Excel vs. Google Sheets: Which Should You Use for Everyday Work?

Google Sheets is the easier choice for a file several people edit in a browser: it is free, and everyone you invite can work in the same file at once. Excel is stronger for large workbooks, automation and offline work, especially as a desktop app. That split settles most Excel vs Google Sheets decisions. A team tracker or a shared trip budget belongs in Sheets, a finance model with many linked sheets belongs in Excel, and a solo household budget works in either.

Both apps handle the formulas, pivot tables and charts most people use each week, so the deciding questions are price, who edits the file, where you work and how big the data gets. The job-first method for picking a productivity app applies here too. Every feature and price below comes from Microsoft’s and Google’s own pages, checked on 24 October 2026; your country, your plan and the app version you run may change the details.

Excel vs Google Sheets at a glance (checked October 2026)

The two apps differ most on cost, offline use and size limits, and least on everyday formulas. Each row below rests on the makers’ own help or pricing pages.

Is Excel free to use?

Yes, in a browser. Microsoft’s free account includes Excel for the web and the mobile apps, with files saved to OneDrive.¹ The installed desktop app is the paid part: in the US it comes with a Microsoft 365 subscription, whose Family plan covers up to six people, or with Office Home 2024, a one-time purchase for one computer.³ Outside the US, prices and plan names vary, so look up the Microsoft plans page for your own country.

Google Sheets comes whole with a free Google account, and storage is the catch. The free allowance is shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos, and Google says new accounts made on or after 9 March 2026 begin with 5 GB and receive the rest once a phone number is verified.²

A household budget or a club’s sign-up sheet fits easily in either free version. Pay for desktop Excel when you hit something only the desktop app does, such as running a VBA macro a colleague sent, or working on a large file without a connection.

Editing together, and undoing someone else’s change

Google Sheets was built for several people in one file: you share it, and Google’s help describes working with others on a file in real time.⁵ Excel does the same through co-authoring, but Microsoft’s help sets conditions: the workbook must be saved in OneDrive or SharePoint in a modern format such as .xlsx, and co-authoring in the desktop app needs a Microsoft 365 subscription; colleagues without one can edit in the browser. The same help page points co-authors to a Show Changes pane, which lists other people’s edits with the previous cell values.⁴

Both apps keep a trail of edits. In Sheets, right-click a cell and choose “Show edit history” to see who changed it. Google’s help lists gaps: changes made by formulas, format changes, and added or deleted rows don’t show, and you need edit permission to browse earlier versions. Restoring an older version also clears the cell-by-cell history from before the restore, so Google suggests making a copy instead when you need that trail.¹²

A team tracker shows why this matters. A small team updates one sheet of orders, and on Friday a delivery date is wrong. In Sheets, the cell’s edit history points to who changed it; in a co-authored Excel workbook, you check the recent edits in the Show Changes pane.

Offline: where each one stops working

The installed Excel app works without a connection, because the file sits on your computer. Excel for the web does not: Microsoft describes it as working from devices with a supported browser and an internet connection.⁶

Google Sheets can work offline, but only after setup. Google’s help lists the conditions: Chrome or Microsoft Edge, not private browsing, the Google Docs Offline extension, and enough free space on the device. Only one Google account per browser profile can have offline access, and some recent files are saved for offline use automatically, while others must be marked “Available offline”.⁷

Anyone who works on flights or with patchy connections feels this most. With Sheets, mark the files you need as available offline before you leave, then turn off the connection at home and check that each one opens.

Which is better for large data sets?

Excel holds more. Microsoft’s limits page gives each worksheet more than a million rows, and the number of sheets in a workbook is limited only by your computer’s memory.⁹ Google caps a whole Sheets file, every tab together, at 20 million cells.⁸ In 2022 the cap was 10 million cells, Google announced at the time, so older comparisons may quote a lower figure.¹³

Myth

Google Sheets stops at 10 million cells.

Fact

That was the 2022 limit. Google's Drive help now gives each spreadsheet up to 20 million cells or 100 MB.

The two limits work differently, so count before you choose. A sales log with 200,000 rows and 30 columns is 6 million cells: it fits in one Sheets file with room to spare. A log of 500,000 rows and 50 columns is 25 million cells, which is over Google’s cap but well inside a single Excel worksheet.

1. Excel: a limit per worksheet: each worksheet can hold up to 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns, and a workbook can have several sheets, limited by your computer’s memory
2. Google Sheets: a limit per file: the whole spreadsheet, every tab together, can hold up to 20 million cells or 100 MB
3. Old .xls files are smaller: the Excel 97-2003 format holds only about 65,000 rows per sheet, so save working files as .xlsx

The file format matters as much as the app. In England in 2020, Public Health England fed lab results into Excel templates saved in the old .xls format, which holds only about 65,000 rows; once a template filled, further cases were left off, and the BBC reported that nearly 16,000 coronavirus cases went unreported.¹⁴ Save working files as .xlsx, and after every import compare the row count with the source.

