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Google Sheets vs Excel – Which Is Better In 2024?

Before I get into the Google Sheet vs Excel debate, there is something you need to know.

I love Excel spreadsheets, and I have been an active user for 12+ years, and I use it every day. But at the same time, I am also a massive fan of Google Sheets. I run my online business using Google Sheets and Google Drive, so I have been using them more and more lately.

So, I believe that I can be objective in my comparison of Google Sheets and Excel. I see both these are Excellent spreadsheet tools, and I am excited to see how these develop in the coming years.

Also, this article is not about judging a winner. Both are great tools with pros and cons. Based on what you want to get done, you need to analyze the functionalities and choose what suits you best.

Enough of disclaimers, let’s get started with our Google Sheets vs Excel comparison!

Pros and Cons of Google Sheets vs Excel

 

Pros

Cons

Google Sheets

Free

Limited data visualization

 

Collaborative by design

Formulas are less customizable

 

Realtime chat and revision history

Slow load times on large spreadsheets

     

Microsoft Excel

Advanced functions

More difficult to use

 

Fast

Collaboration is harder

 

Superior charting options

Costs money

Key Differences Between Excel and Google Sheets

Is Google spreadsheet the same as Excel? No, not really. They are both spreadsheet software, but there is a lot of difference between Excel and Google Sheets. Here are the key differences between Excel and Google Sheets:

  • Google Sheets is a purely online spreadsheet while Microsoft Excel is a desktop spreadsheet—although it does have an internet version.
  • Google Sheets is a free spreadsheet and you can use all its features for free. It also has a business subscription for $5. On the other hand, Microsoft Excel is not free since it is a licensed product but comes in the Microsoft Office 365 package
  • Another key difference between Excel and Google spreadsheets is that Google Sheets has simultaneous collaboration, which Excel does not have. In Google Sheets, you can share files and edit them in real-time with other people, while in Excel you can only track changes.
  • Google Sheets automatically saves your files in your drive while Microsoft Excel automatically saves your spreadsheets to one drive or share point. For Microsoft Excel, however, you will need to set this up otherwise you will have to save your Excel files manually.
  • Excel formulas and Google Sheets formulas also differ. They share the main functions but Excel has some advanced functions like XLOOKUP, while Google Sheets also has its own special functions like Google functions.
  • The scripting language for Google Sheets is the Google Apps Script, while Microsoft Excel uses VBE.
  • Excel can work with a large volume of data in millions while Google Sheets can only work with low volumes of data

Easy Comparison Tools for Microsoft Excel Vs Google Sheets

We’ve gone out of our way to build easy-to-understand diagrams to compare Google spreadsheets vs Excel. You can use this flow chart and table to identify the difference between Google Sheets and Excel and pick which suits you best.

Google Sheets Vs Microsoft Excel Flowchart

A flowchart comparison of Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel

Google Sheets Vs Excel Comparison Table

Comparison Area

Google sheets icon

Google Sheets

Microsoft excel icon

Excel

Cost of the Spreadsheet Tool

✅

 

Features and Functionalities

 

✅

Collaboration

✅

 

Formulas

✅

✅

Keyboard Shortcuts (and Mouse Shortcuts)

 

✅

Data Analysis

 

✅

Charting

✅

✅

Automation (Visual Basic in Excel and Scripts in Google Sheets)

✅

✅

Advanced Functionalities (Add-ins)

 

✅

Releasing Updates

✅

 

Google Spreadsheet vs Excel – Cost

Winner: Google Sheets

Why: It’s Free!

Cost is often one of the first determinants (and sometimes the most important) when selecting a spreadsheet program.

Microsoft Excel has a cost associated with it, and you can buy only Excel as a standalone tool or buy the Microsoft 365 subscription. But in any case, you will be charged monthly or yearly for it.

At the time of writing this article, Microsoft 365 subscription would cost you $70 a year. And if you only want Excel, it will be $159.99 (one time). Excel does now offer a free online version too, but lacks the features of the 365 subscription version.

On the contrary, Google Sheets is absolutely free to use. If you have a Google account (which many of us have because of using Gmail), then you already have access to Google Sheets.

While Google offers paid G-suite services, you can get the same Google Sheets functionality even if you are using the free version.

This is why many freelancers and small companies prefer using Google Sheets.

