Etherpad
Office Suites
Highly customizable online editor providing collaborative editing in real-time.
Actively maintained
Real momentum
Apache-2.0
Next-generation spreadsheet with relational structure, formula-based access control, and a portable, self-contained format (alternative to Airtable).
Grist is an open-source office suites project positioned as an alternative to Smart spreadsheet, with 11k GitHub stars and a health score of 100/100. It committed 1131 times in the last twelve months across 12 of those months, and its status is actively maintained. Licence: Apache-2.0. It has real momentum, so treat it as a live competitor rather than a stale repository.
| Status | Actively maintained — Committed within the last 45 days. |
|---|---|
| Last commit | 2026-08-14 |
| Days since last commit | 3 |
| Commits, last 3 months | 214 |
| Commits, last 12 months | 1131 |
| Months with activity | 12 of 12 |
| Last release | 2026-07-29 |
| Archived | No |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 |
| Category | Office Suites |
| Positioned against | Smart spreadsheet |
Health score combines commit recency, twelve-month commit volume, months with activity, release recency and archive state. Metadata refreshed August 2026.
Permissive (MIT, Apache, BSD): you can fork it, close the source and sell it. Lowest legal friction for a commercial product.
This matters most when you plan to sell a hosted version. A permissive licence means anyone — including a competitor with more capital — can do the same, so your defensibility has to come from distribution, support or data, not from the code.
Grist is shipping code consistently, so a buyer comparing your product will find a maintained free option. Price and position against the total cost of self-hosting it, not against the paid incumbent's list price.
The clearest opening in the dataset. Low open-source competition usually means either a genuinely underserved need or a market too small to attract volunteers — validate demand before assuming the former.
Actively maintained. Grist recorded 1131 commits over the last twelve months, with activity in 12 of those months and 214 commits in the last quarter. Last commit: 2026-08-14. Last release: 2026-07-29. Committed within the last 45 days.
Grist is published under Apache-2.0. Permissive (MIT, Apache, BSD): you can fork it, close the source and sell it. Lowest legal friction for a commercial product.
Grist targets the same job as Smart spreadsheet and is actively shipping. Adoption sits at 11k stars. Whether it is a good replacement depends on your deployment constraints: self-hosting adds infrastructure, upgrade and security work that a commercial subscription absorbs for you.
6 open-source implementations, 2 of them actively maintained, led by Etherpad at 18k stars. Saturation score 18/100 — Open. Thin or poorly maintained open-source coverage.
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Highly customizable online editor providing collaborative editing in real-time.
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