Best Google Sheets Alternatives (2026): 8 Free and AI Picks

The best Google Sheets alternative depends on who fills the sheet in. If it’s you, at a desk, Microsoft Excel is the closest match. If your AI agents do half the typing, you want a spreadsheet they can open and change themselves.

We compared eight Google Sheets alternatives, from free desktop apps to AI spreadsheets, with every price read on the vendor’s own page on November 9, 2026. Each card says who should pick that tool.

ContextBolt is ours, so weigh the bias. Our Sheets board is first because it’s the spreadsheet Claude and Codex fill in for you, with the Google Sheets formulas you already know, for $12 a month. The other seven are real alternatives, and the free ones get their own section.

Why people look for a Google Sheets alternative

Google Sheets is free, fast to share and good enough for most lists. People leave it for one of four reasons:

• Privacy. They want their numbers off Google’s servers, on their own computer or their own server.
• Size. Google says a spreadsheet holds up to 20 million cells or 100 MB. A database or a desktop app goes past that.
• Excel files. Clients and accountants send .xlsx files, and some people would rather work in Excel itself.
• AI. The newest reason. A founder who works with Claude or Codex all day wants the agent to update the budget, the lead list or the pricing model directly, and a sidebar chat inside one app doesn’t reach the agent in your terminal.

Each tool below is strongest on one or two of these, so pick by the reason you’re leaving.

The 8 best Google Sheets alternatives, compared

Where a vendor shows a yearly and a monthly rate, the table gives the yearly one and says so. Our server is in Europe, so where a page showed us a price in another currency, we left the price out.

1. Context Board: a spreadsheet your AI agents fill in

Best for: a solo founder or small business owner who already works with Claude, Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, and wants the budget, lead list or pricing model kept up without the typing.

Context Board is a web app at board.contextbolt.com, a workspace you share with your AI agents. A Sheet board is one of its kinds of board: tabs of cells and formulas that work like Google Sheets. Type in a cell and press Enter, Tab or the arrows. Type = to start a formula, and the list under it says what each function does.

Running costs Example

B9fx=SUM(B2:B8)

ABCD

1ToolMonthlyYearlyCategory

2Hosting$20$240Infrastructure

3Database$25$300Infrastructure

4Email$15$180Marketing

5Error tracking$26$312Infrastructure

6Design tool$15$180Design

7Domains$2$24Infrastructure

8Analytics$19$228MarketingCodex

9Total$122$1,464

10Share of MRR1.5%

11

12

CostsRevenueSum $122

Codex Added a row to “Costs”Undo

Codex added the Analytics row, its yearly cost filled itself in, and the total moved. Example sheet, example numbers.

Your agent connects once. Claude Code and Codex link through your computer with one line from Connect. Claude and Cursor add the board’s address and click Allow, and so does ChatGPT on a Business, Enterprise or Edu workspace, per OpenAI’s help page on custom MCP apps. Then you ask for the work: “On my Running costs sheet, add the analytics tool at $19 a month.” The row lands with its yearly figure as a formula, glows in the agent’s color with its name, and the totals move.

What the Sheet board does:

• The formulas you know. The everyday Google Sheets functions work, more than a hundred of them, from SUM and IF to SUMIFS, XLOOKUP, FILTER and TEXTJOIN, with references across tabs and named ranges.
• Agents that write the sheet. Your agent reads a tab as a table and writes cells, rows, formulas, formats and sorts. It can add a tab, make a table whose column formulas fill every row, or put a chart beside a range.
• A name on every change. Board activity lists what each agent did, and an agent’s change can be undone.
• Excel and CSV in and out. Import an Excel or CSV file and every tab comes in with its formulas, number formats, bold and column widths. Download a tab as CSV, or the whole sheet as .xlsx.
• The tools you reach for. Filters, dropdowns, checkboxes, notes, color by rule, frozen rows, and find and replace.
• Charts that follow the sheet. Chart a range beside the cells, or put the same range on a Slides board, and the slide changes when the sheet does.

A tab holds up to 10,000 rows and 104 columns, and a sheet up to 40 tabs.

