Microsoft
Rutba Office vs Microsoft 365
The desktop suite the formats are named after, sold as a per-user subscription with cloud storage and a mail service alongside it.
Ours is the free one, so read this knowing whose page you are on. What follows starts with where Microsoft 365 beats us, because on this page that is the part you cannot get from them.
First, honestly
Where Microsoft 365 wins
Not a courtesy paragraph. Each of these is a real reason to choose them over us.
It defines the formats
When a .docx renders differently anywhere, Word is right by definition and everyone else is wrong. No compatible implementation can ever fully close that gap, including this one.
Depth nothing else has
Decades of features — mail merge, pivot tables, VBA, add-ins, an ecosystem of consultants. If your work depends on one of them, nothing on this page is a substitute.
Collaboration that works
Real-time co-authoring across desktop, web and phone, with the storage and identity underneath it already in place.
And ours
Where Rutba Office wins
Nothing to subscribe to
No per-user fee, no renewal, no seat count to manage — and no risk of losing access to your own documents because a card expired.
No account at all
The desktop apps want you signed in. This one has nothing to sign into and collects nothing, which for some organisations is not a preference but a requirement.
It opens the archives their own client left behind
A .pst or .ost from an old machine opens directly, with no Exchange, no import wizard and no licence.
Side by side
The seven structural questions
Asked of desktop office suites. A component and a desktop suite are not decided on the same seven, so each group has its own.
| Question | Rutba Office | Microsoft 365 |
|---|---|---|
| FreeUsable in full, at work, without paying | Yes | No |
| Works offlineEverything functions with the network off | Yes | Partly |
| No accountUsable without signing in to anything | Yes | No |
| Microsoft formatsReads and writes .docx, .xlsx and .pptx | Yes | Yes |
| Mail includedA mail client in the same suite, not a separate download | Yes | Yes |
| Outlook archivesOpens .pst and .ost files | Yes | Yes |
| Source publishedYou can read and change the code | Yes | No |
These seven are the questions this project was built to answer, so of course it answers them. Feature depth, maturity, collaboration and support contracts are not on this table, and Microsoft 365 beats us on at least one of those.
Verdict
Who should choose which
If your work runs on Excel macros, mail merge or co-authoring, stay. Nobody should switch away from the reference implementation to save money on software that is already paid for. This is for the machine that does not have a licence, the archive nobody can open, and the person who does not want an account.
Model-level descriptions from Microsoft’s published licensing and product structure, as of 8 September 2026. No prices are reproduced here — check microsoft.com/microsoft-365 for those.
Also worth reading
Compared with each other, not with us
We are not in these. They are the same two questions asked without our thumb on the scale.
Microsoft 365 vs Google Workspace
The two subscriptions almost every organisation ends up choosing between, and the choice is less about features than about where a document is supposed to live.
Against Google Workspace →
Microsoft 365 vs LibreOffice
The paid standard against the free one that has been shipping for over a decade. The honest version of this comparison is shorter than most: it turns on how much your formatting has to survive.
Against LibreOffice →
It costs nothing to find out
Install it beside whatever you use now — a normal per-user install, a normal uninstall.