This is also a great strategy by Google as many students, teachers, and small companies, who cannot afford to pay for Microsoft Excel, start with Google Sheets and other Google products.

And once you are used to a specific spreadsheet program, you would try and stick to it in most cases.

So if the cost is the criteria, Google Sheets is the clear winner

The Difference Between Excel and Google Sheets Features and Functionalities

Winner: Excel

Why: It comes loaded with more functions and works a little faster

Because Excel is a tool that you can download and use on your own system, it can afford to have a lot more features than Google Sheets (which is web-based).

Excel uses the processing power of your laptop or desktop, while Google Sheets has to use the Internet connection and the servers on Google to get the same thing done (which makes it a bit slower).

This means that Excel can have better functionalities in the tool while Google Sheets would be slightly slower and would not have so many functionalities (unless, of course, they decide to come up with their own desktop app version)

Excel has also been around for a lot longer compared to Google Sheets. As a result, it has benefited from all the feedback from its users.

To give you some examples, Excel has a lot better functionalities for stuff such as Conditional Formatting or Pivot tables, or Data Analysis.

Collaboration

Winner: Google Sheets

Why: Most collaborative workplaces already use Google Sheets, and as it’s solely online, it’s easy to share spreadsheets.

If being a web-based tool is a drawback for Google Sheets when it comes to features and functionalities, it’s a huge plus when it comes to collaboration.

The level of collaboration that you can do with Google Sheets is way ahead of Excel.

While Excel has been making progress in enabling collaboration and making it easier for people to use it, it’s still not as smooth (or friction-less as they call it) as Google Sheets.

For example, if you need to collaborate with someone using Excel, these Excel files need to be saved on OneDrive or SharePoint.

While these tools may be used by big enterprise clients, most of the people are used to Google Drive, which is where you save your Google Sheets.

Collaboration in Google Sheets works seamlessly where you can have multiple users editing the same sheet from multiple devices (be it a desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile).

You also don’t need to worry about saving your Google Sheets files as it is saved in real-time. You also get this with Excel in Microsoft 365, but it’s not something you would have if you were using the older versions.

All in all, Google Sheets has an upper hand when it comes to collaboration.

Formulas

Winner: Tie

Why: Both programs use lots of formulas and while one may be ahead at any one time, it doesn’t take long for the other to catch up.

When it comes to formulas, I find Excel and Google Sheets are neck to neck.

But if you force me to choose the winner, I would go with Google Sheets. To begin with, Google Sheets has more formulas as compared with Excel. Also, because it’s made as a web-based tool, it has some formulas that can work with the web.

For example, there is a formula called IMAGE in Google Sheets that you can directly insert an image in a cell using its URL.

Also, Google Sheets came up with dynamic arrays formulas such as SORT, FILTER, and UNIQUE a lot earlier than Excel did.

And while Excel in Microsoft 365 has these new formulas, these are not available to people who are not using Microsoft 365 (Excel 2016 or 2013 or prior versions).

But in the case of Google Sheets, everyone has access to these new formulas (and everyone gets access to all the new functionalities as soon as it’s released).

While Excel has been playing catch up in the formulas areas, they have recently started working on newer formulas that are not there in Google Sheets. For example, there is a new lookup formula called XLOOKUP, and they also added a new formula called LET, which is quite useful.

I believe both Google Sheets and Excel will continue to work on the formulas and at the same time continue to copy each other.

Keyboard Shortcuts (and Mouse Shortcuts)

Winner: Excel

Why: Sometimes, the browser shortcuts get in the way of Sheets shortcuts

Excel is a clear winner when it comes to keyboard shortcuts. This is one of those areas where having a stand-alone application helps.

When you use Google Sheets in a Chrome tab or any other browser such as Firefox or Brave, you can only use keyboard shortcuts specific to Google Sheets. They cannot have a keyboard shortcut that would conflict with the browser or other popular web applications, which limits their options.

Excel, on the other hand, has no such issues.

Excel also has a lot many keyboard shortcuts there are quite useful that Google Sheets completely lacks. For example, there is no keyboard shortcut in Google Sheets for pasting data as values or applying or removing filters.

Google Sheets does allow some keyboard shortcuts to become available that are also there in Excel; it’s just not the same.

So if you’re making a switch from Excel to Spreadsheet and you are used to keyboard shortcuts, be prepared to be a bit frustrated.

