Google Sheets vs Excel: Which Spreadsheet Should You Use?

Published: October 17, 2026. Every price and limit below was re-verified on the official Microsoft and Google pages today.

Bottom line: Google Sheets and Excel are both superb spreadsheets, but they win at different jobs. Sheets is free, browser-based, and unbeatable for real-time collaboration — sharing a sheet is as easy as sending a link, and up to 100 people can edit at once. Excel is the heavyweight: a desktop-first powerhouse with a 17-billion-cell capacity, the deepest statistical and financial function library of any spreadsheet, and automation tools (Power Query, VBA) that Sheets cannot match. Pick Sheets if you collaborate, pick Excel if you crunch. Below is the full hands-on comparison I ran in October 2026 on both platforms.

Google Sheets vs Excel at a glance

How much does each one cost?

Sheets wins on price, no contest. Google Sheets is completely free with any Google account — full features, unlimited spreadsheets, 15 GB of shared Drive storage. There is nothing to buy and no trial to expire. Google’s paid Workspace plans exist, but they buy you AI features and admin controls, not spreadsheet capability.

Excel is free only in its web version, which is genuinely usable but missing desktop power features (no Power Query, no VBA, limited add-ins). The real Excel — the full desktop app — comes with Microsoft 365 Personal at $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year (about $8.33/month if you pay annually), including 1 TB of OneDrive storage and the desktop Office suite. A one-time-purchase Office Home 2024 license also exists if you refuse subscriptions. If $9.99/month sounds steep for a spreadsheet, my roundup of free Microsoft Office alternatives covers the full free Office spectrum, Sheets included.

Which has better collaboration?

Sheets is the collaboration king. Real-time co-editing is baked into its DNA: you share a link, people type at the same time, colored cursors show exactly where everyone is, and cell-level comments resolve into threads. In testing, opening a shared sheet on a phone, a Chromebook, and a desktop simultaneously worked flawlessly — no checkouts, no lock conflicts, no version forks. Sheets supports up to 100 simultaneous editors per document.

Excel does offer co-authoring, but only when the file lives on OneDrive or SharePoint, and simultaneous editing is still more fragile — you’ll occasionally hit a sync conflict banner or a cell lock that Sheets would never show. Excel’s sharing also requires everyone to have (or create) a Microsoft account. If your work involves more than two people touching the same file regularly, Sheets saves you real friction every week.

Which is better for big data?

Excel crushes Sheets on capacity. Excel worksheets allow 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns — roughly 17.2 billion cells per sheet (Microsoft’s official specifications). On the desktop app, a million-row dataset with pivot tables is business as usual.

Sheets capped spreadsheets at 10 million cells for years — then in September 2026 Google doubled the limit to 20 million cells (Google Workspace Updates blog), applying to new, existing, and imported files. That’s a meaningful upgrade, but it’s still about 850x smaller than Excel’s ceiling. In practice, Sheets also gets sluggish with complex formulas above a few hundred thousand rows, because every recalculation runs through your browser. My rule of thumb from testing: under ~200,000 rows, Sheets is fine; beyond that, Excel on the desktop is the only sane choice. For genuinely massive datasets, neither tool is right — you’d move to a database or a tool like Power BI.

Which has better formulas?

Both tools now ship 400+ functions, and the gap that used to exist is mostly closed: both have XLOOKUP, dynamic arrays, and LAMBDA for custom functions. Sheets even has a unique ace — the QUERY function, which lets you run SQL-style queries (=QUERY(A:F,"select A,sum(D) group by A")) directly against your data. No Excel equivalent exists as a single function.

But Excel’s function library is deeper where it matters for finance and statistics: more specialized financial functions, stronger what-if analysis (Scenario Manager, Solver, Goal Seek), and more robust array handling. In my testing, the same nested formula suite ran identically in both, but Excel’s error messages and formula auditing tools (trace precedents/dependents) made debugging genuinely faster. A side note: if formulas slow you down, using AI to write and debug Excel formulas is a skill worth building — it works for Sheets formulas too.

Do they work offline?

