Google Sheets vs Excel—The Ultimate Showdown

It’s 2021, and most of us have used both Google Sheets and Excel. But, have you ever thought about which among these tools is the better option? At some point in your career, you’d have to make the decision and choose one over the other.

That’s why this Google Sheets vs Excel comparison is important. It throws light on some important differences that impact the end-user. 

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In this blog, we’ll evaluate each of these tools in different categories and let you decide which one is best suited for your needs.  Let the Google Sheets vs Excel Showdown begin. 

We’ll cover the following in this comparison: 

Overview: Google Sheets vs Excel

Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel are both spreadsheet applications that do virtually the same thing. Whilst Excel has always been the go-to spreadsheet application for business, times are changing.

Now, Excel is not necessarily the first choice for consumers.

Its biggest rival in recent times is Google Sheets. Part of the free G-suite package, Sheets seamlessly integrates with other Google applications such as Google Drive, Google Docs and Gmail.

But does free equate to better? It’s time to stack them up against each other and find out.

The below table gives you a crisp overview of the winners in various categories.

Category	Winner
Accessibility and Cost	Excel
User-friendliness for Newbies	Google Sheets
Functionality and Features	Excel
Collaboration	Google Sheets
Worksheet Size	Excel
Security	Tie
Autosave	Google Sheets
Customization	Excel

Read on for more detailed rankings.

Google Sheets vs Excel Comparison Video!

Key Differences: Google Sheets vs Excel

Both Excel and Google sheets are spreadsheet applications and are very similar if you look at them from a distance. But some important features give them very unique differences.

We’ll objectively look at these key differences of Google Sheets vs Excel one by one below.     

Accessibility and Cost

The main difference between Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel is that Google Sheets is purely available online whereas Microsoft Excel is available online and as a desktop application with a Microsoft 365 subscription.

You can use Excel without paying for a subscription. If you have a Hotmail, live, or outlook email account or even an Xbox account, you already have access to all Microsoft applications’ web versions.

Upgrading to a paid subscription gives you the ability to download the full desktop version of Excel.

Excel Online operates in the same way as Google Sheets. However, if your internet connection goes down, Excel has the edge over Google Sheets as you can continue to work in the desktop app.

The deciding factor might be $$$$$. Google Sheets is completely free with a google account. Excel Online is also free with a Microsoft account. Both will be inaccessible if the internet goes down (unless you have offline editing turned on).

However, Microsoft offers paid subscriptions with Microsoft 365 and access to download the desktop version. The cost per month is slightly more than your average cup of coffee. Google Sheets has no such offering.

The choice is yours!

WINNER: Microsoft Excel. For this author, the reliability of a desktop app is worth paying for! It’s comforting to know you have access to your files regardless of internet connectivity.

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User-friendliness for Newbies

Any Google Sheets vs Excel comparison is not complete without talking about the user-friendliness of these applications.  

Excel can be a bit daunting for newbies. Hundreds of commands spread across numerous ribbons and tabs, hundreds of formulas, complex data analysis tools, and visualization features.

It’s a lot to take in! There’s a reason why Excel tutorials are some of the most popular on YouTube. It’s a huge, complex application that can take years to truly master.

Google Sheets seems a lot easier purely based on the layout and the simplified toolbar system. It is true to say that you don’t get as much functionality with Google Sheets but for beginners, it appears less overwhelming.

Excel Ribbon

Google Sheets Toolbar

WINNER: Google Sheets. Almost all the basic functionality of Excel but a lot less intimidating.

Functionality And Features

This is the big one! At the end of the day, the application you use needs to be up to the job. Your preference here will very much be determined by the type of work you do.

Formulas and Processing Power

Functions and Formulas are the backbones of any spreadsheet application. They help us perform basic to complex calculations, automate tasks and processes, organize, sort, and analyze data.

Excel contains over 450 functions and formulas, and new ones are released frequently. Having access to the best and most comprehensive library of these is invaluable.

Believe it or not, some formulas are available in Google Sheets and not in Excel. Sheets has a category of functions specifically for Google, like GOOGLEFINANCE, GOOGLETRANSLATE, ARRAYFORMULA, and SPARKLINE.

Google Sheets also released dynamic array functions like FILTER, SORT and UNIQUE before Microsoft but as of 2019, these functions are also now available in Excel.

If analyzing large datasets is more your thing, you will quickly become frustrated with Google Sheets simply due to it being cloud-based. Cloud-based apps tend to struggle with large datasets.

However, if you are a casual Excel user who deals with smaller spreadsheets, Excel might be overkill. If the most you need to do is a couple of SUM calculations and some formatting, Google Sheets is more than enough.

Business Intelligence Tools

Excel has a comprehensive set of Business Intelligence Tools like Power Pivot and Power Query. These powerful utilities supercharge data analysis.

There are no equivalent utilities in Google Sheets, and even if there were, the processing power of a cloud-based app would struggle to handle and process thousands of rows of data.

Data Visualization

Google Sheets is limited when it comes to data visualization. On the other hand, Excel has a host of charts from the basic column, bar, and line charts all the way to waterfall, sunburst, and stock charts.

If creating visual dashboards and telling the story of the data is important to you, Excel is your best friend.

Pivot Tables

If you analyze data, you will be very familiar with PivotTables. It took a while for Google Sheets to catch up to Excel in terms of PivotTable functionality, but one advantage of Google Sheets over its rival is that PivotTables update automatically when new data is added to the source. In Excel, you need to remember to press the Refresh button.