Price: free for 3 days, then $12 a month for the whole workspace: sheets, docs, slides, dashboards and every other kind of board. Your agents work on the Claude or Codex plan you already pay for, so there are no AI credits to buy.

Pros

• Your AI agents do the typing, and you see every change they made
• The Google Sheets formulas you know, with Excel in and out
• One price for sheets, docs, decks and live dashboards

Cons

• Built for one founder and their agents. A teammate who edits needs their own subscription
• A tab holds 10,000 rows, so very large datasets belong in a database

Context Board vs Airtable, for one person’s numbers

You gain a sheet your agents keep current, with formulas, for less than one Airtable seat. You give up Airtable’s team permissions and larger bases. The full head-to-head is on our Context Board vs Airtable page.

2. Microsoft Excel: the closest like-for-like

Best for: anyone who trades .xlsx files with clients, an accountant or a bank, and wants the full Excel app.

Microsoft’s Excel page says Excel for the web “is free for anyone to use online”, with 5 GB of cloud storage on the free tier. Microsoft 365 Personal is $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year and includes Copilot. Business plans start at Business Basic, $7 a user a month billed yearly.

Your AI: Copilot in Excel builds and edits workbooks, including formulas, charts and PivotTables. Anthropic’s Claude for Excel add-in does similar work in a sidebar, on Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans, and runs on Excel on the web, Windows with Microsoft 365, and Mac. Our guide to Claude in Excel covers setup and fixes.

Watch for: both assistants work inside the workbook you have open. An agent in your terminal, like Codex, needs an Excel MCP server and a file on your computer.

3. Airtable: when your sheet is really a database

Best for: a team whose spreadsheet has turned into records, views, forms and automations.

Airtable’s plans page gives the Free plan 1,000 records a base and 5 editors. Team is $20 a collaborator a month billed yearly, or $24 monthly, with 50,000 records a base. Business is $45 yearly or $54 monthly, with 125,000 records. Team includes 15,000 AI credits per billable collaborator a month.

Your AI: the Airtable MCP server works on all plans and connects Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and more. Editors can read and update records, with up to 10 records created per request.

Watch for: it’s priced per seat, and a base is a database. It doesn’t behave like a grid of formulas.

4. Quadratic: an AI spreadsheet for data analysis

Best for: a founder or analyst who wants Python and SQL in the spreadsheet, with live data from a database.

Quadratic calls itself an AI spreadsheet. Its AI writes Python and SQL cells, and it connects to data sources such as Postgres, MySQL and Snowflake. Per its pricing page, Personal is free with limited AI. Pro is $18 a user a month billed yearly with $20 in AI credits a month, and Business is $36 with $40 in credits.

Your AI: Quadratic’s MCP server is included on every plan, free tier too. ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and VS Code can read a range, add formulas, build charts and run Python and SQL inside Quadratic.

Watch for: it’s built for analysis. For a simple lead list or invoice tracker, the code cells are more than you need.

5. Smartsheet: projects tracked in a grid

Best for: a small team that runs projects, timelines and approvals from a spreadsheet.

Smartsheet’s pricing page lists Pro at $9 a member a month billed yearly, or $12 monthly, for 1 to 10 members. Business is $19 billed yearly, or $24 monthly, for 3 or more members. There’s a 30-day trial with no card and no free plan.

Your AI: AI tools such as Smart Assist, Smart Columns, formula generation and data analysis are on every plan. Connecting Smartsheet to your own AI assistants and agents through MCP starts at Business.

Watch for: it’s project management in a grid. The minimum of 3 members on Business makes the MCP route a team purchase.

6. Grist: open source, on your own server

Best for: a business that wants its spreadsheet data on its own server.

Grist’s pricing page has a Free cloud plan with up to 5,000 records a document and 100 AI Assistant credits, one time. Pro is $8 a user a month billed yearly, or $10 monthly, with up to 100,000 records a document. The Grist Community edition is “free and open-source, hosted on your own server.”

Your AI: the AI Assistant works on credits, starting at 100 a month on Pro.

Watch for: self-hosting means you run the server, the updates and the backups.

