CryptPad vs Microsoft 365
CryptPad and Microsoft 365 are both office suite software. CryptPad is open source under AGPL-3.0, with 8k GitHub stars. Microsoft 365 is a commercial product from Microsoft.
Which to pick
- Pick CryptPad when
- Confidentiality is the deciding factor and you want shared documents that even the server operator cannot read, either self-hosted or on cryptpad.fr.
- Pick Microsoft 365 when
- A business of any size that relies on Excel and Office files, Windows PCs or Microsoft identity and security tooling.
Side by side
An end-to-end encrypted office suite in the browser with documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, kanban and whiteboards, where the server cannot read the content.
Subscription bundle of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Exchange email, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive, with identity management through Entra ID.
Encryption makes server-side search, recovery of lost keys and integrations harder, and large spreadsheets and documents can feel slower than Google or Microsoft equivalents.
Licence tiers are confusing, admin is complex, and prices rise regularly with bundled AI.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server and cloud service
Cloud service, desktop app and mobile app
JavaScript, Node.js and OnlyOffice
Not published
Open source, AGPL-3.0 (network copyleft)
Closed source, sold by Microsoft
Use inside your business is unrestricted. If you change it and let customers use it over the internet, you must publish your changes.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
8k GitHub stars
10k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Established: started 12 years ago, latest release 2026.10.0.
Not known
Other comparisons
More office suites and document editors
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.