JOV Download

Microsoft Office alternatives for Mac: what each one costs and does

. 5 minute read. By JOV

Most people who look for an Office alternative on a Mac don’t want a new way of working. They want to open the .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files other people send, change them, and send them back without anyone noticing which app was used. That is the test this comparison uses. We make one of the five options, JOV Office, so read our part with that in mind.

The short version

Works offlineSaves in the format it openedFiles stay on your MacCost
Microsoft 365Yes, desktop appsYesYour choiceSubscription
Pages, Numbers, KeynoteYesNo, exports a copyYour choiceFree
Google Docs, Sheets, SlidesLimitedYes, or convertsNoFree with a Google account
LibreOfficeYesYes, asks each timeYesFree
JOV OfficeYesYesYes$2 a month or $15 a year

Microsoft 365

Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Mac are the reference. Every feature of the file formats works because Microsoft defines them. You pay a subscription per person or per family, and Microsoft also sells a one-time purchase of Word, Excel and PowerPoint for one Mac. Prices change, so check Microsoft’s site.

Buy it if you write long documents with cross-references and mail merge, build workbooks with macros, Power Query or PivotTables you need to change, or if your employer or university already gives you a licence. Nothing else on this list replaces those.

The reasons people look elsewhere are the price for occasional use, the size of the apps, and the push toward OneDrive and an online account.

Pages, Numbers and Keynote

Apple’s apps are free and already on most Macs. They are well made, and Keynote in particular is a pleasure to present with.

They are not Office-format editors, though. They open a Word, Excel or PowerPoint file by converting it to their own format, and you export a copy to give it back. Each conversion can move things: fonts, table layouts, tracked changes, spreadsheet functions that Numbers doesn’t have. For files that live on your own Mac this never matters. For a document that goes back and forth five times with a Word user, small differences pile up.

Choose them if most of your documents start and end with you.

Google Docs, Sheets and Slides

Google’s editors run in a browser, cost nothing with a Google account, and are the best option here for several people editing at the same moment. They open Office files and can save them in Office format.

Two things to weigh. They work best online, and offline editing has to be set up in advance in Chrome. And every file you open is uploaded to Google. Many workplaces don’t allow that for client or patient documents. Formatting in complex Word documents and large workbooks is also less faithful than in the desktop options.

Choose them if you work in a team that already lives in Google Drive.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is free, open source, works offline and opens almost anything, including old .doc, .xls and .ppt files and formats nobody else reads any more. Its spreadsheet has an enormous function list.

The cost is comfort. It doesn’t look or behave like a Mac app, it is a large download, and it prefers its own OpenDocument formats, so it asks which format to keep each time you save an Office file. Layout differences in Word documents are common enough that you should check a file before sending it.

Choose it if you want a free, complete suite and don’t mind that it looks and works differently from other Mac apps, or if you need to rescue old files.

JOV Office

JOV Office is one Mac app for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, CSV and PDF files. It opens each file in its own format and saves it in the same format, with no import or export step. It works offline, and documents are never uploaded.

A letter with a schedule table open in JOV Office, with the Home ribbon above it.

What it covers is everyday work: writing and formatting documents with styles, tables, pictures, headers and footers, comments and Track Changes; spreadsheets with about 340 functions, charts, sorting, filters and conditional formatting; editing and presenting slides with Presenter View; and marking up, filling in, signing, combining and splitting PDFs.

What it doesn’t do, so you can rule it out quickly if you need one of these:

  • It doesn’t open the older .doc and .ppt formats, and .xls workbooks open for reading only.
  • It keeps macros in a file but never runs them.
  • It shows PivotTables but can’t create or change them.
  • It doesn’t open Office files that are protected with a password.
  • It plays slide transitions, not animations inside a slide.
  • It has no real-time editing with other people and no cloud storage of its own.
  • It is for the Mac only. There are no iPhone, iPad or Windows versions.

No app other than Microsoft’s reproduces every Word layout exactly, and JOV Office is no exception. For an important document, look it over before you send it, as you would with any of the options here.

It needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later and runs on Apple silicon and Intel Macs. It is free for 7 days, then $2 a month or $15 a year. If the trial or a subscription ends, you can still open, read, print and export your files to PDF.

Choose it if you mostly receive Office files, want to edit them and send them back in the same format, and want your documents to stay on your Mac.

How to decide

Three questions settle it for most people:

  1. Do the files go back to Office users? If yes, prefer an app that saves in the format it opened: Microsoft 365, JOV Office or LibreOffice.
  2. Do you need to edit together with others at the same time? If yes, use Google’s editors or Microsoft 365.
  3. Do the files rely on macros, PivotTables you must change, or heavy Word features such as mail merge? If yes, buy Microsoft 365.

If none of those apply and the files are your own, the Apple apps you already have are enough.

For one format at a time, see the guides to opening a Word file, an Excel file and a PowerPoint file on a Mac.

All posts