LibreOffice vs WPS Office
Free and open against free-with-a-paid-tier, and the difference between them is not really features — it is what the free version is for.
We make competing software. Rutba Office is a free office suite, so we have an interest in this comparison and you should read it knowing that. Neither product below is ours. There is a short section about ours at the end, marked as such, and it only addresses things this page actually examined.
The decision
What you are actually choosing between
Whether you want software that is finished, or software that is the entry point to something you may later pay for. Both are legitimate; they are not the same purchase.
Head to head
Where they genuinely differ
| LibreOffice | WPS Office | |
|---|---|---|
| What "free" means | The whole product, permanently, with nothing above it. | A tier. Some features, storage and conveniences sit behind an upgrade. |
| Source | Published under the MPL 2.0. Every claim about it is checkable. | Proprietary. Its claims have to be taken on trust. |
| The interface | Its own, and it takes a little relearning if you come from Microsoft Office. | Deliberately close to the Microsoft ribbon, which for most people means no relearning at all. |
| Accounts and cloud | None. It is a program on your computer. | A connected account and cloud storage are part of the product. |
| PDF editing | Draw handles PDFs, capably but not as a PDF editor. | A genuinely good PDF editor, which is a real reason people choose it. |
| Phones and tablets | A desktop suite. | Proper mobile applications on both platforms. |
Choose LibreOffice if
- You want software with no commercial layer above it and no account
- Policy, procurement or principle requires open source
- You need the depth, or Base, Draw and Math
- You are deploying across an estate and want one thing that will not change its terms
Choose WPS Office if
- The familiar ribbon matters — for a team that will not tolerate relearning, this is decisive and not trivial
- You need PDF editing and mobile apps from the same vendor
- You are one person who wants something that works in five minutes
- You do not mind a paid tier existing as long as the free one does what you need
Our own product, and we said so at the top
Where Rutba Office fits
On "what free means", we are at the LibreOffice end
There is no paid tier of this suite, so there is nothing inside it steering you towards one — no locked feature, no storage limit, no upgrade prompt. The commercial licence exists for a different customer entirely: somebody embedding the engine in their own product.
On source, likewise
Published under the AGPL. Every privacy claim we make is a file you can read, which is exactly the argument this row is about.
On PDF and mobile, WPS beats all three of us
We export PDF and view it; we do not edit it. And there are no phone or tablet applications at all. If either of those rows decided it for you, that decision stands.
Model-level descriptions from each vendor’s published licensing and product structure, as of 8 September 2026. No competitor prices appear on this page.
Or take the free one and decide later
It installs beside whatever you use now and costs nothing to try.