Excel vs Google Sheets: Pricing, Features and AI Compared

Excel and Google Sheets are no longer just two ways to fill in a grid of cells — they are two different bets on what AI should do inside a spreadsheet. Microsoft 365 Personal starts at $9.99 a month with Copilot in Excel bundled in, while Google's cheapest Workspace plan, Business Starter at $7 a user a month, does not include Gemini in Sheets at all; that only arrives on Business Standard ($14) and up. Beyond AI, the two apps are close to feature parity on formulas and far apart on add-on depth, offline behavior and collaboration defaults. Here is where each one currently stands.

Pricing and plans

Excel is sold almost entirely through Microsoft 365 subscriptions now rather than as a standalone box product. Microsoft's consumer lineup lists Microsoft 365 Personal at $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year for one person on up to five devices, Family at $12.99 a month or $129.99 a year for up to six people, and Premium at $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year, which adds "extensive" Copilot usage and agentic AI features on top of the Family tier, according to Microsoft's plan comparison page. A one-time, no-subscription Office Home 2024 license is still sold for $179.99, though Copilot access on that tier is unclear from Microsoft's own listing. Business customers buy separate Business Basic, Standard and Premium plans with Copilot licensed on top, which Microsoft prices on its business plans pages rather than the consumer comparison page.

Google sells Sheets only inside Google Workspace (plus a free consumer tier tied to a personal Google account with no Gemini access). Workspace's published tiers are Business Starter at $7 per user per month on an annual commitment, Business Standard at $14, and Business Plus at $22, each rising roughly 20% on flexible monthly billing, per Google's Workspace pricing page. Enterprise is quote-only. Crucially, Gemini inside Sheets itself is not part of the entry-level Starter plan — Google's pricing page lists Gemini in Gmail and Gemini in Vids as the only generative AI included at that tier, with Gemini in Sheets, Docs, Slides, Drive, Meet and Chat arriving only from Business Standard upward.

Both apps also have a genuinely free entry point if you skip AI entirely. Anyone with a Microsoft account can open Excel for the web at no cost with reduced features, and anyone with a Google account can create and edit Sheets files for free with no Gemini access, per Google's Sheets product page. Neither free tier is the right comparison if AI assistance is the point of buying in, since both companies gate their spreadsheet AI behind a paid plan of some kind — a Microsoft 365 subscription with AI credits on one side, a paid Workspace edition or a Google AI Pro/Ultra add-on on the other.

For a broader look at how the two companies price storage and the rest of their office suites, Pandromeda's earlier comparison of Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 covers the full bundles; this article stays focused on what you get inside the spreadsheet app itself.

Collaboration and real-time editing

Both apps support real-time, multi-person co-editing today, but they got there from different starting points and it still shows in the defaults. Microsoft's own support documentation says an Excel workbook must be uploaded to OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or a SharePoint Online library — AutoSave then switches on and collaborators' initials appear on screen so you can see who is editing which cells. Co-authoring does not work on a file saved to a local drive or a traditional network share. Google Sheets, by contrast, is cloud-native by default: every file already lives in Drive, so multiple people can co-edit the same spreadsheet, leave comments, and assign tagged tasks to colleagues without any extra setup, per Google's Sheets product page. Both tools keep version history you can revert to, and both work across desktop, web and mobile apps.

Offline support

This is one area where the two are closer than their reputations suggest. Excel's desktop apps for Windows and Mac have always worked fully offline, syncing changes back to OneDrive once you reconnect. Google Sheets, which many people still associate with "needs the internet," can also be set to work fully offline — Google's product page states you can create, view and edit spreadsheets with no internet connection once a file is marked available offline in the Chrome browser or mobile app. The practical difference is that Excel's offline mode is its native state, while Sheets' offline mode is an opt-in setting you have to remember to turn on before you lose a connection.

Formulas and functions parity

Both apps now cover the same core ground: standard math, lookup (XLOOKUP/VLOOKUP-style), text, date and array functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting and dynamic ranges are available in both, and each app can import and partially work with the other's file format. Google explicitly markets native formula support, pivot tables and charts on its Sheets product page, and Microsoft's Copilot documentation confirms Excel's own toolset of "tables, charts, PivotTables, and formulas" remains the base layer that its AI features build on rather than replace. Where the two genuinely diverge is in advanced data science: Excel offers a built-in Python integration for statistical and visualization work directly in the grid, while Sheets leans on Connected Sheets to query BigQuery and Looker datasets with billions of rows without writing SQL — two different routes to the same "beyond spreadsheet-scale analysis" goal.

