WPS Office vs. Microsoft Office: Which Is Right for You?

When it comes to choosing an office suite, there are a lot of factors to consider. Are you looking for something lightweight and simple? Or are professional tools more important to you?

Choosing between Microsoft Office and WPS Office can be a bit challenging as they both share similar features and functions. But they still differ when it comes down to the details.

What Are Microsoft Office and WPS Office?

Microsoft Office and WPS Office are both office suites. They are collections of productivity software and tools that are often used by students and office workers.

Microsoft Office—also available as Microsoft 365 as a subscription—is the industry standard. The tools it offers are more suitable for an experienced user who’s doing a lot of in-depth work, which reflects its price.

Alternatively, WPS Office offers a more surface-level version of the same tools, making it more suitable for someone doing simpler work on a limited budget. Or someone who doesn’t know their way around the countless menus and features of a professional-grade office suite.

As for pricing, both WPS Office and Microsoft Office are subscription-based. Microsoft offers a variety of packages depending on the number of accounts and the level of features, starting at $8.00/month per user.

On the other hand, WPS Office offers two subscription packages depending on the number of accounts, rather than features, starting at $3.99/month per user.

Depending on your primary needs for an office suite, one included app could make or break your decision regardless of all other factors. So it’s good to start the comparison by covering what you get with each office suite.

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office comes with a wide variety of productivity tools. In addition to the main three—Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—it comes with Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, and Access.

They’re all compatible with one another and work seamlessly together. For example, you can directly copy Excel graphs and Publisher designs into a PowerPoint slide without having to convert formats.

WPS Office

WPS Office has a more modest offering. Its main apps are in its name, which stands for Writer, Presentation, and Spreadsheets. But it also comes with a PDF reader.

When it comes to basic software functionality, WPS Office is on a par with Microsoft Office. This makes it the ideal choice if you’re only looking for an office suite to write or create simple graphs and tables with.

Platform Support

Platform support plays a big role when deciding which office suite to use. Unless you plan on replacing all of your devices with compatible ones, your best option would be to go with the office suite that works with what you already have.

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office offers both desktop applications that are compatible with Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. That way, you can still use Microsoft Office even you use different operating systems.

WPS Office

Similar to Microsoft Office, WPS Office is also compatible with Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android, but it also works seamlessly with Linux. While there are ways to get Microsoft Office on Linux, you won’t need to cut any corners with WPS Office as it offers a ready-to-use Linux version.

Additional Microsoft Office Features

Microsoft has been a giant in the industry of productivity software for more than 20 years. So naturally, it has the widest array of additional features that work alongside its office suite.

Free Cloud Storage

A free Microsoft account comes with 5GB of cloud storage on OneDrive that you can connect to your office suite for syncing and backup. You can also use OneDrive to back up your personal files and share them with your contacts, freeing you from the size restrictions in email and messaging apps.

One notable downside to OneDrive is that you need a Microsoft account to register, which could be a major inconvenience if you prefer to keep using a non-Microsoft email address.

Adobe Integration

Adobe’s recent partnership with Microsoft now allows you to read and sign PDF files as well as convert other Microsoft file formats—for example, DOCX, XLS, or PPT—into PDF documents.

Templates

Microsoft Office offers thousands of pre-built, professional templates for its apps. Some are free and others come at a cost. They range from simple color schemes for decoration to complete resume setups. And, you can also create your own templates in Microsoft Word.

Additional WPS Office Features

While WPS isn’t as grand as Microsoft and doesn’t offer dozens of additional apps and services, it does come with its own additional features that make it more than just an office suite.

Free Cloud Storage

By signing up to a WPS Office account using any email address provider—even Google or Facebook—you get 1GB of free cloud storage. While you can’t effectively use it to store personal files, it does let you back up your files in real-time and sync them with other devices using the same WPS account.

Teams

Embedded into WPS Office is a Teams feature. It’s a simple way to share and submit files and tasks with a remote team. It doesn’t function as a complete team suite, but it helps you and your team members stay up to date project-wise.

Templates

Similar to Microsoft, WPS Office also offers countless templates for its productivity apps. But it also has casual templates for personal occasions such as wedding invitations and letters. The only downside is that most templates are a premium feature.

User Interface and Apps

In terms of the user interface, both WPS and Microsoft Office are similar in their appearance and presentation. They both have a sleek and minimalist user interface with ribbons and drop menus hiding a variety of tools.

The main difference appears when comparing installation options.

Microsoft Office

On both Android and iOS, you have the option to either install the complete Microsoft Office suite or individual apps, such as Word or Excel. The same applies to Windows and macOS. This gives you complete control over what to install and what to leave out.

The Microsoft Office app gives you complete access to all of Microsoft’s productivity apps as well as your OneDrive storage and additional features like the ability to share files with nearby devices.

WPS Office

Separate apps don’t apply to WPS Office. On Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows you can only install WPS Office as a whole. But similarly, you have access to WPS Cloud, along with additional tools for PDF files, picture scanning, and document translation.

Office Suite File Size

The age of your devices can also be a factor. You might struggle with CPU-intensive software slowing down your device or taking up storage space you can’t afford.

If your first and foremost priority is a lightweight office suite then WPS Office is the perfect match. It maxes out at just under 750MB when installed on Windows or macOS, while Microsoft Office’s main three apps come in at over 5GB.

The situation is more balanced on Android and iOS.

Both WPS Office and the Microsoft Office apps average at around 350MB on iOS, but a solo Microsoft app could take up to 260MB on its own. As for Android, Microsoft Office and WPS Office are both around 400MB each, and a single Microsoft app is around 100MB.

Making the Right Decision

Luckily, unless you’ve already invested in a year’s subscription, you can easily switch between Microsoft Office and WPS Office whenever you want to. But if you have the time and patience, you can install both and see which performs better on your devices and if you feel more attuned with one more than the other. Additionally, there are countless office suite alternatives to both, each with upsides and downsides of their own.