Budget Spreadsheets: Excel vs Google Sheets in 2026

Every spreadsheet template we publish ships for both Excel and Google Sheets, and people always ask which copy to use. Short answer: Sheets for anything shared or on your phone, Excel for anything heavy. Here’s the longer answer.

Sheets wins for sharing and mobile

A budget you check at the store needs to live in your pocket. Google Sheets’ mobile app and real-time sharing make it the default for household budgets and any tracker more than one person touches.

Excel wins for heavy data

Past a few thousand rows — a year of transaction-level cashflow, big inventory sheets — Excel stays fast where Sheets starts to lag, and its conditional-formatting engine handles our overdue-invoice flags with room to spare.

Use both, in the right order

Build the model in Excel where the formulas are fastest to write, then publish the working copy to Sheets for everyone else to read. Our Monthly Budget Tracker ships exactly that way: an .xlsx master and a Sheets copy link.