Free Excel Clone for Linux Opens Spreadsheets Instantly
This free app opens huge spreadsheets in a blink—no more waiting for Excel to load.
If you've ever waited for Excel to load a big spreadsheet, you know the pain. A new free app called GridCraft aims to fix that. Made by ArtCraft, the team behind other open-source clones like WordCraft and PDFCraft, GridCraft is a spreadsheet program that looks and works like Excel but is built to be much faster. It runs natively on Linux, MacOS, and Windows, and because it's written in a modern programming language called Rust, it opens almost instantly—even with spreadsheets containing thousands of rows.
GridCraft isn't just a copy; it's a full-featured spreadsheet tool. It can open and save Excel files (.xlsx) without conversion, supports over 500 calculation functions, and includes charts, pivot tables, and automation features. The reviewer tested it on Linux, Mac, and Windows and found it performed identically and speedily on all three. For anyone who uses Linux, this is a big deal because Excel has long been unavailable there, forcing people to use web versions or complicated workarounds. Now, Linux users have a native, fast, and free alternative.
However, GridCraft isn't perfect. The biggest missing piece is templates: you can't save a spreadsheet as a template file (.xltx) like you can in Excel. The built-in templates are also limited. The reviewer suggests saving a spreadsheet as a CSV file in a templates folder as a workaround. Also, while GridCraft handled the reviewer's test files flawlessly, it's not officially production-ready. The advice is to always keep a backup copy of your data before opening files in GridCraft, just in case something goes wrong.
Despite these caveats, the reviewer is impressed and plans to use GridCraft regularly. For everyday spreadsheet tasks—budgets, lists, simple data analysis—it's more than capable. And since it's free and open-source, anyone can download it, inspect the code, or even contribute to its development. For businesses or individuals looking to cut software costs, or for Linux users tired of being left out, GridCraft is a welcome step forward. It may not replace Excel for power users yet, but it's a strong option that could save you money and time.
- GridCraft is a free, open-source spreadsheet app that works like Excel on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
- It opens large spreadsheets instantly and supports Excel files, charts, and over 500 functions.
- Templates are limited and it's not yet recommended for critical business files without backups.
Why It Matters
You can avoid buying Microsoft Office and still work with Excel files, even on Linux.