Microsoft

Microsoft Word

Microsoft 365 raised prices in 2025 by bundling Copilot. Australia's regulator sued over how that was sold.

  • Forced subscriptionYou rent it. Stop paying and you lose it.
  • Account wallSign up, log in, hand over your data, just to use it.

The exits

  1. WordCraft

    by ArtCraft

    A clean-room Word with a ribbon, a styles gallery and a navigation pane, in pure Rust.

    Status
    Alpha Early and moving fast. Try it, expect rough edges.
    License
    Apache-2.0
    Get WordCraft ↗View source ↗

  2. Mature, offline and fully compatible with .docx.

    Status
    Stable Mature and ready for daily work.
    License
    MPL-2.0
    Get LibreOffice Writer ↗View source ↗

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Adobe
  • Subscription
  • Paywall

Adobe Acrobat

Merging, splitting or editing a PDF, an open ISO standard, sits behind an Acrobat Pro subscription.

  1. PdfCraftAlphaApache-2.0

    A PDF workbench to read, organize, combine, split and secure, built from the ISO 32000 spec.

    Site ↗Source ↗
  2. Stirling PDFStableMIT

    A self-hosted PDF toolbox with more than 50 tools: merge, split, OCR, sign, convert.

    Site ↗Source ↗
DocuSign
  • Subscription
  • Paywall

DocuSign

Per-seat subscriptions and envelope limits, just to sign a PDF.

  1. DocumensoStableAGPL-3.0

    The open-source DocuSign alternative. Self-host it and own your signing infrastructure.

    Site ↗Source ↗
Grammarly (Superhuman)
  • Paywall
  • Surveillance

Grammarly

Everything you type goes through their servers, and the useful suggestions are paywalled.

  1. LanguageToolStableLGPL-2.1

    An open-source grammar and style checker for more than 30 languages. Run the server locally for full privacy.

    Site ↗Source ↗