Best Microsoft Excel Alternatives and Competitors (2025)

Table of Contents

IdeaBuddy for Entrepreneur-curious, Small businesses, Solopreneurs
Columns for Consultants, Educators, Marketers
Scoop Analytics for Marketers, SaaS, Sales managers
Only Sheets 2.0 by Better Sheets for Ecommerce, Entrepreneur-curious, Small businesses

Compare alternatives to Microsoft Excel

Deal	Price	Best for
IdeaBuddy	$69/lifetime	Entrepreneur-curious, Small businesses, Solopreneurs
Columns	$79/lifetime	Consultants, Educators, Marketers
Scoop Analytics	$79/lifetime	Marketers, SaaS, Sales managers
Only Sheets 2.0 by Better Sheets	$30/lifetime	Ecommerce, Entrepreneur-curious, Small businesses

Top 4 Alternatives to Microsoft Excel in 2025

Browse the options and compare their key features, targeted users, top integrations, and more. Find a better and more affordable alternative to Microsoft Excel that works best for your business.

Best for Entrepreneur-curious

IdeaBuddy

87 reviews

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Questions

Review

Best for Consultants

Columns

30 reviews

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Questions

Review

Best for Marketers

Scoop Analytics

6 reviews

Try now

Questions

7b3e2b5e77ee41eab7d63d6133974202PLUS

Edited Oct 9, 2025

Q: If AI analytics is only available at tier 3, what is the use case for tiers 1 and 2? Specific examples for please.

You lead off with the ability to ask your data anything but that actually isn't available until tier 3. And that is limited to 50 queries. What is the cost of additional queries. Can we bring our own api?

Helpful?

bd560f244b0c495080a6026c18cab13b

I agree! The description says "Analyze business data with AI in plain English" but it's only available on Tier 3. A little misleading, I would say.

MathiasHoffmannPLUS

All of the monthly subscription tiers on their website seem to include unlimited AI queries, which makes sense since the AI analytics is their main USP.
The fact that Tier 1 and 2 don't include any AI requests at all and Tier 3 only include 50 requests makes this deal kind of a joke to me. What you end up paying for is just a very limited and stripped down version of the full product.

Brad_ScoopAnalytics

Verified purchaser

Not true. Our product, without AI, is a full end-to-end business intelligence suite, it includes data preparation, slide creation, the ability to create visualizations (like Tableau or PowerBI), the ability to do data blending (with full Excel formula library), the ability to connect data from many sources. We have customers who pay much more without AI.

7b3e2b5e77ee41eab7d63d6133974202PLUS

Quote: "AI let's you communicate with it with natural language and have it create reports for you, but instead of spending thousands on PowerBI or Tableau and all the data stack that goes with it, Scoop is all in one."

AI is only available in Tier 3. So. . . can you answer the question with a list of REAL Use cases? Much, much more isn't specific.

WonkaPLUS

Gemini already can analyze data from spreadsheets and give insights or create charts, these types of tools will get phased out with AI fast.

Sumo_WrestlerPLUS

I tend to agree with the complaints. The whole selling point in the description is the AI integration. So to make that unavailable in T1 and 2 is confusing at best. Misleading at worst.

Sumo_from_DownUnderPLUS

Verified purchaser

not a good start Brad, answering 'ad like' but not the question asked. You dont need BI to see this is a half baked deal. Fot those reasons, I'm out.

WonkaPLUS

You made me laugh even though its true

WonkaPLUS

im out too, as this will be phased out as LLM models can already do this and will get smarter and more capable in a short time, plus pretty much free to low monthly usage costs using LLM models vs this.

Brad_ScoopAnalytics

Verified purchaser

Also, BYOK is coming in a couple of days - we heard you :)

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