Self-hosted alternatives to Google Docs

Collaborative document editing on your own infrastructure. Below are 12 open source options you host on your own server — with no monthly per-user fee and full control of your data.

Stirling-PDF

★ 82,894

Stirling-PDF is a Swiss-army knife for PDFs running in the browser via your own server: merge, split, compress, convert, sign and OCR. It replaces online PDF sites without uploading sensitive documents to third parties.

Document Management Apache-2.0

Paperless-ngx

★ 42,365

Paperless-ngx digitizes, indexes and organizes all your paper documents, with OCR and full-text search. Self-hosted, it becomes a fully private paperless archive, with tags and automatic matching.

Document ManagementArchiving and Digital Preservation (DP) GPL-3.0

Etherpad

★ 18,409

Highly customizable online editor providing collaborative editing in real-time.

Office Suites Apache-2.0

Docuseal

★ 17,261

Create, fill, and sign digital documents (alternative to DocuSign).

Document Management AGPL-3.0

BentoPDF

★ 13,836

Powerful, privacy-first, client-side PDF toolkit that allows you to manipulate, edit, merge, and process PDF files directly in your browser.

Document Management AGPL-3.0

Documenso

★ 13,514

Digital document signing platform (alternative to DocuSign).

Document Management AGPL-3.0

Gotenberg

★ 12,446

Developer-friendly API to interact with powerful tools like Chromium and LibreOffice for converting numerous document formats (HTML, Markdown, Word, Excel, etc.) into PDF files, and more.

Document ManagementAutomation MIT

Grist

★ 11,176

Next-generation spreadsheet with relational structure, formula-based access control, and a portable, self-contained format (alternative to Airtable).

Office Suites Apache-2.0

CryptPad

★ 7,739

Collaboration suite built to enable collaboration, synchronizing changes to documents in real time.

Office Suites AGPL-3.0

ONLYOFFICE

★ 6,631

Office suite that enables you to manage documents, projects, team and customer relations in one place.

Office Suites AGPL-3.0

OpenSign

★ 6,549

Document signing software (alternative to DocuSign).

Document Management AGPL-3.0

Papra

★ 4,837

Minimalist document storage, management and archiving platform designed to be simple to use and accessible to everyone.

Document ManagementArchiving and Digital Preservation (DP) AGPL-3.0

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free self-hosted alternative to Google Docs?

Yes. We've gathered 12 self-hosted, open source alternatives to Google Docs — including Stirling-PDF, Paperless-ngx, Etherpad. You run all of them on your own server.

What is the best open source alternative to Google Docs?

Stirling-PDF is one of the most popular (82,894 GitHub stars). The "best" depends on your case — compare the options below.

Do I need a server to replace Google Docs?

Yes. You can use a home server (homelab) or a cheap VPS (from ~€4/mo). See the hosting suggestions on this page.