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.

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.