# Google Sheets

92 Hacker News commenters recommended Google Sheets and 54 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 1 years (3 owners).

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a free, easy spreadsheet that handles most calculations, planning and simple data work well. The common caveat is that it slows down and feels awkward once data or formulas get large or complicated.

## Why people recommend it

- Free and good for most people (4 comments): "For 99% of people (sometimes we let Finance folks have an Excel license), it's more than enough." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47025389)) "Google docs and sheets if you don't need Microsoft is also way better than Apple's free apps" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47505470)) "Google sheets is probably 99% and available to everyone and better in a lot of regards." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48980731))
- Handles calculations, data and planning well (5 comments): "it's my favorite way to do financial calculations because you can easily customize contribution amounts or withdrawals in certain years by having different columns" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46707150)) "Highlighted weekends and laid out with all days of the year. Export as PDF can fit on a single sheet of paper." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46408862)) "if I have a bunch of data I need to go through and/or present, Sheets is usually my go-to" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48833368))
- Scriptable and automatable with add-ons (3 comments): "Use Google Sheets + Google App Scripts to make external API calls for each column!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45792805)) "Google Sheets can do a lot, especially if you have automation tool like Zapier." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46202422)) "Google sheets's programmability is way better (than the last time I used) Excel" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46356720))
- Quick database and prototyping (2 comments): "a Google Sheet is often the fastest way to handle CRUD without the friction of setting up a traditional database" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562313)) "I really like the idea of using Google Sheets for quick prototyping" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562490))

## What people warn about

- Slow with large data sets (3 comments): "When I load it, the first 100 rows appear pretty much instantly, but the following <100 rows take 9 seconds to load!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47508853)) "Office/Google Spreadsheets seems to get more and more bloated, and subsequently slower." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46192446)) "try to parse a multi-million line orderlines extract in Google Sheets compared to excel" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46084366))
- Awkward once spreadsheets get complicated (2 comments): "Google Sheets is nice for basic things but it somehow feels awkward to use a browser based app once things get complicated." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46257675)) "LibreOffice and Google Sheets are still quite far from everything that Excel is capabale of" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46160079))
- Easy to break calculations by mistake (2 comments): "It's astounding how useful and intuitive they are, but my biggest gripe is how easy is for anyone to mess calculations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46197671)) "did not enjoy seeing one his formulas borked by a difference in how Excel and Sheets handles xlookup()" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47129213))
- Weak automation and poor AI integration (3 comments): "it is pretty fast, but: multi-line outputs don't look good and there are no automation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46293092)) "I find myself let down. I don't know what version of Gemini they're stuffing into Google products, but sheets, docs, and colab/data science agent are all bad experiences." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45928160)) "Google Sheets has such poor AI integration and is outrageously tedious to edit." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47788461))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Microsoft Excel](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-excel.md): 339 recommend
- [Lotus 1-2-3](https://hackerapproved.com/p/lotus-1-2-3.md): 34 recommend
- [LibreOffice Calc](https://hackerapproved.com/p/libreoffice-calc.md): 32 recommend
- [Numbers by Apple](https://hackerapproved.com/p/numbers.md): 27 recommend
- [cell terminal spreadsheet editor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/terminal-spreadsheet-editor-with-vim-keybindings.md): 12 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://workspace.google.com/products/sheets/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Google Sheets", https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-sheets/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).