According to a 2026 third-party review snapshot (The Business Dive): Pro about $35.99/year (PDF tools, conversion, unlimited templates, e-sign, ~20 GB cloud, fewer ads); WPS AI about $119.88/year; Pro+AI about $129.99/year; Team about $2.49 per user per month starting at two users. Kingsoft’s own blog still tells people the Writer/Spreadsheet/PPT core is free and that some PDF/AI features require payment.
Stay free if…
- You write DOCX, build simple XLSX, and present PPTX.
- You can export PDF from Writer instead of editing PDFs in place.
- You will uncheck default-app boxes and tolerate some banners.
Pay Pro if…
- You weekly OCR scans, merge PDFs, or e-sign.
- Ads on save are costing you more irritation than $3 a month.
- You want the template vault without locks.
Pay AI if…
You will actually use draft/summarize/slide-gen every week. If you try it twice a year, skip it. Combine with Pro only if the $10 delta vs AI-only is worth the PDF bundle in your region.
Refunds
Reviewers describe refund policy as technical-issue-oriented and support as hard to reach. Screenshot invoices. Cancel in the same store you used (Kingsoft account, Apple, Google, Microsoft).
Official site: wps.com
A practical decision tree
Start at free. If you only write DOCX and export PDF from Writer, stay. If you OCR or merge PDFs weekly, Pro is the honest product. If you ask AI to draft every email, the AI SKU can pay for itself in hours — if you still proofread. If you bought AI and use it twice, cancel before renewal; reviewers say refunds after the fact are painful.
Hidden costs people miss
- Time spent closing ads (free SKU).
- A second suite still installed “just in case” (disk + confusion over which icon opens .xlsx).
- Cloud quota. Free is small; Pro snapshots cite ~20 GB. That is not a replacement for Drive if you already pay Google.
- Team plan vs five personal Pros — do the arithmetic before a manager buys five separate checkouts.
How to cancel without folklore
Cancel where you paid: Kingsoft account on wps.com, Apple Settings → Subscriptions, Google Play → Payments, Microsoft account subscriptions. Screenshot the confirmation. If a trial converted, the timestamp on the email is your evidence. We cannot press Kingsoft’s refund button for you.
What the free desktop suite actually includes
Writer, Spreadsheet, Presentation, a PDF viewer, comments, Track Changes, mail merge, charting, basic conversion, and local files with no account required for ordinary editing. That list is the reason 676 million monthly devices exist. It is also why “is WPS free?” is a bad question: the core is free, the interruptions are the product, and the PDF factory is the upsell.
What free users bounce off
OCR on a stack of scans. Batch merge of 40 PDFs. Some conversion quotas. Template locks. AI drafts. Save-time subscription walls on recent mobile builds. Extra cloud. None of those are secret; they appear at the moment of need, which is psychologically effective and socially annoying.
Team plan versus five personal Pros
If five people already share Drive, do not buy five WPS clouds. If five people only meet in DOCX email, five personal Pros may still be cheaper than teaching them a new suite — until someone leaves and the company card is on a personal Apple ID. Centralize billing on the Team SKU if this is work, and write down who owns the admin.
Schools
A classroom image on free WPS is legitimate if the EULA in your country allows it. It is not a Microsoft campus agreement. Students will still click Pro. Policy: no personal subscriptions on lab logins. Present from PDF. Official download cached locally.
Related: suite comparison · install.
Keep the receipt
Screenshot the plan name, price, renewal date, and last four digits. Store purchases hide in Apple/Google/Microsoft history, not in your WPS profile. Refunds start with that screenshot. A chat that says “I paid something sometime” goes nowhere. We still cannot refund you — Kingsoft or the store can.