Add-ons and extensions ecosystem

Excel's extensibility runs through Office Add-ins (installed via Microsoft AppSource), classic VBA macros, and newer Office Scripts/Power Automate flows for task automation — a deep, decades-old ecosystem aimed as much at enterprise IT as individual users. Sheets takes a lighter, more consumer-facing approach: Google Workspace Add-ons (installed from the Google Workspace Marketplace) cover things like e-signature, project-management and CRM connectors, while Apps Script gives anyone who can write JavaScript a built-in way to automate a sheet without installing anything, and AppSheet lets you turn a sheet into a no-code mobile app. Neither ecosystem is objectively "bigger" — Excel's is broader for finance and enterprise workflows, Sheets' is faster to pick up for scripting and lightweight automation.

Copilot in Excel: what it actually does today

According to Microsoft's own support documentation, Copilot in Excel currently runs in three modes: Edit, which makes changes directly to the workbook including multi-step tasks; Plan, which proposes a set of changes for you to approve first; and Chat, which only answers questions about your data without touching the file. Inside those modes it can build and edit worksheets, generate formulas and data from a written prompt, create charts and PivotTables linked to source data, surface insights like trends and outliers, pull in information from the web with citations, and let admins define reusable custom "skills" for repeated tasks. Access depends on your plan: Microsoft's FAQ lists eligibility as a Microsoft 365 Personal/Family subscription with an AI credits allowance, a Microsoft 365 Premium subscription, a commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, or a Copilot Chat-eligible business/enterprise subscription — and switching between AI models (Claude or GPT) requires Premium or a commercial Copilot license. Files must be saved to OneDrive or SharePoint with AutoSave on, and editing only works when the workbook's calculation setting is "Automatic."

Gemini in Sheets: what it actually does today

Google's equivalent, Gemini in Sheets, has expanded fast. Google's own support documentation lists capabilities including building tables, formulas, charts and graphs from a prompt; generating data analysis, insights and summaries; fixing formula errors in plain language; solving optimization problems such as budget allocation or staffing; and summarizing related Gmail and Drive content. A newer capability announced on Google's Workspace Updates blog in April 2026 lets Gemini build and edit an entire spreadsheet end to end from one natural-language request — including pulling in pivot tables and complex formulas without manual setup — and Google reports a 70.48% success rate on the independent SpreadsheetBench benchmark for that capability. It is currently US-only and English-only, rolling out to Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard/Plus, and Google AI Pro/Ultra subscribers; Business Starter and plain free Google accounts are excluded. One real limitation: Gemini works best on native Google Sheets files, so an uploaded Excel (.xlsx) file has to be converted to Sheets format before most Gemini features will run on it, and chart outputs don't auto-update when the underlying data changes.

AI features head-to-head

The pattern is consistent with how Pandromeda found Notion and Obsidian splitting on AI features and privacy trade-offs in note-taking apps: the AI capability itself is converging fast between competitors, but access, pricing tier and model choice are where real differences remain. Excel's willingness to offer a Claude/GPT model switch to its higher-tier subscribers is the most distinct feature on either side right now.

Data handling is worth a line too, since it comes up constantly in reader questions about trusting either assistant with real business numbers. Google states plainly on its Gemini-in-Sheets support page that none of your spreadsheet content is shared with outsiders or used to train generative models outside your organization without permission, though it also warns that on shared or externally-visible spreadsheets, Gemini's own generated content can be seen by anyone with file access. Microsoft's parallel warning for Copilot in Excel is about accuracy rather than data handling: it tells users not to rely on Copilot's output for decisions in sensitive areas like finance, legal or medical topics without independent verification.

Which one should you use

If you work mostly alone or with one or two collaborators, want files to behave identically online and off, and are already paying for Microsoft 365, Excel with Copilot is the simpler, cheaper AI on-ramp at $9.99 a month. If your team already lives in Google Workspace, needs frictionless multi-person co-editing by default, and can commit to at least a Business Standard seat, Gemini in Sheets now matches or exceeds Copilot's headline capability — including a genuinely new whole-spreadsheet generation feature — but it costs more to unlock ($14 vs $9.99) and won't touch an uploaded Excel file until it's converted. For raw formula and pivot-table power with no AI involved at all, the two remain close enough that file compatibility and existing subscriptions, not spreadsheet features, should usually decide.

What's next: bottom line

Both companies are iterating on spreadsheet AI faster than on almost any other part of their office suites, so today's gap is unlikely to hold. Microsoft has signaled further Copilot "skills" and agent-style features for Excel, while Google's SpreadsheetBench-scored, end-to-end sheet-building feature is still rolling out region by region and due to lose its promotional usage limits in mid-2026. The practical bottom line for right now: Excel plus Copilot is the cheaper, more offline-friendly starting point for individuals; Google Sheets plus Gemini is the better bet for teams that need real-time collaboration and are willing to pay for the Workspace tier that actually includes it.

Written byFelix Moreau

Felix Moreau writes Pandromeda's software coverage and how-to guides. He covers Windows, macOS and Linux updates, the apps people rely on, emulators and developer tools, and turns official documentation into clear, numbered steps that work on the current version.

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