About openWorkstand
A workstand is the place you step up to when there is work to do: everything within reach, nothing in the way.openWorkstand is that place in your browser — 144 free tools and a full set of office apps, ready the moment you open the page, with every file kept on your own computer.
Why we built it
Writing a letter, splitting a bill in a spreadsheet, merging two PDFs or planning a week should not need five accounts, three subscriptions and a cloud you have to trust with your files. Yet that is what most everyday tools ask for today. We wanted the opposite: one calm place that opens instantly, costs nothing, and never asks you to upload your work.
What “open” means here
- Open to everyone. No sign-up, no trial, no paid tier that holds features back. Students, teachers, freelancers, office teams and families get the same tools.
- Open formats. Documents are Word files (.docx), spreadsheets are Excel files (.xlsx), the calendar is a standard .ics file, notes are Markdown and drawings are .excalidraw files. Word, Excel, Google Docs, Outlook, Obsidian and many other apps open them too — you are never locked in.
- Your files, in the open. When you start your workstand you choose a folder on your computer. Everything you make is a normal file in that folder, which you can see in File Explorer or Finder, back up, or sync with OneDrive, Dropbox or Google Drive. Each time you open openWorkstand, it reads that folder again, so your work is always there and always current.
Private by design
openWorkstand has no servers that store, read or analyse your work. The office apps and the tools run inside your browser on your device: merging a PDF, compressing a photo, editing a spreadsheet or saving a document happens locally, and nothing is uploaded. That is also why it keeps working offline once loaded.
How it stays free
Because we store nothing, running openWorkstand costs very little. That cost is covered by a small number of ads on public tool and guide pages. There will never be ads inside your workstand, and ads never see your files.
Built on great open-source work
The whiteboard uses the Excalidraw editor, documents and notes useTiptap, spreadsheets use Univer, Word and Excel files are written with docx andExcelJS, PDFs are rendered with Mozilla’s PDF.js, and code is edited with CodeMirror. We are grateful to the people behind these projects.