Google Sheets vs Excel: The Honest Comparison

Google Sheets and Excel are both spreadsheet tools, but they're built for different workflows. Excel dominates financial modeling and heavy data analysis. Google Sheets wins at real-time collaboration and accessibility. Here's the full breakdown.

Collaboration

Google Sheets wins decisively. Real-time co-editing works flawlessly with any number of users. Comments, suggestions, version history — it's all built in and free.

Excel has improved with Microsoft 365's co-authoring, but it's clunkier. The desktop app still struggles with simultaneous editors, and the web version lacks features. If your team edits spreadsheets together daily, Google Sheets is the clear choice.

Formula Power

Excel has more functions and better performance. Excel has 500+ functions vs Google Sheets' ~400. Key differences:

• Excel has XLOOKUP, LET, LAMBDA, dynamic arrays — Google Sheets has most of these now but added them later
• Google Sheets has QUERY, IMPORTRANGE, GOOGLEFINANCE — unique functions Excel doesn't have
• Excel handles array formulas and complex calculations faster on large datasets
• Google Sheets' ARRAYFORMULA is powerful but different from Excel's spill behavior

Performance & Scale

Excel handles larger datasets. Google Sheets caps at 10 million cells per workbook. Excel's limit is over 17 billion cells per worksheet. For datasets over 100,000 rows, Excel (desktop) is noticeably faster.

Google Sheets starts lagging around 50,000 rows with complex formulas. If you work with large datasets regularly, Excel desktop is the better choice.

Pricing

Google Sheets is free. Full-featured, no limits (within the cell cap). Google Workspace adds admin controls starting at $7/user/month.

Excel requires a license: $7/month for Microsoft 365 Personal, $10/user/month for Business Basic, or $12.50 for Business Standard. The desktop app requires Business Standard or higher.

Best For

• Choose Google Sheets for: team collaboration, simple to medium complexity, web-first workflows, budget-conscious teams, IMPORTRANGE connections between sheets
• Choose Excel for: financial modeling, large datasets (100K+ rows), complex formulas, Power Query/Power Pivot, VBA automation, desktop-first workflows
• Use both: Google Sheets for collaborative input and reporting, Excel for heavy analysis and modeling