For about a year, Microsoft's Office suite was my software of choice for the occasional document and spreadsheet I might need to write, but at the start of 2025, I decided I was no longer interested in paying such a high recurring fee for Office, and I left it behind. So I had to find an alternative I could use on my Mac Mini.

I could have used Apple's own versions of Office apps, but I wanted something that was actually good, so I tried out a wide range of options. And as it turns out, WPS Office has ended up being my top choice after trying pretty much every option. Here's why it's become my go-to Office suite on the Mac Mini, and potentially on Windows as well.

4 It's free

Name a better price

First off, I didn't want to spend money on an Office suite I use so sparsely anymore, so being free was a major point I was looking for in an alternative to Microsoft Office. Surprisingly, there are a few free options out there, but WPS Office not only has a free app, but it includes 1GB of free cloud storage for documents, which is great to have for the occasional document I want to save across devices. Thankfully, on macOS, ads are also relatively minimal, so it's not a frustrating piece of free software.

What's more, WPS Office includes a few templates for free for your documents, and it seems to include the most features, or at least the most features I need. Another great contender for me was SoftMaker Free Office, but that one lacked the ability to create tables in Excel, which is a very important feature for me. Plus, some features like converting PDF documents to Word documents are also available for free.

3 Handling CSV files and numbers

A specific need, but an important one

As I've mentioned, I don't use my Office suite for a lot of things, but the one use case I've had recently is opening CSV files that I export from one of the management platforms I use for work. This platform lets me export lists of articles with a lot of data, including a lot of fields with numbers, and they're exported as a CSV file.

When I open these CSV files in most of the alternative Office suites I've tried, the fields with numbers are treated as text fields, so when I sort them, instead of sorting them from highest to lowest for the whole number, many of these suites would put all the fields starting with 9 at the top, even if the full number was much smaller. I would have to manually edit all the fields so they'd be recognized as proper numbers.

WPS Office is one of the few tools where all the numbers are properly interpreted from the start, so I can just sort the Excel tables without any fuss, and it saves me a ton of time. These are things you may not always think of until you need them, but it makes such a huge difference when you do.

2 A familiar, modern UI

Following Microsoft's footsteps

I know some people will disagree, but I still firmly believe the Microsoft Office UI design is a far better approach than what Microsoft was doing before the Ribbon UI was implemented. Thankfully, WPS follows in the footsteps of modern Microsoft design. All the major features in WPS Office are split into tabs that look and feel very modern, going as far as offering smooth transition animations when switching between tabs. It feels very good to use overall.

The tabbed interface makes it much easier to find specific settings, especially because all the options are clearly labeled (many times even more so than Microsoft's own).

You get a lot of the same features, too, like a small toolbar that appears next to selected text so you can quickly change formatting settings for specific parts of a document. Using WPS just feels natural coming from Microsoft Office, and it's a very easy transition.

1 An all-in-one interface

One window, all the apps

Finally, another thing I love about WPS Office is the convenience of having all the apps in one unified interface. Whether you're editing documents, spreadsheets, or presentations, WPS opens each file in a new tab, rather than a new window, allowing you to keep your desktop tidier and stay more organized. Plus, it's easier to just have a single app you open for whatever you need, instead of three different apps for different file types.

Don't want all your documents in the same windows? WPS has you covered there, too. While the default behavior keeps all your files together, you can create "workspaces", which are independent windows you can use to separate your files. That way, you can choose which documents to keep together and which ones to separate based on things like the project they're related to, and you have total flexibility to organize things how you want to.

WPS Office is a great free option

If you're like me and want an Office suite you can use for relatively light workloads, WPS Office is an excellent option that doesn't break the bank, mostly because you can use it for free. Even if you choose to pay, the cost is a fraction of what Microsoft Office costs, so you can get rid of the ads and unlock some extra features for a relatively low price.

I find WPS to be particularly great on macOS, mostly because ads seem to be less intrusive there than they are on Windows, where you might be pushed to upgrade to the paid version a bit more frequently. But even if you're a Windows user, this is a great option to check out, and it works very well for my needs. I highly recommend checking it out below.