Google Sheets vs. Microsoft Excel in 2026: The Honest, No‑Nonsense Showdown

The Question I Receive Each Week

Every week, I hear from a friend, client, or even a total stranger who got my name from a LinkedIn post about this common question that they have: "I am intending to start my own small business. Should I acquire my knowledge of how to use Excel or just use Google Sheets? My buddy says Excel has died; my accountant says she cannot do her job without Excel; I don’t know who or what to believe."

I have answered this question for almost two decades in one form or another. In my early career, it was simple; Excel was on the top, the king; Google Sheets was the cute new toy that could barely support 10,000 rows without breaking down.

2026 will be a big change; both platforms have made strides to bring modern features and integration into each platform. Using Microsoft 365 Copilot, Excel has become heavily involved with the cloud. In addition, Excel now allows for real-time co-authoring with your team on various projects. Just as well, Google has built-in AI, allowed for AppSheet automation, and integrated with Looker Studio. The once-large gap between the two platforms has been reduced to near zero in some cases.

Google Sheets vs. Microsoft Excel in 2026

The tribal battles continue to rage, with some who swear by Excel calling Sheets "a toy", and others who evangelize that Sheets call Excel "bloated and expensive." Both positions are correct and, for that matter, incorrect. And neither will help you make an informed choice.

Let’s cut through the static. You will not find this feature comparison anywhere else. This is a practical, real-world comparison based upon fifteen years of using both applications together (often for the same project) on a daily basis. I will tell you where both applications shine and where they don't, and most importantly, point you towards the appropriate platform to use for your scenario in 2026.

Chapter 1: The Collaboration Chasm

Let’s start with the most obvious difference — and perhaps, in fact, the most deciding factor between the two platforms.

My first experience of this was on a pro bono consulting project for a four-continent non-profit. Volunteers in Nairobi were editing budget cells while a grant writer in London added comments and the executive director in São Paulo watched live. It was no emails. No “please save and send back.” No version conflicts.

What’s Good about What Sheets Can Do:

• Real-time co-authoring at its finest. You see your collaborators’ cursors moving, what cells they are selecting, and what they’re typing character by character.
• Working comment threads and @mentions, just like you would on social media.
• Advanced permission levels. You can give your users view-only, comment-only, edit (full) or protect from editing on specific ranges in your spreadsheet.
• unlimited history of file revisions, searchable, and restored at the click of a button.

Excel: Catching Up Fast

For years, collaboration in Excel was an afterthought. The work flow was save a file, email it, wait for feedback, and manually merge the changes. This was frustrating.

This is not the case any more. Excel 2026 with Microsoft 365 allows for true real-time co-authoring. It is not as smooth as Sheets (I have had instances of sync delay with very large files), but it is 90% there. The integration with OneDrive or SharePoint is solid.

Where Excel still falls behind:

• Mobile editing lacks simplicity when compared to desktop editing. The Excel app is quite powerful but has issues when used to collaborate quickly.
• Comments are not as easy to use. They do work, but they are not as conversationally friendly when creating discussions as with Sheets.
• People are still in the mindset of sending attachments. People are still emailing excel documents instead of using their own tools.

The review in 2026 is that if you work in a situation where there are many users working together at the same time, especially if there are many non-technical people, then Sheets will be the best at this, and it's by a long shot. If you are working alone or within a small, highly controlled group of users, then Excel's ability to collaborate has now become more than sufficient.

Chapter Two: The Analysis Strength Gap

We have now entered into holy ground.

Excel: Still The Unbeatable Powerhouse

I learned how to use excel on my desktop computer that had only 256 MB of RAM. I have built financial models that include 50 linked workbooks, pivot tables with multiple nested slicers, and created VBA macros that handle an entire accounting department. I share this to provide evidence for my ability to tell you that:

When it comes to serious analytics and data analysis, Excel will continue to be the clear choice and that gap has only widened since 2021 (four years).

• Power Query is now regarded as a free ETL tool due to its advanced capabilities. With Power Query, you can extract information from an SQL database, an API, a corrupted CSV file or a web page, clean and manipulate the data for use in your model, all without programing a single line of code. Sheets has no analogous functionality.
• Power Pivot allows you to perform analysis on more than 10 million rows of data in memory with its use of a columnar database engine, whereas Sheets will have difficulty with approximately 500,000 cell units.
• Excel's use of FILTER, SORT, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE are all examples of how to use functions in an analytical manner, while Sheets has comparable functions that are not as sophisticated nor as efficient.
• Excel's use of Goal Seek, Scenario Manager and Data Table functionality represents some of the unique features of Excel.
• Excel has two complete programming environments for true automation (VBA and Office Scripts), while Sheets has Google Apps Script, which is capable, but slower than Excel's automation.