Formulas, pivot tables and charts: mostly shared ground

The formulas most people use exist in both apps with the same names. Google’s function list includes XLOOKUP, LAMBDA and the dynamic array helpers such as BYROW, alongside the long-standing SUM, IF and VLOOKUP, so a formula learned in one usually works in the other.¹⁵ If you are choosing between lookup functions, see how XLOOKUP and VLOOKUP differ.

Each app also has functions the other lacks. Sheets adds GOOGLEFINANCE, which fetches current or historical securities data from Google Finance, and QUERY, which runs a query written in Google’s own query language across a range.¹⁵ A file that relies on them may not calculate the same way in Excel.

Pivot tables work in both. Sheets can suggest pivot tables for the data you select and supports calculated fields; it needs a header on every column.¹⁶ For a monthly summary of spending by category, either does the job in a few clicks. Give every column a short header before you start, since Sheets will not build a pivot table without one.

What can Excel do that Google Sheets cannot?

Excel’s extra depth is mostly automation and data preparation. VBA macros, the long-standing way to automate Excel, run only in the desktop apps for Windows and Mac, not in Excel for the web. Office Scripts, Microsoft’s newer option, run on the web, Windows and Mac and can also run in Power Automate flows.¹⁰ On work and school accounts they need a business or education license, and Microsoft lists them as a preview for Personal and Family plans.¹⁷

Power Query, which Excel also calls Get & Transform, imports or connects to data from files, databases and the web, shapes it (removing columns, changing types, merging tables) and refreshes it later; it is available in Excel for Windows, Mac and the web.¹⁸ A monthly bank export with the same messy columns is a typical use: set up the cleaning once, then refresh each month.

Google Sheets automates through Apps Script. Recording a macro writes an Apps Script function you can edit and assign a shortcut.¹¹ Google’s quota page limits a script to 6 minutes per run, and scripts run by triggers on a personal account to 90 minutes a day in total, which is ample for small jobs and tight for heavy ones.¹⁹ The step from formula to macro to script works the same way in both apps, as the guide to automating a spreadsheet explains.

AI help in each app, and the plan it needs

Each app now offers a generative AIgenerative AI: AI systems that produce new text, images, audio or code in response to a request, by generating output that resembles the data they were trained on. Chatbots built on large language models are the best-known kind.Full entry in the glossary helper, and your plan decides whether you get it. Google’s help says Gemini in Sheets can create tables and formulas, analyze data, build charts and create pivot tables, and it needs an eligible Google Workspace or Google AI plan. It works best on native Sheets files, so Google suggests saving an Excel file as a Google Sheet first.²⁰

Copilot is Microsoft’s counterpart. On US personal plans, Microsoft’s plan page says Copilot in Excel is for the subscription owner only and needs AutoSave, so the file must be saved to OneDrive; a workbook kept only on your own computer is out of reach.³

Treat anything either assistant writes as a draft. Before you rely on a generated formula, test it on a few rows whose answers you already know: if it builds a total by month, add up one month by hand and compare.

Can Google Sheets open Excel files?

Yes. Double-click an Excel file in Google Drive and it opens in Sheets, and a Sheets file can be downloaded as .xlsx. Google lists what doesn’t carry over: macros, links to other spreadsheets and protection. Locked and hidden cells in an Excel workbook become viewable and editable once converted.⁵

Both apps share one habit that damages data on import: turning text that looks like a date into a date.

The study

Moderate evidence

Excel and Google Sheets both turned gene names into dates (Australia, 2021)

Researchers at Deakin University in Australia tested four spreadsheet programs by opening, pasting and typing human gene names such as MARCH3 and SEPT7. Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets converted them to dates in all three modes; LibreOffice and Gnumeric did not. A scan of supplementary files in PubMed Central from 2014 to 2020 found gene name errors in nearly a third of articles with Excel gene lists. Formatting cells as plain text before pasting or typing avoided the conversion.²¹

The scan covers one field’s published files, and Google Sheets was tested in June 2021, so its behavior may have changed. Other codes that look like dates, such as part numbers written “3-4”, may be at risk too, and the same fix applies: format those columns as plain text before you paste or type into them.

Budget, team tracker, finance model or school: which app fits

The better app depends on the job and on who else touches the file. Work files usually follow your workplace: a company on Microsoft 365 supports Excel, one on Google Workspace supports Sheets, the same split that decides whether you end up in Gmail or Outlook. The cases below are for files you choose yourself.

A team tracker, a shared trip budget and a class sign-up list suit Sheets, because everyone edits one live copy and the cell history shows who changed what. A solo household budget works in either, and Sheets is the simpler free start. Finance models with many linked sheets suit Excel, where the per-sheet grid, desktop macros and Power Query count most.

For school, follow the course: use the app your teacher sets work in, and Excel when the course teaches Excel skills. Check whether your school gives students a Microsoft 365 or Google account before paying for anything.

Before you start the file

• Estimate rows times columns
• List who will edit it, and on which devices
• Decide whether it must work offline
• Check for macros or Google-only functions
• Set ID and code columns to plain text

The bottom line

Your formulas will mostly carry across, so the size of the file and the people who edit it decide the app. Before you start a new file, multiply its expected rows by its columns and list its editors: open Excel if it will pass 20 million cells or needs VBA, and Sheets if several people in different places will edit it.