We ship most of our templates in both Google Sheets and Excel, and people regularly ask why. Here’s the honest breakdown.
The 30-second answer
| Google Sheets | Excel | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free with a Google account | Paid (Microsoft 365) or one-time |
| Collaboration | Real-time, native | Co-authoring, clunkier |
| Offline | Limited | Full |
| Big files (50k+ rows) | Slows down | Handles it |
| Sharing | Send a link | Send a file |
| Printing / PDF | Decent | Best in class |
| Formulas | ~90% identical | ~90% identical |
Choose Google Sheets if you work across devices, share with other people, or don’t want to buy software. Choose Excel if you live in Excel already, work offline, or handle large files.
Where Google Sheets wins
- Zero setup. No software to buy, no license to manage. If you have a browser, you have it — which is why roughly 70% of template buyers prefer Sheets.
- Sharing is native. Send a link, your partner or VA edits the same file. No email attachments, no version chaos.
- Always backed up. Close the tab mid-edit and nothing is lost. Version history lets you roll back any mistake.
- Works everywhere. Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebook, iPad. Excel can’t say that.
- Formulas are 90% identical. SUMIF, IF, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH — if you can write it in Excel you can almost always write it in Sheets.
Where Excel wins
- Offline and fast on huge files. Past ~50k rows with heavy formulas, Sheets starts to lag; Excel doesn’t blink.
- Advanced formatting and printing. Print-ready layouts, precise page control, headers and footers that behave.
- No Google account required. Some customers (and some companies) simply won’t use Google Workspace — an .xlsx file just opens.
- Power features. PivotTables, Power Query, and (on desktop) VBA macros have no Sheets equivalent.
The formula differences that actually bite
Most formulas copy across untouched. The ones that don’t:
- Array formulas. In Sheets you must wrap them in
ARRAYFORMULA(). In Excel 365 they spill natively. - QUERY. Sheets has
QUERY()(a pseudo-SQL for ranges); Excel doesn’t. It’s one of the few things Sheets does better. - IMPORTRANGE / IMPORTDATA. Sheets can pull live data from other files or URLs. Excel needs Power Query.
- XLOOKUP. Available in both now, but older Excel (2019 and earlier) only has VLOOKUP. Our templates use formulas that work in both.
If you build in one and switch later, expect to fix a handful of these — not rewrite everything. Moving an Excel budget across? Our SUMIFS walkthrough covers the one formula family that behaves most differently between the two.
Can you open one in the other?
Yes, mostly. Upload an .xlsx to Google Drive and it opens in Sheets (File → Save as
Google Sheets to convert). Download a Google Sheet as .xlsx and Excel opens it.
Charts, conditional formatting and dropdowns survive the round trip; a few exotic
formatting details occasionally don’t. For the templates we sell — budgets, invoices,
calendars, trackers — the round trip is clean because we test both files.
Where they’re identical
For the use cases our templates cover, the experience is effectively the same. The formulas, charts and formatting behave identically because we build and test both versions side by side. The “Sheets + Excel” label on a product page means you get both files in one purchase.
So which should you choose?
| Your situation | Pick |
|---|---|
| Personal use, any device, no software budget | Google Sheets |
| Sharing with a partner, VA or small team | Google Sheets |
| Big data (10k+ rows) or offline work | Excel |
| Client-facing documents you print or PDF | Excel |
| Not sure / want both | Our “Sheets + Excel” products include both files |
If a product page says Google Sheets only, it’s because the template is built around browser-native features (drag-friendly grids, link sharing) that don’t translate to .xlsx cleanly. Everything else ships in both.
Common questions
Is Google Sheets really free? For personal use, yes — a Google account is all you need. Businesses pay for Workspace, which adds admin controls and more storage.
Do my Excel skills transfer? Almost entirely. Keyboard shortcuts differ slightly (Ctrl+Shift+L for filters is the one people miss), and menus are laid out differently, but the logic is the same. If you want a concrete side-by-side, our step-by-step invoice guide uses identical formulas in both programs.
Which is better for beginners? Google Sheets. Nothing to install, nothing to activate, and it saves itself. If you can use a browser, you can use Sheets.
Can I use Excel templates in Google Sheets?
Yes — upload the .xlsx to Drive and open it. Our invoice templates
work identically in both.
The best template is the one you’ll open. Choose the format you already live in — switching later takes five minutes.
Want to test the difference without spending anything? Grab our free Mini Monthly Budget — it works in both Google Sheets and Excel, so you can see how each handles the same file.