Google Sheets vs Excel, Best Google Sheets Alternatives in MS Excel, Smartsheet, Notion in AI ERA

Excel for the web opens on a home screen built around Create with templates, with tabs for Recommended, Lists, Invoices, Project management, Budgets and Calendars above a row of thumbnails. Below that, My workbooks lists recent files with Opened, Owner and Activity columns, plus Recent, Favorites and Shared filters.

It's free with a Microsoft account, but the browser version isn't the full desktop app. Macros in an .xlsm workbook don't run in the browser, and protected worksheets can only be viewed there. If your workflow depends on VBA, budget for the desktop app.

In Sheets, the Share dialog opens over the spreadsheet itself. It lists People with access and a General access setting, here Anyone with the link as Viewer, with a Copy link button beside Done.

Several people can edit the same sheet at once without sending versions back and forth. Excel for the web shares files through OneDrive or SharePoint instead.

The practical difference is where your team already works. If everyone lives in Gmail and Drive, a Sheets link is the lowest-friction way to share.

The Sheets home screen lists every spreadsheet you've opened in a searchable table, sortable by owner or by Last opened by me. Those files sit in Google Drive next to Docs and Forms, and they use your Drive storage.

Anything created or edited in Sheets since 1 June 2021 counts toward the 15 GB a free Google Account shares across Gmail, Drive and Photos. Excel for the web's My workbooks list draws on OneDrive and SharePoint. A free Microsoft account gets 5 GB of OneDrive, a third of Google's free allowance, although spreadsheets rarely take up much of either.

Google's Sheets FAQ covers the two questions people ask most in this comparison. Sheets is free for anyone with a Google Account.

You also don't have to convert an Excel file to use it: Sheets can edit .xlsx files directly and leaves the original intact. Converting is only needed for Gemini features such as Fill with Gemini.

When you do convert, any cell holding more than 50,000 characters is removed, which matters for sheets that store long notes or pasted text. Google has reworded that FAQ since this recording. The cost answer used to name joining a Meet call as a Workspace-only feature; it now says some Gemini in Sheets features need a Workspace plan.

Smartsheet looks like a spreadsheet but is built for scheduling projects. Its Gantt view puts the task grid on the left and a timeline of bars and milestones on the right.

Turn on dependencies in Project Settings and a task can name its predecessor. Move the predecessor's dates and the dependent task's dates shift with it, and duration, start and end date calculate from one another.

That's the job a colour-coded Sheets tracker does badly. Dependencies are available on Smartsheet's Pro, Business and Enterprise plans, and the sheet's Owner or an Admin has to switch them on.

Notion starts from pages and databases. A table is one way to look at a database.

The same data can also be shown as a board, list, calendar, timeline, gallery or chart, each with its own filters and sorts. That makes Notion good at keeping tracked items next to the notes and documents about them.

It isn't a calculation tool, though. Teams that need heavy formulas or large datasets usually keep a spreadsheet alongside Notion instead of replacing one with the other.