Google Sheets vs Microsoft Excel on Android in 2026: Which to Install

Spreadsheet comparisons usually turn into a formula-count argument. On Android that is the least useful angle, because neither app is the desktop product and both cover far more functions than anyone types on a phone.

Three things actually decide it:

Whose file is it? A spreadsheet you built yourself can live anywhere. A file someone else built in Excel, with pivot tables and conditional formatting, only renders exactly right in Excel.

What hardware are you on? These two have genuinely different floors, and the gap is wide enough to settle the question on a lot of phones.

Are you working alone? Real-time collaboration is Sheets' native mode and Excel's add-on.

Everything below is arranged around those three.

The specifications

That table is more decisive than it looks. Excel needs Android 9.0 and 3 GB of RAM; Sheets runs on Android 8.0 with 2 GB. In a market full of three- and four-year-old budget phones, a large number of devices can run one of these and not the other. Excel is also more than twice the download and needs double the free space.

If your phone is comfortable and modern, ignore this section entirely. If it is not, the comparison may already be over.

Where Excel wins

File fidelity, and it is not close

This is the whole argument for Excel, and it is a strong one. An .xlsx file built in Excel renders in Excel exactly as its author intended. Every pivot configuration, every conditional formatting rule, every chart type, every named range, every macro.

Google Sheets opens .xlsx natively and handles ordinary spreadsheets faithfully. The drift is at the advanced end: certain pivot table setups simplify, some conditional formatting rules translate imperfectly, VBA macros do not run at all, and a handful of Excel-only functions come back as errors. Open, edit and re-save such a file in Sheets and the person who built it may find pieces missing.

For your own data this does not matter. For a file that belongs to a workflow — a company template, a report someone else maintains, an accounting sheet — it matters completely, and it is the reason accountants and analysts do not treat these as interchangeable.

Insert Data from Picture

Excel has one mobile-only feature with no equivalent in Sheets on Android: camera OCR that turns a photographed table into real cells. Point the phone at a printed report, a receipt or a whiteboard, and the rows and columns come in as data rather than an image.

It is genuinely useful and it is not magic. Numbers need checking — decimals and tightly spaced columns are where it slips — but re-typing a page of figures is worse. For anyone who receives data on paper, this alone can decide the choice.

Card View for editing rows

Excel's Card View takes a single row and shows it as a form, one field per line, instead of asking you to scroll a wide table sideways on a phone screen. For entering or correcting one record in a wide sheet, this is the single best mobile spreadsheet interaction either app has. Google Sheets has nothing similar.

Pivot tables and charts, viewed properly

Excel renders interactive pivot tables and charts on mobile without simplifying them. Creating a complex pivot on a phone is unpleasant in both apps; reading one built on a desktop works properly in Excel.

OneDrive and SharePoint

If your organisation stores files in SharePoint or OneDrive, Excel connects natively with permissions intact. Sheets can be pointed at those files but the path is less direct.

Where Google Sheets wins

Collaboration is the default, not a feature

Google Sheets was built around several people editing one document at once, and it shows on a phone. Share a link, see other people's cursors, comment in a cell, watch changes arrive live. Version history is automatic, complete and free — you can roll back to any point without having thought about saving versions.

Excel has co-authoring and it is layered on top of a file-based model. On mobile it is workable and less immediate.

If more than one person touches your spreadsheets, this is decisive in the other direction from file fidelity.

It runs on far more phones

Android 8.0, 2 GB of RAM, 60 MB of free space, 39.8 MB download. Excel wants Android 9.0, 3 GB of RAM and 120 MB free. On a mid-range or older device Sheets is the app that opens without stuttering, and on some devices it is the only one that installs.

Offline calculation with no ads

Sheets carries a full offline calculation engine — over 400 formulas and mathematical functions, evaluated on the device with no connection. The requirement is that you mark a file available offline in advance; do that and it behaves like a local app. There are no ads in either app, and neither pushes a purchase mid-edit.

Nothing to pay for, ever

The Sheets app has no paid tier that changes what you can do with a spreadsheet. Excel's app is free for phone use, and Microsoft's model does gate some advanced capability behind a 365 subscription, with larger tablet screens historically among them. For personal use on a phone you will likely never hit that, and one product has no upgrade path at all.

Chart generation on mobile

Sheets' mobile chart builder is more usable than Excel's for making a chart on the phone. Excel is better at displaying a complex chart made elsewhere; Sheets is better at creating a simple one where you are.

Side by side

Which one to install

Install Excel if the spreadsheets you open were made in Excel by someone else and will go back to them. Fidelity is not a preference here — it is the difference between editing a file and quietly damaging it. Also install Excel if you photograph printed tables, or if you frequently edit one row of a wide sheet on the phone.

Install Google Sheets if you collaborate, if your phone is older or tight on storage, or if the spreadsheets are yours. It is half the size, runs on a lower Android version, and its version history has saved more work than any feature in either app.

Install both if you have a modern phone. They are 126 MB together, they do not conflict, and the honest workflow for many people is Sheets for their own work and Excel for opening what other people send. This is not indecision; it is the two apps being good at different jobs.

Two things worth knowing before you commit

A phone is not where complex spreadsheet work belongs. Both apps are impressive and neither replaces a desktop for building a model with nested formulas across multiple sheets. Use mobile for viewing, quick edits, data entry and approvals. If a task takes more than a few minutes on a phone, it is probably a desktop task — and on Windows the LibreOffice and Microsoft 365 comparison covers that side of it.

Check the developer before installing. Both apps are heavily cloned, and a fake spreadsheet app that requests storage access is a plausible-looking way to read every document on your phone. The developer must read Google LLC or Microsoft Corporation exactly. If an install is blocked, find out why Play Protect flagged it rather than overriding it — for an app that will read your files, the warning deserves attention.

The short version

Excel if the file is not yours. Perfect .xlsx fidelity, camera OCR, and Card View for editing rows. Needs Android 9.0 and 3 GB of RAM.

Sheets if the file is yours, or you share it. Native collaboration, free automatic version history, half the size, runs on Android 8.0 with 2 GB of RAM.

Check your phone's specs first. The hardware floor settles this for more people than any feature does.

Both, if you can. 126 MB total, no conflict, and the combination has no gaps.

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