7. Zoho Sheet: a free web spreadsheet with AI help

Best for: a small business that wants a free Google Sheets look-alike outside Google, with mobile apps.

Zoho’s Sheet page says teams can work on spreadsheets together for free, in real time, with iOS and Android apps. Its import keeps Excel formatting, and an automatic tool cleans up messy data.

Your AI: Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant, answers questions about your data in plain language, and a ChatGPT-powered Zia writes formulas, sample datasets and VBA macro code.

Watch for: the page shows no plan limits, and it doesn’t mention MCP, so an outside agent has no stated way in.

8. LibreOffice Calc: free, offline and private

Best for: anyone who wants a spreadsheet that never leaves their computer.

LibreOffice calls itself free and open source software, at no cost. It runs on Windows 10 and 11, macOS 11 or newer, and Linux, per its system requirements. Calc opens Excel .xls and .xlsx files, saves in Microsoft formats, and can make an Excel format its default, per the LibreOffice help.

Your AI: none built in.

Watch for: it’s a desktop app, so working with someone else means sending them the file.

Also on most lists: Rows, a spreadsheet with an AI Analyst and data integrations, and ONLYOFFICE, a free office suite. Both are in the free section below.

Free Google Sheets alternatives

If the reason you’re leaving is cost or privacy, these cost nothing:

1. Excel for the web. Free in a browser with a Microsoft account and 5 GB of storage. Copilot needs a paid plan.
2. LibreOffice Calc. Free, open source, on your own computer, with .xlsx support.
3. ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors. Free for personal and professional use on Windows, macOS and Linux, with XLSX files and an optional AI layer that supports your own AI provider and MCP.
4. Grist. The Free cloud plan holds 5,000 records a document, and the Community edition is free on your own server.
5. Zoho Sheet. Free in the browser, per Zoho, with Zia.
6. Quadratic Personal. Free with limited AI, and its MCP server works on the free tier.
7. Rows Free. $0 with 5 AI tasks a month and 10 integration accounts.

Context Board has no free plan. It’s free for 3 days, then $12 a month. Pay for it when your AI agents do enough of the typing to be worth $12 to you.

AI spreadsheets: which ones your agent can fill in

An “AI spreadsheet” means two different things. In most of these tools, the AI sits inside the app: Copilot in Excel, Zia in Zoho Sheet, Grist’s AI Assistant. You open the app and ask.

The other kind lets your own agent in from outside, over MCP. Quadratic, Airtable and Context Board do that today, and Smartsheet does on Business. That matters if you run Claude Code or Codex in a terminal, because the agent that just shipped a feature can log its cost or update the launch numbers without you opening anything.

Context Board was built for that second kind. A sheet is one board in a workspace your agents also use for docs, slides and live dashboards, so a chart from the sheet can sit on the investor deck and the deck follows the sheet. If your reporting lives in charts more than cells, our Looker Studio alternatives post covers dashboards, and the Notion alternatives roundup covers docs and wikis.

Which Google Sheets alternative fits your job

Moving your sheets out of Google Sheets

To move a Google Sheet into Context Board:

1. Download your spreadsheet. In Google Sheets, choose File, then Download, and pick the .xlsx file type.
2. Make a Sheet board. Sign in at board.contextbolt.com with your email, choose New board, then Sheet.
3. Import the file. Choose Import a CSV or Excel file, on the left. Every tab comes in with its formulas, number formats, bold and column widths.
4. Connect your agent. Link Claude Code or Codex with the one line from Connect, or add the board’s address in Claude or Cursor.
5. Ask for the first change. “Add an Invoices tab for what my clients owe, with a paid checkbox.” The tab lands with a total that adds itself up.

What doesn’t come across: a few Google-only functions, like QUERY, IMPORTRANGE and GOOGLEFINANCE, aren’t on the board, and the import is a copy, so later edits in Google Sheets don’t follow it. Fill colors and charts stay in the file, and your agent can redraw a chart in one ask. A cell that uses a function the board lacks shows #NAME?, and hovering says which one, so you or your agent can swap it.

Start a Sheet board, import the spreadsheet you open most, and ask your agent for the row you’d otherwise type tonight. Free for 3 days, then $12 a month.