Related: How to Convert Google Sheets to Excel

Data Analysis

Winner: Excel

Why: Google Sheets was not designed for powerful analysis as it has features more friendly for beginner and intermediate users instead.

To be honest, Google Sheets is not made for data analysis. Sure, you can have a few hundred or even a few thousand data points that you can work within Google Sheets, but anything more than that, and you will be miserable.

When you open a Google Sheets document, it only has 1000 rows to begin with. And if you need to add more rows, you need to go and add it manually.

This makes sense for their target audience, who mostly use Google Sheets as a data entry tool to record student scores or project timelines or basic transactions at best.

If you have thousands of rows of data, you need to get a better tool (read Excel).

On the contrary, Excel is built to work with big data.

While it has been infamous for crashing or getting too slow when you have more than a few 1000 data points, it’s gotten better and better with each version.

New tools have been released that work well with big data – such as Power Query, Power Pivot, and Power BI.

Millions of rows of data, no problem – Excel can handle it!

So if you work with a huge amount of data and need to analyze it, it’s a no-brainer – choose Excel.

Differences Between Excel and Google Sheets Charting

Winner: Tie

Why: Excel is more user friendly for charting but has less options

Both Excel and Google Sheets have similar inbuilt chart types.

While Google Sheets has more chart types (only a few extras such as Guage Chart or Timeline Chart), I find that Excel charts are easier to customize.

Also, Excel and Google Sheets have multiple interactive control options (such as dropdowns and checkboxes), which you can combine with the charts to create powerful interactivity.

All in all, there is no clear winner when it comes to charts in Excel in Google Sheets.

Automation (Visual Basic in Excel and Scripts in Google Sheets)

Winner: Excel

Why: Although Sheets can be more user-friendly for those that already understand Javascript, Excel’s native automation language is a little easier to understand.

Automation is one area where there are huge differences in Google Sheets in Excel. While Excel uses VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) as the backend programming and automation language, Google Sheets uses Google Apps script (similar to JavaScript).

While VBA is a lot easier to learn and use, it’s limited to Microsoft applications such as Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

So, if you need to automate only using these applications, then VBA is perfect for you. But in case you want to automate things that also need to interact with other applications (such as databases and web applications), you will find VBA to be a bit restrictive.

On the other hand, Google App Script can work with many different applications, but it’s harder to learn (if you already don’t know JavaScript).

Lately, Excel has been working on its backend, trying to Include JavaScript. As one of the programming languages. As of now, you can test it out in Excel online.

Since JavaScript is a lot more robust and versatile as compared with VBA. Google Sheets has a slight edge when it comes to automation.

However, keep in mind that the target segment that uses Google Sheets is mostly freelancers, teachers, students, and small businesses, so they are not overly reliant on automation compared to people who use Excel.

A lot of automation in Google Sheets is actually done using third-party tools such as Zapier.

Advanced Functionalities (Add-ins)

Winner: Excel

Why: Excel has more Microsoft-supported add-ons while Google Sheets relies on third-party apps

Excel has been working hard on adding new advanced functionalities in Excel. They have launched advanced add-ins such as Power Query, Power Pivot, and Power BI in the past few years.

As of writing this article, Power Query has already been made an inbuilt part of Excel (it’s called Get & Transform now).

This allows Excel to extract a large amount of data (millions of rows), clean and transform it, and load it back into Excel.

With Power BI, you can connect it to multiple databases and create advanced dashboards users can host online. This has made it easy for Excel to compete with tools such as Tableau.

On the other hand, Google Sheets is not working on adding these kinds of advanced data analysis functionalities into the tool. And it makes sense as the target market does not need it.

While Google Sheets does support a lot of third-party add-ins, these are not as powerful as the ones that Excel has.

So, if you are looking for advanced functionalities and add-ins, you’re better off using Excel.

Releasing Updates

Winner: Google Sheets

Why: Free immediate updates for all users

This is not about the tool’s current functionalities but how it releases new functions and functionalities to the existing customers.

If you use Excel 2016 or prior versions, the only way to get new functionalities is by upgrading to the next version, which would mean that you would have to pay for another Excel version.

But with Microsoft 365, Excel has gone the Google Sheets way.

Now, just like Google Sheets, Excel would also be releasing real-time updates. This means that as soon as the functionality is released, all the people using Excel would have that in their current version.