In summary, Sheets has done a tremendous job of closing the gap however, it does have limitations.

What makes Google Sheets so special? 

• With GOOGLEFINANCE you can have access to all of the data needed in your spreadsheet from real-time stock quotes, currency exchange rates, historic security prices.
• Unlike Sheets where you have access to everything at once; importing data (with or without add-ins) into Excel can take some time to set up and import through the Import/Export feature if it’s not already set up in Excel!
• The QUERY function gives Google Sheets serious super powers. Essentially, you have a SQL database right inside your spreadsheet. Once you get comfortable with it — you will find that you are able to do many things that would normally take multiple Pivot Tables in Excel!
• Another advantage over Excel is Google Sheets' ArrayFormula. ArrayFormulas are Sheets' equivalent of dynamic ranges in Excel — and while they work the same way; the syntax for creating an ArrayFormula is very different and much harder to read than the syntax for creating a dynamic range.

To be completely honest, 80% of the work you will do in spreadsheets (budgets, basic dashboards/management reports, project trackers) is going to work perfectly fine in Google Sheets. However, if you are trying to create an advanced financial model or conducting a statistical analysis, or have more than 100,000 records in your data set; in those situations, you still won't be able to do everything you want to do in Google Sheets that you can do in Excel!

Chapter 3: The Rise of AI – The Competition Between Copilot and Gemini

The years 2024-2026 will be very memorable years for the AI Revolution as we will see the true beginnings of AI becoming fully operational with all productivity tools. Both Microsoft and Google have been committed to the success of AI!

Here's a breakdown of each one:

Microsoft 365 Copilot

What you can do with it:

You enter natural language input, such as "Show me product sales based on region for my top 10," and Copilot automatically generates the formula, creates the pivot table, or creates a chart.

• You can ask follow-up questions such as "Now filter out Q4."
• Copilot can also make suggestions for conditional formatting rules, identify trends in your data, and create VBA macros.

Caveat: While it's pretty powerful, it sometimes misinterprets context. You must have an expensive Microsoft 365 Copilot license, and it works best when your data is structured and clean.

Google Sheets + Gemini

Google takes a more integrated approach to their overarching AI ecosystem.

What you can do:

• If you type "Help me organize," Gemini will automatically create a structured table from unstructured data.
• If you type "Generate categories," Gemini will suggest groups for the data based on text patterns.
• You can also create custom GPTs that are specific to your workflows in Google Sheets.
• Gemini provides seamless integration with Gmail and Calendar, allowing you to draw data from your Calendar events and use them in your Spreadsheet.

Caveat: Gemini is also a paid add-on. Its spreadsheet features are typically less developed than Copilot's but can be more effective when using it in conjunction with other Google Workspace apps.

Conclusion: Both products are amazing and continue to evolve rapidly. But as of January 2026, Copilot is better for raw spreadsheet tasks, while Gemini is better for people invested in the greater Google ecosystem.

Chapter 4: Will You Go with Microsoft or Google? 

Not just creating a spreadsheet here, also selecting your EcoSystem.

The Microsoft EcoSystem

Use MS Excel (in Office 365) to get:

• OneDrive/SharePoint (for File storage & sharing)
• Teams (for Communication)
• Power BI (for Data Visualization)
• Power Automate (to Connect Applications)
• Outlook (for Email)

Excel can create a dashboard that refreshes from SQL database, creates a Power Automate flow and then sends you (via Outlook) PDF automatically without ever leaving the MS EcoSystem.

The downside is that it is Expensive and Complex --- A full suite of tools is a significant investment for the individual or small team.

The Google EcoSystem

Use Google Sheets to get:

• Google Drive (for File Storage)
• Gmail & Google Calendar (for Communication)
• Google Form (to Collect Data)
• Looker Studio (to Create Dashboards)
• AppSheet (to Create No Code Applications)

Overall, the Google EcoSystem wins hands down by providing Simplicity - All the applications are in your browser which makes sharing very intuitive. And at the end of the day the Cost Savings of using Google is a high probability better fit for SMBs, Non-Profits and Distributed Teams than MS.

What do we NOT want or NEED:

•   - Complicated Processes  
•   - Time Consuming Processes  
•   - Expensive Products  
•   - Outdated Technology

Chapter 5: The “Death” of Excel

“This is the statement I hear all the time,” states someone somewhere, anytime; “Excel is old tech. Everybody’s moving to Sheets.”

Let me be forward; this is absolutely false!

Today, the number of users of Excel is higher than it was ten years ago. Microsoft’s subscription services for consumers and businesses using 365 are still growing. To say Excel is going away is not only groupthink based on Twitter, but it’s also completely out of touch with reality.

