LibreOffice vs Microsoft Office - Which Is Best?

Many people are torn between LibreOffice and Microsoft Office. Which office suite is the best for the majority of them? Usually, there’s only one deciding factor – price. LibreOffice is completely free, while Microsoft Office costs a hefty amount considering its official prices. You may wonder if it’s worth investing in Microsoft Office or sticking to the free alternatives.

On the surface, this issue is not a problem. We have two office suites that should have the same features, at least in principle. If there’s no difference, it would be more beneficial to choose a free substitute. But when we go into details, there are some differences. And those details in both products can make us go for one or the other option. This article will show you which office suite is the best and the main differences between them.

Table of Contents

• LibreOffice vs Microsoft Office - Which Is Best?

  • Libre Office and Microsoft Office – Comparison

    • Microsoft Office

    • LibreOffice

  • Microsoft Office Suite

    • Value for Money

    • Customer Support

    • File Compatibility

  • The Functionality of Microsoft Office and LibreOffice

    • Main Differences

  • Which One Should I Choose?

Libre Office and Microsoft Office – Comparison

Both office suites offer a selection of applications whose concepts go back several decades and are well known to almost all users. They are practically archetypes by now. Of course, many new features have appeared over time, such as Microsoft Teams, which was included in Office 2021. This also applies to features such as real-time collaboration on documents, available in Office as early as the 2019 release. Let's now focus on the essential tools they both provide.

Microsoft Office

• Word. Word processing program.

• Excel. Spreadsheet program.

• PowerPoint: Presentation software.

• OneNote. Note-taking software.

• Outlook. An email client.

• Teams. A messaging and collaboration program.

• Publisher. A desktop publishing program.

• Access. A database management system.

• Skype for Business. Messenger and video-call software.

LibreOffice

• Writer. A word processing program with its own word processor – equivalent to Microsoft Word.

• Impress. A slideshow presentation software – equivalent to Microsoft Powerpoint.

• Calc. A good alternative to Microsoft Excel, although it lacks some of its features.

• Base. A database management system – equivalent to Microsoft Access.

• Draw. A vector graphics program, equivalent to Microsoft Visio. However, it’s not a part of the default Office package.

• Math. A LibreOffice's formula editor that can be invoked in your text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and drawings, enabling you to insert perfectly formatted mathematical and scientific formulas.

As you can see, LibreOffice has essential applications with the same purpose as Microsoft Office. There are also additional modules that are the own invention of The Document Foundation. However, the content of these applications isn’t identical. This applies to the general appearance, interface, function names, available options, and solutions. 

If you need an email client, a desktop publishing application, or bundle cloud storage, you have to look for third-party programs. However, they won't have the same look and feel as the rest of the office suite, and they won’t be integrated.

Microsoft Office Suite

First, let's consider whether an office application suite is worth buying. Microsoft Office is a well-known brand often equated with the office suite. When one says "Office," it’s usually implied as "Microsoft Office." By habit, we create documents in Microsoft Word, do calculations in the Excel spreadsheet program, and prepare presentations in PowerPoint.

Over the past 30 years, Microsoft Office has set the standard to which the rest of the office application vendors have (more or less successfully) matched. All in all, the Office brand is impossible to ignore.

Value for Money

If we invest in Microsoft Office, we expect the quality that the package is known for, and we have the right to demand it. Suppose we are users of Microsoft Office and we got to know its capabilities well. When we use another package, we immediately notice the differences and limitations.

Of course, it's not that the competition's products are very deficient, unintuitive, twisted, and unsupported. However, the disadvantages are much easier to notice when using something theoretically familiar but differing in details.

Unfortunately, the official pricing isn’t as attractive as the office software itself. Microsoft 365 subscription that includes Microsoft Office, which is for one person across multiple devices, is $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year. You can use Microsoft 365 Home for free through a one-month trial. Or you can buy a retail version of Microsoft Office for $150.

Fortunately, there are third-party sellers who buy software keys in bulk, thus getting a discount. How does it affect us, customers? It means that we can buy our desired software for way cheaper than the retail price. For example, RoyalCDKeys is offering Microsoft Office 2019 Pro Plus Key for less than $4. A fully legitimate working software that can be activated using official methods. An excellent alternative, isn’t it?

Customer Support

Microsoft Office features constant and very meticulous user support. Microsoft doesn’t tolerate compromises and regularly improves its applications to satisfy customers. This is because it’s an established brand and one of the main revenue-generating products of the Redmond giant.

Reliability of software is required both by home and educational users alongside company and corporate users. For them, the smooth operation of processes is crucial from a financial point of view. These customers vote with their wallets, and for the Giant of Redmond, that means a lot of liabilities.

File Compatibility

File compatibility doesn't usually grab the attention of average users. Unless they start using other applications or get the file from another person, it may then turn out that the new program "does not read" a file that was saved in another program. Microsoft Office provides the luxury that when we receive a file from one of its millions of users, we can open it without a problem in our Office applications.

It doesn’t matter if it was saved in an older version of the suite or on a different device, e.g., PC, tablet, or smartphone. On the other hand, Excel, Word, or PowerPoint documents can be opened in most competing packages. Still, there is a risk that the worksheet, document, or presentation will look different, the formatting will bug out, or there will be problems with fonts. 

Unsupported file extensions in a spreadsheet or altered document formatting are the most common problems in Microsoft Office alternatives. Interestingly, it doesn't work the same way the other way around. Microsoft Office can open OpenOffice formats without much trouble. Although created in a free package, such a file is often saved by the user in the Microsoft Office format - out of habit and often so that the recipient does not have a problem opening it.

The Functionality of Microsoft Office and LibreOffice

LibreOffice open-source software could theoretically be equipped with a massive amount of available functionality through community contributions. Quite a few open-source projects do just fine that way. However, this is not how it looks in office suites. 

At first glance, you can see that Microsoft Office provides a lot more features, and when you start getting into the details, there's much more to it. But, do we need all these features daily? If you only want to write documents, Writer from LibreOffice can easily suffice. 

The number of functions you’ll need depends on your individual needs and work style. LibreOffice is not overly fussy compared to Microsoft's product and has many advanced options like it. However, if you are used to Microsoft Office and are familiar with it, LibreOffice may seem unintuitive.

It will require you to change your habits, search for deeply buried options or learn new function names. Besides, you will have to spend some time personalizing the application or installing fonts. So it seems clear that LibreOffice is not a clone of Microsoft Office.

Main Differences

These are the fundamental differences between LibreOffice and MS Office. The list could go on but the key difference is that LibreOffice is completely free while MS Office requires a commercial license.

Both can save documents, export documents, and have dedicated developers. They’re great for mainstream usage and provide support for their users. With all of this in mind, let’s answer the final question.

Which One Should I Choose?

As we said in the beginning, it usually comes down to pricing. People tend to pick free office suites just because they’re free of charge. Unfortunately, any free productivity suite won’t be 100% compatible with Microsoft Office formats, as we stated before. There’s a risk that the same document made in Office suite won’t look identical in different software. However, we understand that pricing is a huge factor when making decisions.

On RoyalCDKeys, you can get Microsoft office professional plus 2019 key for as low as $8.40. Is it really worth resorting to half-measures when you can get the full package for such a low price? In our opinion, Microsoft Office is your best bet. Especially when it’s available for only a fraction of the retail price.