 365 Family | £104.99 a year, or £10.49 a month | Up to six people, each on up to five devices, sharing 2TB of OneDrive storage. |
| Office Home 2024 | £119.99, paid once | One Windows computer or Mac. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, but not Outlook. |
| Office Home & Business 2024 | £249.99, paid once | As Office Home 2024, with Outlook added. |
Microsoft’s prices, correct as of October 2026.
BEWARE OF CHEAP LICENCE KEYS
Websites and online marketplaces sell ‘lifetime’ Office licences for a few pounds. Many are not genuine, and can stop working without warning. Buy only from Microsoft or a well-known retailer.
WHAT’S INCLUDED
The subscription and the one-off versions aren’t quite the same, so it’s worth checking that the version you choose includes everything you use.
| Microsoft 365 | Office Home 2024 | |
|---|---|---|
| Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote | Yes | Yes |
| Outlook | Yes | Free version with adverts only. The full version needs Office Home & Business. |
| Access (databases) | Yes, on Windows computers | No |
| Phones and tablets | Yes, on up to five devices in total | No, one computer only |
| Cloud storage | 1TB, or 2TB shared on Family | 5GB, as with any free Microsoft account |
| Updates | New features as they’re released | Security updates only, until October 2029 |
- Microsoft 365 now includes Copilot, Microsoft’s AI assistant, which is partly why its price rose in 2025. You don’t have to use it.
- The storage that comes with Microsoft 365 is a real benefit if you’d otherwise pay for cloud storage. Our Guide to Cloud Storage explains more.
- Support for Office Home 2024 ends in October 2029. We don’t expect it to stop working then, but it will no longer receive security updates, so it’s less good value than it first appears.
WHICH IS RIGHT FOR YOU?
If you write the odd letter or open attachments
Use a free option. Microsoft’s free web versions are the most familiar if you’ve used Word before. On an Apple device, Pages and Numbers are already there.
If you use Word and Excel regularly
Microsoft 365 Personal. You’ll have the full programs on your computer, phone and tablet, kept up to date, plus plenty of storage for your files and photos.
If several people in the household need it
Microsoft 365 Family. It costs only a little more than Personal and covers up to six people, making it the best value by far.
If you’d rather not pay a subscription
LibreOffice gives you a full office suite on your computer for free. Office Home 2024 is the paid alternative, or Office Home & Business 2024 if you need Outlook. It should keep working after its support ends in 2029, but without security updates.
WE CAN HELP
We can help you choose the right option, install it, move your documents across and make sure your files are saved somewhere safe.
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