Google Sheets

Cloud spreadsheet, free for a personal Google account and bundled into paid Google Workspace for organisations

As of 1 September 2026, Google Sheets is free to use. The spreadsheet most people already have through a free Google account, but the version organisations actually deploy comes with a Workspace subscription that adds admin controls, storage and support a personal account does not have. Softwr lists it under Spreadsheets. Google Sheets is made by Google, available on Web, iOS, Android.

Visit siteVisit Google Sheets

Overview

What Google Sheets does

Google Sheets is a browser-based spreadsheet with real-time multi-user editing, formulas, pivot tables, charting and an Apps Script layer for automation, all stored in Google Drive and accessible offline through the Chrome or mobile apps. It reads and writes Excel files and supports add-ons from the Google Workspace Marketplace. The pricing distinction that matters is who is paying. Anyone with a free personal Google account gets full Sheets functionality at no cost, subject to the 15 gigabytes of shared Drive storage that account gets across Gmail, Drive and Photos. Businesses and schools instead buy Google Workspace, which starts at roughly 7 US dollars a user a month for Business Starter, and that subscription is what actually pays for centralised admin controls, larger storage pools, audit logs, data loss prevention and enterprise support; a company standardising on Sheets is paying for Workspace, not for Sheets as a separate line item. Buyers are individuals and small teams already inside the Google ecosystem who want real-time collaboration without installing anything, and organisations that have standardised on Workspace for email and file storage and get Sheets bundled in. The trade-off against Excel is that Sheets has weaker performance on very large or formula-heavy workbooks, and its offline mode is a fallback rather than the primary way most people use it.

What people use it for

A freelancer or small team wanting real-time spreadsheet collaboration without installing software
A school or nonprofit already using free or discounted Google Workspace for Education
A company standardising on Google Workspace for email and file storage that gets Sheets included
A team building lightweight internal tools with Apps Script rather than a dedicated database

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Google Sheets.

Performance degrades noticeably on very large or formula-heavy spreadsheets compared with desktop Excel, particularly with complex array formulas.
Its charting and pivot table features are less capable than Excel for advanced statistical or financial analysis.
Offline editing requires the Chrome browser or a specific offline-enabled setup, so it is not as seamless as a native desktop application.
The free personal tier has no admin controls, audit logging or data loss prevention, so it is not appropriate for regulated business data on its own.
Apps Script has execution time limits and quota restrictions that make it unsuitable for heavier automation workloads a dedicated backend would handle better.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Google Sheets

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Google Sheetsvs
Zoho Sheet
Zoho Sheet: If you want a spreadsheet bundled into a lower-cost workplace suite
Google Sheetsvs
Numbers
Numbers: If your organisation is Apple hardware based and wants a spreadsheet bundled with the devices
Google Sheetsvs
Airtable
Airtable: If you need database-like structure and views rather than a traditional grid

Pricing

What Google Sheets costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Personal Google account

Free

Full Sheets functionality
15GB shared Drive storage across Gmail, Drive and Photos
No admin controls

Google Workspace Business Starter

$7 /mo

Sheets bundled with Gmail, Drive and Meet
Admin console and centralised management
30GB pooled storage per user

Capabilities

Features

Real-time collaboration
Multiple users editing the same sheet simultaneously with visible cursors and comments
Formulas and pivot tables
Standard spreadsheet functions plus pivot tables and QUERY for data summarisation
Apps Script automation
A JavaScript-based scripting layer for custom functions, triggers and add-ons
Excel compatibility
Opens, edits and exports Microsoft Excel files
Offline mode
Editing continues without a connection and syncs once back online
Connected Sheets
Query BigQuery data directly from a spreadsheet with pivot table analysis

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Is Google Sheets really free?

Yes, for a personal Google account with full functionality, subject to the 15GB Drive storage limit shared across Google services.

Why would a business pay for something that is free?

Businesses pay for Google Workspace, which bundles Sheets with admin controls, larger storage, audit logs and support that a personal account lacks.

Does Google Sheets work with Excel files?

Yes, it opens, edits and exports Microsoft Excel format files directly.

Keep looking

Where to go from Google Sheets

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Google Sheets, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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