GridCraft is the open-source Excel clone for Linux I’ve been waiting for

ZDNET’s key takeaways

• GridCraft is almost the MS Excel clone it intends to be.
• GridCraft is both free and open-source.
• The only thing missing is a strong template feature.

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ArtCraft, the development team behind PhotoCraft (and a number of other similar apps) reverse-engineered yet another de facto standard app: GridCraft, meant to mimic Microsoft Excel.

ArtCraft’s collection is an important step forward for open source and the Linux operating system because some of the apps they’ve built have long been considered roadblocks to user adoption of Linux. With apps like WordCraft, DeckCraft, and PDFCraft now available, those roadblocks go away. Time will tell, but these apps seem like a big step forward for Linux and open-source to me.

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What does GridCraft do?

You might be thinking that this is simply a rebranded MS Excel that runs on top of an interpretation or abstraction layer, but that is not the case. Like the other ArtCraft apps, GridCraft runs natively on whatever OS you are using (Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS, or Windows). And because these apps were written in Rust, they are blazingly fast.

I’ve opened very large spreadsheets in GridCraft (one with 1,000 rows), and the app never so much as hiccuped.

Jack Wallen/ZDNET

GridCraft works on more platforms than Excel and is free, which are obvious perks, as is the fact that it’s released under an open license, so anyone can download the code, edit it, rebuild it, and redistribute it.

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With GridCraft, you get a standard spreadsheet workflow, native XLSX compatibility, more than 500 calculation functions, charts & pivot tables, agent-native automation, and copy-on-write workbooks with instant undo snapshots, incremental recalculation, and a virtualized grid.

I’ve tested GridCraft on Linux, MacOS, and Windows, and it performs exactly the same and as fast on every platform. So if you’re accustomed to MS Excel’s draggy performance, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with how fast GridCraft does everything. Click on the launcher, and it opens immediately.

Once opened, you can start creating your own spreadsheet from scratch. Although there are three samples (Household Budget, Quarterly Sales Dashboard, and Gradebook), the templates are lacking. You can always create your own templates or download some from the official MS Template download site.

Keep in mind that if there’s one aspect of GridCraft that differs from Excel, it’s templates. I’ve yet to find a way to save a spreadsheet as an .xltx (template) file. Hopefully, the developers will add a more robust template feature in the future. In the meantime, you can always save a spreadsheet as a CSV file into a templates folder you create. It’s a hack, but it works.

How well does GridCraft perform?

As I said, GridCraft is not exactly a 1:1 drop-in replacement for Excel. Even so, it’s pretty close and works as you would expect. It offers the same features, the same UI (minus the MS branding), and does the same calculations. I opened an Excel spreadsheet with a pivot table, and everything was in place and functioning properly.

Jack Wallen/ZDNET

Although I’ve tested the app on several spreadsheets without a single issue, your spreadsheet could be the one that encounters problems. Because of that, I would suggest always making a copy of your work and using the copy on GridCraft. No matter how well GridCraft performs, do not go into the app thinking it is production-ready.

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Because spreadsheets can sometimes be the heart of your business or project, you always want to make sure you have a copy of your data. I would say that for any application you use.

Will I be using it for spreadsheets? You bet I will. In fact, I’ve begun adopting all of the ArtCraft apps to replace other, similar apps I use. The one exception to that is FilmCraft, but only because I’ve invested so much time and money into DaVinci Resolve, and FilmCraft doesn’t quite have the color tools and node trees that I’m used to.