This is an extremely seamless process with Google Sheets, and I’m sure it will be the same with Excel in a few months.

But if you are using an older version of Excel, unfortunately, there is no way to get new functionalities unless you pay for the shiny new Microsoft 365.

Is Google Sheets the Same as Excel? Can Google Sheets Do Everything Excel Can?

Both of these programs function similarly, and for the bulk of users, you won’t find anything that Sheets can’t do that Excel can. However, once you start moving up into more complex functions and more extensive datasets, Excel is a little better in the long run. Most skills will transfer between programs, so don’t let that impact your decision of which to use too much.

Using Excel and Google Sheets Together

There’s no reason you can’t opt to use both of these programs. It is relatively easy to import files from one to the other. In fact, we have an easy guide for importing Excel to Google Sheets.

Just remember that some functions aren’t compatible and sometimes conditional formatting can get warped when transferring over. So make sure you check over your spreadsheets when converting either way.

Which is Better?

Here at Spreadsheetpoint, we love Google Sheets. It’s constantly being updated and in our opinion will one day supersede Excel in functionality too. But, Excel is still an extremely powerful program and its own right. Truth be told, you will be fine no matter if you decide to go with Excel or Google Sheets.

Who Should Use Google Sheets and Who Should Use Excel?

So which one should you use, Google Sheets or Excel? If you are someone who is heavy on calculations whether it’s for business or any other intense job then Excel is probably the right fit for you. However, if you like to seamlessly integrate your documents across platforms then you should definitely go with Google Sheets.

Google Sheets is also more user-friendly therefore definitely better for beginners to spreadsheets. We recommend Google Sheets for the casual spreadsheet user since Excel might be a bit overkill for smaller tasks. If this article may have changed your mind and you want to transfer your documents to either one of these spreadsheets then here’s an article on how to convert Excel to Google Sheets.

Google Sheets vs Excel FAQ

Is Google Sheets Better Than Excel?

Google Sheets is better for collaboration but Excel is currently a more powerful program for complex functions.

Which Is Easier to Use Excel or Google Sheets?

Generally speaking, Google Sheets is easier to use than Excel. But, if you have a lot of experience in the Microsoft suite, you may still prefer Excel.

Will Google Sheets Replace Excel?

It may not ever fully replace Excel but it is constantly encroaching on Excel’s market share.

What Can Google Sheets Do That Excel Can’t?

The main advantages are:

  • Collaboration
  • Ease of use
  • Real-time chat and commenting

Can Google Sheets Do Everything Excel Can?

Unfortunately, there are still some Excel functions that don’t work in Sheets, but since Google is constantly updating its software suite, it’s only a matter of time before they catch up.

Do Google Sheets and Excel Use the Same Formulas? / Does Google Sheets work like Excel?

They mostly do use the same formulas but there are a few exceptions. You can check them out in this article.

Conclusion

In this article, we have compared Google Sheets and Excel, focussing on things that matter to the users.

If you are looking for a good enough spreadsheet program to start with (without a lot of bells and whistles and advanced functionalities), you can start with Google Sheets.

And if you’re ready to invest some money to get more power and data analysis functionalities, you should go for Excel in Microsoft 365.

Note that this comparison is based on my experience in using these tools for more than ten years now. I don’t claim to know everything about these tools, and I still learn new things about Google Sheets versus Excel every day.

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7 thoughts on “Google Sheets vs Excel – Which Is Better In 2024?”

  1. Thanks for a very interesting article. In the section on Automation you say ‘Excel has been working on its backend, trying to Include JavaScript… as of now, you can test it out in Excel online.’ Can you comment how this is done and what, if any, additional software is needed?

    I moved from Excel some years ago and haven’t looked back. Apps Script, despite its limits, has a fresh feel to it and Javascript isn’t so difficult to learn.

    Reply
    • Sure! Thanks. Microsoft has been working on incorporating JavaScript as a scripting language in Excel through a feature called “Custom Functions.” This enables users to create custom functions using JavaScript that can be used in Excel formulas. However, please note that features and updates in software applications can change over time.

      Reply
  2. There’s one powerful feature of Excel that Google has not given, that of protecting the sheet with a password for sensitive data. That’s a deal breaker for me in Google sheets. Please add this to the comparison.

    Reply

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