Excel wins offline. The desktop apps are fully functional with no internet connection: open any local file, run VBA, use Power Query, save anywhere. That’s why finance teams and travelers still default to it.

Sheets is cloud-native: your files live in Drive and the app runs in a browser. You can enable offline access in Chrome or Edge (install the Google Docs Offline extension, toggle “Available offline” per file), and it works — edits sync when you reconnect — but it’s a setup step most casual users never take, and the offline mode lacks some add-ons. If you regularly work on planes or in areas with spotty internet, Excel’s desktop app is the safer bet.

Which has better automation?

This is closer than it looks, and it depends on who you are. Sheets’ Apps Script is free, cloud-native JavaScript: you can automate sheet chores, build custom menus, and call external APIs (fetch a live exchange rate into a cell) with no extra license. It runs on Google’s servers, so your automations work while your laptop is closed. The macro recorder generates Apps Script code for you.

Excel counters with VBA — decades old, Windows-desktop-only, but unmatched for deep desktop automation — plus Office Scripts (TypeScript for Excel on the web) and, most importantly, Power Query: a visual ETL tool that pulls, cleans, and reshapes data from databases, CSVs, web pages, and other sheets before it ever lands in your grid. Power Query alone is a reason data analysts won’t leave Excel; Sheets has nothing native like it (you’d script the equivalent in Apps Script yourself).

Which AI is better: Copilot in Excel or Gemini in Sheets?

Both apps now have built-in AI assistants, and neither is free with the base product. Gemini in Google Sheets (available on Workspace Business Standard at $14/user/month, or Google One AI Premium at $19.99/month for individuals) sits in a side panel: it writes formulas from plain-English descriptions, builds formatted tables from a prompt, and summarizes data ranges. In 2026 it gained multi-step task handling (“add dropdowns, formulas, and freeze headers”) and genuinely understands sheet context.

Copilot in Excel (requires an eligible Microsoft 365 plan) goes deeper on analysis: it generates formulas, suggests PivotTables, and in 2026’s Agent Mode can even run Python in Excel for statistics and forecasting. My hands-on verdict matches what I’ve seen across AI-assisted spreadsheet workflows: Gemini vs Copilot is a two-horse race where Copilot leads on heavy numerical analysis and Gemini on conversational, in-grid help. Honest note: neither replaces knowing your formulas, and both occasionally generate plausible-looking but wrong results — always spot-check AI-written formulas on a small sample first.

What about mobile and everyday usability?

Both have solid Android and iOS apps, but spreadsheets are desktop tools at heart. Sheets’ mobile app is snappier for viewing and light edits, and its sharing model (“anyone with the link”) makes it the better choice for collecting responses — think expense trackers, signup sheets, class rosters. One genuinely useful Sheets habit: learning how to freeze rows in Google Sheets makes shared sheets far more readable for everyone who opens them.

The hands-on verdict: which spreadsheet should you use?

After a week of using both for real work — a shared budget tracker, a 500,000-row sales CSV, formula-heavy dashboards, and an Apps Script vs VBA automation shootout — the split is clean:

• Choose Google Sheets if: you collaborate with others regularly; you work across devices and browsers; your datasets fit comfortably in 20 million cells; you want the free option; you like cloud-native automation with Apps Script.
• Choose Excel if: you work with large datasets; you need Power Query, Power Pivot, or VBA; you’re in finance, accounting, or data analysis; you need full offline power; your employer already pays for Microsoft 365.
• Use both if: you’re like most knowledge workers — Sheets for quick shared trackers and collaboration, Excel for the heavy analytical files. The Sheets product page and Workspace Sheets page both document easy Excel file import, so switching between them costs nothing.

For students and casual users, Sheets is the obvious starting point — it’s free and runs anywhere. For professionals whose job title includes “analyst,” Excel remains the industry standard, and its ~$8.33/month annualized cost pays for itself the first time Power Query saves you an afternoon.

Frequently asked questions

Tested in October 2026: Google Sheets in Chrome on Windows 11, and Excel desktop for Microsoft 365 (current channel). Prices checked October 17, 2026 on microsoft.com and Google Workspace pricing pages.