Format as Table

A powerful and useful feature in Excel is the ability to format a range of data as a table. Tables can be named and referred to in formulas to make the notation easier to understand.

However, the single best use of tables in Excel is their ability to auto-expand to accommodate new data. Charts or PivotTables that use the table data can be updated to include the new rows with the click of one button.

Google Sheets updates PivotTables automatically but there is no equivalent feature to format data as a table.

GoTo Special

Excel’s GoTo Special lets you highlight specific cells in a worksheet based on the cell contents. Highlight blank cells, cells that contain formulas, cells that contain constants or even cells that contain conditional formatting or errors.

This is a great utility for troubleshooting and performing tasks quickly.

Google Sheets does not have this functionality. The most you can do is jump to a specific cell reference.

WINNER: Microsoft Excel. More formulas, more features, better processing, and enhanced data visualization. No contest really.

COLLABORATION

Most of us have reason at one time or another to share files. Back in the day, this process was cumbersome. Open an email, attach the file to the email, send it to a colleague and then sit patiently and wait for them to send the document back to you with their changes.

Wash, rinse, repeat. How Google Sheets vs Excel fare here is very important to all those collaborators out there. 

Thankfully, with the advent of collaboration and real-time co-authoring, this process is now a breeze. Send a link to the document stored in the cloud and see changes as they are made.

Multiple people can work on the same document at the same time and changes are tagged with a name to identify who has made what change. If you need to roll back to a previous version, no problem!

Both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel offer this functionality. However, this is what Google Sheets is known for as it was one of the first applications to introduce advanced collaboration features.

WINNER: Google Sheets. Sharing is caring. Now, you can achieve all of this in Excel too, but real-time collaboration only exists in Excel for Microsoft 365. If you have the standalone or non-subscription version, I’m afraid you are back to emailing your spreadsheets like it’s 1999.

LARGE WORKSHEETS

Most worksheets we create are of manageable size. However, if you are a financial professional or data analyst you could be dealing with large datasets and need worksheets that can handle a large amount of data input. Effectively, you don’t want to run out of cells.

WINNER: Microsoft Excel. Sometimes size does matter. Google Sheets can handle 5,000,000 cells. Microsoft Excel can handle 17,179,869,184 cells.

SECURITY

Microsoft has had a bad rap over the years when it comes to security. Password protected files that any basement-dwelling teen hacker could break into just weren’t going to cut it anymore. Microsoft improved security with the introduction of OneDrive cloud storage.

Cloud files are much less susceptible to being hacked than files stored on your PC. One wrong download from a suspicious looking email and you could lose everything.

Microsoft further improved OneDrive’s security recently with the introduction of the Personal Vault for confidential or sensitive files. The Personal Vault uses two-factor authentication via the Microsoft Authenticator app adding an extra layer of security.

WINNER: This is close, so let’s call it a tie. Google Drive also uses two-factor authentication for files stored in the cloud.  

AUTOSAVE

In the good old days before cloud storage was prevalent, saving documents was a bit of a pain. If you didn’t know many keyboard shortcuts you knew CTRL+S. Mainly due to frantically pressing it every 2 minutes in case the application decided to hang and crash. 

Google Sheets vs Excel have very different approaches to autosave. Excel has always had an autosave feature, but it seemed patchy and work was very often lost. 

This all changed with the introduction of Microsoft 365. Now, Excel auto-saves your file as you make changes, so you very rarely lose anything if something catastrophic happens.

However, the autosave button is only available to Microsoft 365 subscribers who save files to OneDrive.

WINNER: Google Sheets. No subscription is required to autosave files. Google Sheets constantly saves your file for you. It even backs up all your data.

CUSTOMIZATION

Out-of-the-box applications are fine, but you will probably want to customize your copy and set it up in a way that works best for you.

That might include, creating a custom ribbon to house commands and macros relevant to your work, changing settings, assigning keyboard shortcuts etc. Let’s see how Google sheets vs Excel fare here. 

Google Sheets is very limited in this regard. It truly is, what you see is what you get. If you can’t see it on the toolbar, you need to explore the drop-down menus.

When you do find your command, remember where it is as there is no way to move it anywhere else.

In Microsoft Excel, you can create custom ribbons and groups and add your own commands. Excel also has a Quick Access Toolbar where you can store your most frequently used commands as handy, easily accessible buttons.

WINNER: Microsoft Excel. Because we’re lazy and want everything at our fingertips.

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FAQs

Google Sheets vs Excel: Closing Thoughts

In conclusion, both tools are great for different purposes. For us, Excel still reigns supreme and Google Sheets has a little way to go before it catches up. 

However, for collaborating on spreadsheets, Google has really got this right and Microsoft could definitely learn a thing or two. 

Which do you think is the winner in this Google Sheets vs Excel showdown? Do tell us in the comments below.  

If you want to read more about the history and possible future of Excel, we really enjoyed this Excel Never Dies article.

If you need high-quality guides for Excel check our free Excel resources centre.

If you are looking for in-depth Excel courses check our collection of Excel Courses.

To read more about Google Sheets, take a look at the following links:

Automate.io – 20 Essential Google Sheets Tips and Tricks for Everyone

Spreadsheet Class – 7 Reasons why your business should use Google Sheets