What is actually taking place:

• 1. Spreadsheet use is increasing overall. People are using both applications, and they are not taking one away.
• 2. Excel is still the most commonly used application in Finance and Enterprise by a distance from every other app. No Financial Institution, Consulting, or Fortune 500 companies are switching from Excel to Sheets!
• 3. Sheets is very popular in Small-Medium Businesses, The Education Sector, Non-Profits, and Casual Users; and growth of Sheets is seen as real growth for all the above mentioned businesses, many of them will not take any share of the Excel market.
• 4. The Spreadsheet Market is not a Zero-Sum Game, both apps are doing very well.

Chapter 6: The Decision Matrix – Which Should I Use? 

After working through this same question for the last fifteen years, here is my simple and straight-forward answer, providing a framework in order to decide.

When to Use Google Sheets for Your Team

Google Sheets makes sense when:

•  You’re collaborating with a number of people on a project and need to work together in real time;
• You’re building a project where some of your teammates or customers aren’t technical and need to have easy access to the information;
•  You want to pull live financial data into your Sheets using GOOGLEFINANCE;
•  You have a limited budget;
•  Your dataset size doesn’t exceed 500,000 cells;
•  You value simplicity and low friction over having access to advanced functions.

Example: A friend of mine owns a small marketing agency. They have five full-time employees and 15 contractors working on various projects for many clients. All of their company’s project trackers, budget sheets, and content calendars are in Google Sheets, which work perfectly for them. There’s absolutely no benefit to having these documents in Microsoft Office Excel and would create tons of friction for them.

When to Use Microsoft Excel for Your Team

Microsoft Excel makes sense when:

1. You need to work with very large datasets (over 100,000 rows);
2.  You are creating complex financial models or forecasts;
3. You need to use Power Query to clean up and convert messy data;
4.  You use; pivot tables extensively supported;
5.  You need to write VBA Macros or Office Scripts;
6. Your business operates in an industry where Excel is the standard (financial services, consulting, engineering, or data analytics);
7.  You need to use advanced what-if analysis tools;

For instance, one of my clients runs a mid-sized manufacturing facility that has an inventory spreadsheet with 150,000 rows. They use Power Query to extract information from their ERP system, Power Pivot to create cost models, and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) to automate the generation of customer quotes. If they attempted to do all of this inside of one workbook in Excel, it would cause it to crash.

There are many reasons to use both platforms together:

1. You work in an organization that uses both platforms; this trend is quickly becoming the norm.

2. You require the analytical capabilities of Excel, but the collaboration features of Google Sheets.

3. You are willing to manage two separate files or sync your files using third-party tools like Goolge Sheets Sync or GDriveSync.

What I typically do is use Excel to build my models, and then I will use Sheetgo or Coupler.io to summarize those models and transfer them to Google Sheets to share with my clients. This way I get the best of both worlds.

Chapter 7: Personal Confession

I came into this article with the intention of being honest with my readers and here’s the truth:

I really like using Excel! I’ve built an entire career using it. I have taught thousands of people how to use Excel. The fact that I have been using Excel for 15 years and there are still new things that I learn about it is nothing short of incredible.

However, I also use Google Sheets at least once a week.

For my personal projects, quick data analyses and working with my team, I find Sheets to be much more enjoyable because it is faster to open up, sharing is easier and it does not require me to worry about saving files or managing different versions.

The mature and nuanced position that I hope someone would have shared with me years ago is that there is no need to choose between them.

The conflict (read guerilla war) being fought between Excel and Sheets is completely fabricated and perpetuated by both insecurity and blind allegiance to a brand rather than any kind of need based reason. In a real world setting, working professionals use whichever is more suitable (the best tool for the job).

Final Thoughts – Your 2026 Activty Plan

So back to the original question: “Should I learn Excel or learn Google Sheets?” Answer: Learn both.

Not on a superficial level. Learn them both thoroughly.

Learn Excel well and specifically for performing very detailed level data analysis. You should know how to use Pivots, Power Query, Dynamic Arrays, as well as have at least a little bit of knowledge on VBA. This will be your toolset to use when you require very specific and powerful outputs.

Learn Google Sheets well for having effective collaboration and "cloud native" workflows. You should know how to use QUERY, GOOGLEFINANCE, and essentially be an expert of Apps scripts. This will be your toolset for working as a team member and having the most accessibility.

In 2026, an individual using spreadsheets will no longer have any preference for working with Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Instead of worrying about which is the better tool, start learning how to work equally well with both of them so that you can be fully prepared to assist your team when they have to work fast to produce something from a dirty data set.