Productivity · head to head
Microsoft 365 vs Rows
Microsoft 365
Productivity
Subscription bundle of the Office applications with mail, storage, meetings and organisational identity
- From
- $7/month
- Rated
- -
Rows
Productivity
Browser spreadsheet whose formulas call live data from analytics, CRM and payment services
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
The short version
- Only Rows has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
- Each has a real cost: Microsoft 365 business plans are capped at 300 seats, so an organisation that grows past that must move to Enterprise plans, which changes both the price per user and the feature mix at the moment it can least afford a migration project.; Rows refresh frequency is the metered resource, so the free plan refreshes manually only and daily automation begins on the paid tier, which means the automatic reporting that justifies the tool is exactly what the free plan withholds.
- They diverge on capability: Microsoft 365 covers Office applications, Rows covers Integrations in formulas.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Microsoft 365 and Rows actually diverge.
| Attribute | Microsoft 365 | Rows |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $7/month | Free |
| Pricing model | subscription | freemium |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
Identical on both: platforms (Web), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Productivity).
What each one covers
Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.
Only in Microsoft 365
- Office applications
- Hosted services
- Teams
- Microsoft Entra ID
- OneDrive storage
- Device management and endpoint protection
- Purview compliance
- Copilot
Only in Rows
- Integrations in formulas
- Scheduled refresh
- Publishable sheets
- Cell enrichment
- AI tasks
- Guests
- API access
- Version history
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
Microsoft 365
- Any organisation that wants mail, documents, meetings and identity from one supplier on one bill.not Rows
- A company standardising on single sign-on, where Entra ID becomes the account other services authenticate against.not Rows
- Regulated work that needs retention, legal hold and eDiscovery across mail and documents, provided the tier that includes them is actually bought.not Rows
- A household that needs installed Office applications on several machines rather than browser-only editing.not Rows
Rows
- A weekly marketing report that pulls analytics, advertising and CRM figures into one refreshing sheet instead of three manual exports.not Microsoft 365
- Agency client dashboards shared as a page, without handing over access to the underlying accounts.not Microsoft 365
- Enriching a list of companies or contacts from inside the sheet rather than through a separate tool and a re-import.not Microsoft 365
- A small team that needs live numbers in a familiar grid and has nobody available to build a proper reporting stack.not Microsoft 365
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Microsoft 365
- Business plans are capped at 300 seats, so an organisation that grows past that must move to Enterprise plans, which changes both the price per user and the feature mix at the moment it can least afford a migration project.
- The compliance capabilities most organisations eventually need, including retention, data loss prevention, advanced eDiscovery and insider risk, sit at the top tier or in add-ons, so the real cost surfaces after an audit or a customer questionnaire rather than at purchase.
- Annual term subscriptions commit you for the year and month-to-month terms cost measurably more per seat, so the flexibility to reduce seats during a quiet period is bought at a permanently higher rate.
- Entra ID becomes the identity for everything else the organisation uses, which is the hardest kind of lock-in to put a number on, because leaving means re-federating every connected application rather than simply replacing a word processor.
- The licensing model is complicated enough that most organisations are either over-licensed or quietly non-compliant, and reconciling it usually requires a partner or a specialist, which is a recurring cost that never appears in the advertised per-user figure.
Rows
- Refresh frequency is the metered resource, so the free plan refreshes manually only and daily automation begins on the paid tier, which means the automatic reporting that justifies the tool is exactly what the free plan withholds.
- Exports carry values rather than connections, so a downloaded file from Rows is a dead snapshot and anything you built has to be reconstructed from scratch elsewhere, which makes recurring reports quietly expensive to move.
- Guests are capped by tier at three on free and ten on the entry plan, so sharing a report with a client's team or a group of stakeholders pushes you up a tier for people who only ever look at a page.
- It is not Excel or Google Sheets, so the function library, add-ins, pivot behaviour, scripting and offline files people rely on are not all present, and it works as a reporting surface rather than as an organisation's general spreadsheet.
