Open-source Google Sheets alternatives

Univer is an open-source SDK that lets you build office-style applications within your own product. It provides components for spreadsheet, document and presentation features, with no requirement to use a hosted app or a fixed interface. The architecture is plugin-based, with rendering on Canvas, a built-in formula engine and a single Facade API usable in browsers and on Node.js. It is written in TypeScript and released under the Apache-2.0 license.

Typical uses include adding spreadsheet or document editing to a SaaS product, an internal tool, a business intelligence workflow or an AI application, and running workbook or document processing on the server with the same architecture as in the browser. Plugins let you include just the capabilities you want, and presets offer a fast way to get going, and extend behavior with custom plugins, commands, services and UI components. The wider Univer family also covers bases, boards and PDFs, and Univer Workspace, a workspace you can host yourself, is built on the SDK as an open-source example. The README distinguishes the open-source scope from the Pro offering.

Grist is a relational spreadsheet that aims to combine the flexibility of a spreadsheet with the robustness of a database. Columns behave as they do in a database, with a name and a type, while users still write formulas and arrange data in a familiar grid. This repository, grist-core, is the Community edition that you can run as a server for hosting spreadsheets.

Two sibling projects exist: grist-desktop, an app for Linux, macOS and Windows that edits spreadsheets stored locally, and grist-static, a fully in-browser build that shows spreadsheets on a website without a back end. You can try the core with Docker or the desktop app. A list of extra features that are not in grist-core is maintained for people comparing the editions.

All three repositories are open source under the Apache License 2.0. Grist Labs, an NYC-based company, develops the project, with significant contributions from French government organizations ANCT and DINUM, and sells an edition with additional features. It also runs free and paid hosted services at getgrist.com. Help is available on Discord and a community forum.

CryptPad is an open-source collaboration suite with end-to-end encryption. Documents are synchronized between collaborators in real time, and because user data is encrypted, an attacker who breaches the server cannot read the stored content. Administrators who run unmodified code and the service itself also cannot see what users store.

The encryption happens in the browser before data is sent to the server or to collaborators. The README is candid about a limit of this model: the code that does the encrypting is delivered by the host server, as on any website, so users must trust the administrator to keep the server secure. Repository topics mention collaborative editing, real-time work and the ChainPad algorithm.

CryptPad is written in JavaScript and licensed under AGPL-3.0. A developer guide covers setting up a local instance, and an admin guide covers production deployments. Official Docker images for AMD64 and ARM64 are published with every release, and a Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml are included in the repository.

EtherCalc is a web spreadsheet that several people can edit at the same time. It started as a Node.js port of the multi-user SocialCalc engine. The current branch is a TypeScript rewrite aimed at the Cloudflare full stack, using Hono, Workers, Durable Objects, D1, KV and R2, with documentation hosted on its own site and a REST API described in a separate document.

You can deploy it to Cloudflare with wrangler, or self-host it anywhere with docker compose and no Cloudflare account. There is also an npm package that starts a local server on port 8000, which requires Bun on the machine. The Docker route stores spreadsheet room state in a data folder and needs no Redis or Node runtime.

The project warns that the plain Docker setup serves unencrypted HTTP without rate limiting or TLS, so it should be used only on trusted networks such as localhost, an office LAN or a VPN. Anything exposed to the public internet needs a reverse proxy in front. EtherCalc integrates with the Drupal content management system, and translated versions of the site exist.

Mintable is an open-source personal finance automation tool aimed at people who want to track account balances and spending without relying on a service like Intuit's Mint, which comes with ads and third-party data collection. It lets users keep their financial data under their own control in a spreadsheet they own.

It aggregates transactions from checking accounts, savings accounts and credit cards across banking institutions, using Plaid's free plan to connect to US banks, and exports balances and transactions into Google Sheets, where users can analyze and budget with formulas. Plaid is optional: transactions can instead be imported from a CSV bank statement entirely on the local machine, and results can likewise be exported to CSV instead of Google Sheets if preferred. Running Mintable automatically on a schedule can be done for free with tools like BitBar, cron, or GitHub Actions.

Mintable requires Node.js 11 or newer, does not natively support non-US banks without editing country codes, and does not natively support Windows, though a workaround is referenced. It is written in TypeScript and JavaScript and released under the MIT license, with the README comparing it to paid alternatives such as Microsoft's Money in Excel.