5 Google Docs alternatives in 2025
Switch from Google Docs with five 2025 alternatives for privacy, performance, and workflows.
In October of 2006, Google launched Google Docs alongside other products such as Google Sheets in order to compete with the highly popular Microsoft Office suite. Google's Workspace suite has since grown to immense popularity and reached the same level of adoption as Microsoft Office, a success partly attributed to Google being one of the first companies to provide real-time collaboration over the internet.
Though Google Docs is often an easy and safe choice for text-based content, there are many reasons you might want to move to an alternative platform, of which, in today's landscape, there are plenty. Some of these reasons include an increased desire for privacy, better offline support, more control over data ownership, improved performance for large or technical documents, or workflows that better integrate with developer tools, publishing platforms, or knowledge bases.
If your real problem isn’t writing, but keeping team knowledge organized, our companion piece on why Google Docs isn't great for knowledge bases or wikis might be worth a quick read.
As writing and documentation needs have become more specialized, a growing number of tools now focus on specific use cases rather than trying to be a one-size-fits-all solution. In this article, we will explore some of the most compelling Google Docs alternatives and what makes each of them worth considering, depending on how and where you write.
1. Dropbox
Dropbox, most notably known as a file synchronization and storage platform, released Dropbox Paper in 2017 as a way of entering the document collaboration space.
When comparing Dropbox Paper and Google Docs, the differences largely come down to scope and intent. Google Docs is a more fully featured word processor, offering advanced formatting options, robust collaboration tools, and deep integrations across Google's ecosystem. It is well suited for documents that require precise layout control, extensive sharing, and long-term maintenance.
A Focus on Minimalism
Dropbox Paper takes a more minimal and focused approach. It emphasizes speed, readability, and a distraction-free writing environment, with a clean interface and markdown-like formatting shortcuts that encourage a more fluid writing workflow. While it supports real-time collaboration, it intentionally limits advanced formatting features in favor of simplicity.
Optimal use cases
As a result, Dropbox Paper tends to work best for notes, internal documents, and early drafts, whereas Google Docs is better suited for finalized documents, formal writing, and use cases where structure and formatting flexibility are essential.
2. Microsoft OneDrive
Microsoft OneDrive, together with Microsoft Word, is Microsoft's cloud-based response to what Google Docs became in its pursuit to originally compete with Microsoft Word (yeah, we're coming full circle!). While Google Docs moved document editing into the browser, Microsoft brought Word into the cloud through OneDrive, adding real-time collaboration and cross-device access.
Advanced features and Compatibility
Compared to Google Docs, Word offers more advanced formatting, layout control, and file compatibility, making it better suited for complex or formal documents. Google Docs, by contrast, prioritizes simplicity and a web-first experience.
Ecosystem integration
In most cases, the choice comes down to ecosystem. Users already invested in Microsoft 365 benefit from deep integration across Word, Excel, and Outlook, while Google Docs fits more naturally into Google's broader suite of services.
3. Proton Drive
Introduction
Proton, most known for their privacy-focused suite of tools such as Proton Mail, Calendar and VPN, entered the document collaboration and cloud-storage space when they released publicly Proton Drive in 2022. Though meant for any file format, such as photos and spreadsheets, Proton Drive includes a built-in collaborative document editor to similar fashion as Google Docs.
Privacy and security
But Proton Drive takes a fundamentally different approach from Google Drive by prioritizing privacy and end-to-end encryption above all else. From a data protection standpoint, this makes it significantly stronger, as files are encrypted in a way that prevents Proton itself from accessing their contents.
Trade-offs in functionality
That focus on privacy, however, comes with trade-offs. Compared to Google's writing workspace, Proton Docs offers far more limited collaboration features and weaker document compatibility, particularly for complex formatting or established file standards. It is not designed to be a drop-in replacement for a full-featured word processor.
4. Lydie
Lydie is the new kid on the block, and is attempting to disrupt the collaborative workspace field by approaches document writing and collaboration from a more modern and opinionated angle. It is open-source by design and focuses on performance and developer-friendly architecture rather than matching the feature breadth of larger platforms.
Speed and AI integration
At its core, Lydie uses a sync engine that maintains a local database directly in the browser. This allows document navigation, searching, and editing to feel near-instant, even across larger workspaces. In addition to traditional text search, Lydie supports natural language search across workspace documents using AI embeddings, with AI features designed to be integrated more natively into the writing experience rather than added as standalone tools.
Current limitations
As a smaller product, Lydie currently offers a more limited feature set compared to established platforms like Google Docs or Microsoft Word.
5. Notion
Notion has redefined the document space by moving away from the traditional "blank page" metaphor and toward a modular, block-based architecture. It is designed to be an all-in-one workspace that combines notes, documents, databases, and project management in a single interface.
The power of blocks
A lot of Notion’s appeal is in its flexibility. Every piece of content, whether it is a paragraph, an image, a todo list, or a database, is a "block" that can be moved or linked to. This allows users to build highly customized layouts that changes what is possible in contrast to a linear document editor like Google Docs.
While Google Docs is optimized for long-form writing and traditional printing, Notion excels at structured information and collaborative knowledge bases. However, this versatility comes with a learning curve. For users who simply want to write a letter or a simple report, the structural overhead of Notion can sometimes feel more like a distraction than a feature.
Conclusion
The dominance of Google Docs in the collaborative writing space is well-earned - being one of the frontrunners (and even breakthroughs) of Web 2.0, but the rise of specialized alternatives shows that a single tool cannot satisfy every requirement a person or team may have. Whether you prioritize privacy, an extensive ecosystem or modularity, the choice of tool eventually depends on workflow and personal requirements.
As the landscape of digital productivity continues to evolve, the best platform is no longer just the one that is most popular, but the one that aligns most closely with your needs for security, performance, and organization.