Gnumeric
A fast, precise spreadsheet from the GNOME project.
Instead of Excel, Google Sheets
Screenshot from www.gnumeric.org, taken 2026-10-23, shown to help you recognise the tool. It belongs to its maker. Ask us to remove it.
The story goes that before John Glenn's orbital flight in 1962, with the flight calculations done by computer, he asked for the mathematician Katherine Johnson to check the numbers by hand, a tale told in the book and film Hidden Figures. Gnumeric is a spreadsheet for people who care about that kind of trust. It is a lean spreadsheet from the GNOME project that opens large files quickly and has a good reputation for accurate calculations, it is open source, and it saves in standard formats. It runs on Linux and Windows.
Gnumeric scores a 5 on footprint, lock-in and self-direction, a 4 on power and longevity and a 3 on delivery.
Its site lists releases in March 2025, February 2026 and September 2026, so it is still maintained, though the pace is slow, and it is licensed GPL v2 or v3.
Using it means a spreadsheet that opens big files without a long wait and saves them in formats other programs can read.
- A lean spreadsheet that opens large files quickly
- Open source, saves in standard formats
- Still maintained, with releases in 2026
What stands out
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For comparison, we also reviewed Microsoft 365 (15/30) as a benchmark.
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