head to head · open source
LibreOffice vs Collabora Online
LibreOffice has 4,590 GitHub stars, 996 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Collabora Online has 3,389 stars, 1,014 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. LibreOffice leads on adoption by 35% (4,590 vs 3,389 stars). LibreOffice is written in C++ under GPL-3.0; Collabora Online is written in Shell under a custom or non-standard licence. LibreOffice has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, Collabora Online 30%. LibreOffice was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (libreoffice), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| LibreOffice | Collabora Online | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 4.6K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | C++ | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 996 | ⑂ 1.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick LibreOffice if
- You weight community size — 4.6K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Collabora Online if
- You want the Collabora Online feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and Collabora Online fits your workflow better
About LibreOffice
LibreOffice LibreOffice is an integrated office suite based on copyleft licenses and compatible with most document formats and standards. Libreoffice is backed by The Document Foundation, which represents a large independent community of enterprises, developers and other volunteers moved by the common goal of bringing to the market the best software for personal productivity. LibreOffice is open source, and free to download, use and distribute. A quick overview of the LibreOffice code structure. Overview You can develop for LibreOffice in one of two ways, one recommended and one much less so. First the somewhat…
read the full LibreOffice overview →
About Collabora Online
Collabora Online [!IMPORTANT] About this repository. Active development of Collabora Online has moved to our Gerrit instance at which is where the source code and code review live. This GitHub repository is kept for: Issue tracking — please report bugs and request features here. Release artifacts — the nightly container image, the Helm chart, and build assets are published from here. Source code changes go to Gerrit, not GitHub. Follow CONTRIBUTING.md and push to Gerrit instead. Pull requests here are welcome only for the parts this repository owns — the Helm chart and the docker image build. A read only mirror…
read the full Collabora Online overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is LibreOffice or Collabora Online more popular?
LibreOffice has 4,590 GitHub stars and Collabora Online has 3,389. LibreOffice has the larger community by that measure.
Are LibreOffice and Collabora Online free?
Both are open source. LibreOffice is licensed under GPL-3.0, and Collabora Online has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between LibreOffice and Collabora Online?
LibreOffice is written in C++ and Collabora Online in Shell. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, LibreOffice or Collabora Online?
Choose LibreOffice if you want the larger community (4,590 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Collabora Online if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.