Free spreadsheet apps for Mac: an honest roundup

Apple Numbers

Best for: good-looking personal documents and Apple-device users.

Numbers is free, often pre-installed, and runs on Mac, iPhone and iPad with iCloud sync and real-time collaboration. Its canvas of free-floating tables and its templates make documents look polished with little effort. Premium templates and AI features need an Apple Creator Studio subscription, but the core app is free.

Watch out for: Excel files are imported and converted to .numbers, so you must export back to .xlsx; the current version requires macOS 26. More in Numbers vs Foglio.

LibreOffice Calc

Best for: the most complete free desktop spreadsheet, and OpenDocument users.

LibreOffice is open source (MPL-2.0) and runs on macOS, Windows and Linux. Calc has pivot tables, macros in Basic and Python with partial VBA support, a vast function library and excellent import and export of old formats. It works offline with no account and no AI features by design.

Watch out for: about 300 MB to download, a whole office suite installed, and an interface that does not feel native on macOS. More in LibreOffice vs Foglio.

Google Sheets

Best for: working on the same sheet with other people.

Google Sheets runs in any browser and on phones, with the best real-time collaboration around, version history, Apps Script automation and functions that pull data from the web.

Watch out for: you need a Google account, files live on Google's servers, and offline use requires Chrome or Edge with an extension. More in the Google Sheets alternative.

Excel for the web

Best for: occasional Excel users who want the real thing for free.

Microsoft offers Excel in the browser at no cost with a Microsoft account. It opens .xlsx files faithfully, because it is Excel, and supports co-authoring through OneDrive.

Watch out for: it needs an internet connection and OneDrive, and some desktop features (such as running VBA macros) are not available. The desktop Excel for Mac needs a subscription or license to edit.

ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors

Best for: people who want a free, Office-like suite with a familiar ribbon interface.

ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors is a free, open-source (AGPL-3.0) suite for Mac, Windows and Linux that uses Office Open XML (.xlsx) as its native format and includes a spreadsheet editor with pivot tables.

Watch out for: it is a cross-platform app built on web technology, so it is a larger download and feels less Mac-like than a native app.

Foglio

Best for: opening and editing everyday Excel files quickly, privately and natively.

Foglio is free and open source (MIT / Apache-2.0), written in Swift/AppKit with a Rust engine. It is a 7.5 MB download, opens in 0.24 s, edits .xlsx directly, understands about 500 Excel functions in your language (=SOMMA() on an Italian Mac), and detects CSV encodings and delimiters. No account, no telemetry, no network connections of its own.

Watch out for: it is a 1.0 release; there are no pivot tables (only a simpler Summarize by), no macros, no collaboration, no iPhone or iPad version, and it cannot open password-protected files. See the full comparison.

Free spreadsheet apps for Mac: which one for which job

• Excel attachments you need to edit and send back: Foglio, LibreOffice or Excel for the web.
• A shared family or team sheet: Google Sheets or Numbers.
• Pivot tables or macros, offline, for free: LibreOffice Calc.
• Pretty personal budgets and lists: Numbers.
• Confidential data that must not leave your Mac: a desktop app with no cloud: Foglio, LibreOffice or Numbers with iCloud turned off for it.
• An old Mac: LibreOffice supports macOS 11 and Foglio macOS 14; the newest Numbers needs macOS 26.