- The Pro tier adds a fixed monthly platform charge on top of the per-user price, so moving from daily to intra-day refresh, or from ten guests to a real audience, is a step change in cost rather than an increment.
Pricing, plan by plan
Microsoft 365
$7/month- Microsoft 365 Business Basic$7/month
- Email and calendar with 50 GB mailbox
- Web and mobile versions of Office apps
- Microsoft Teams included
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard$14/month
- Desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook
- Email and Teams
- 1 TB cloud storage per user
- Microsoft 365 E5$60/month
- Comprehensive security and compliance
- All productivity apps
- Advanced analytics
Rows
Free- FreeFree
- 5 AI Tasks per month
- Manual data imports
- 10 integration accounts
- Plus$8/month
- 200 AI Tasks per month
- Daily data table automation
- 10 integration accounts
- Pro$79/month
- 1,000 AI Tasks per month
- Per-minute data automation
- 100 integration accounts
- Enterprise$null/mo
- Unlimited AI Tasks
- Custom integrations and API endpoints
- Unlimited guest members
Which should you pick?
Choose Microsoft 365 if
- You need office applications.
- You also want hosted services.
Choose Rows if
- You need integrations in formulas.
- You want to start without paying.
- You also want scheduled refresh.
Questions people ask
- Is Microsoft 365 or Rows better?
- Neither clearly leads. Microsoft 365 starts at $7/month and Rows at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Microsoft 365 or Rows?
- Rows has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $7/month for Microsoft 365 and Free for Rows.
- Does Microsoft 365 or Rows run on more platforms?
- Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
- Can I use Rows for free?
- Yes. Rows has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Microsoft 365 starts at $7/month.
- What is Microsoft 365 best used for?
- Microsoft 365 is most often used for any organisation that wants mail, documents, meetings and identity from one supplier on one bill., a company standardising on single sign-on, where entra id becomes the account other services authenticate against., regulated work that needs retention, legal hold and ediscovery across mail and documents, provided the tier that includes them is actually bought., a household that needs installed office applications on several machines rather than browser-only editing.. Of those, any organisation that wants mail, documents, meetings and identity from one supplier on one bill. and a company standardising on single sign-on, where entra id becomes the account other services authenticate against. are not what Rows is typically brought in for.
- What can Microsoft 365 do that Rows cannot?
- Microsoft 365 covers Office applications, Hosted services, Teams, Microsoft Entra ID. Rows covers Integrations in formulas, Scheduled refresh, Publishable sheets, Cell enrichment.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Microsoft 365: What is the difference between Microsoft 365 and Office?
Office was a one-off licence for a specific version. Microsoft 365 is a subscription covering the applications and the hosted services together, and when payment stops the applications drop to a reduced state rather than continuing as they were.
Rows: Can it replace Excel or Google Sheets?
Not for general spreadsheet work. It is for reports and sheets that pull live data, and most teams end up running it alongside a conventional spreadsheet rather than instead of one.
Microsoft 365: Is Teams included?
Not automatically for newer customers. Microsoft unbundled Teams and now sells it alongside the suite, so check what a given quotation actually covers.
Rows: What can I actually do on the free plan?
Real building: unlimited members, ten integration accounts, five AI tasks a month, 1 MB imports, three guests and seven days of version history. What you cannot do is schedule a refresh.
Microsoft 365: What happens to our files if we stop paying?
The documents remain yours and can be downloaded, but access to hosted mailboxes and sites ends after a retention window, so leaving requires a planned export rather than a cancellation.
Rows: Does the data stay live after I export?
No. Exports contain values only, so the connections and the scheduling do not travel and the file stops updating the moment it leaves.
Microsoft 365: Is Copilot part of the subscription?
No. It is a per-user add-on on top of the base licence, generally with its own term commitment, and it is priced per seat regardless of how much any individual uses it.
Rows: Is pricing per user?
Yes on the paid tiers, with a fixed platform fee added at Pro. Guests are counted and capped separately from members.
Related pages
More on Microsoft 365
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