LibreOffice Calc for a free, native spreadsheet app Google Sheets for spreadsheet collaboration

Microsoft Excel for powerful data crunching and large data sets We've come a long way since 1979's VisiCalc. User interface design and overall user experience have been taken into account while reviewing this software. There is no expectation that free products will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with pricey subscription models.įinally, if you're going to be spending a lot of time in a spreadsheet, it's important that it's easy to use and pleasant to look at.

The software has been chosen for displaying a sense of value, regardless of which price point it targets. This level of sophistication isn't required of all software listed below, but even some of the free solutions have powerful features like these. That's everything from pivot tables for extracting information from large data sets, to conditional formatting for comparing data and spotting trends, to time-savers like recordable macros. And some have no collaboration at all, but work fine for individual number crunching.Īdvanced features have also been given priority. Some spreadsheet software includes real-time collaboration, while some includes version control and in-line commenting. Moving on to nice-to-have features, we looked at the amount of collaboration allowed by each app. All of the solutions featured here offer the ability to create charts and graphs, though the number of choices and formatting options varies. Similarly, once you have your data in a spreadsheet, it's likely you'll want to visualize it. Basic math operations like subtotaling a range or working out average values are present in all of the software featured here. We looked for a certain level of competency in terms of available functions and formulas. Some of the apps featured here have mobile versions, but we only considered apps that were accessible outside of mobile as well. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.įor this roundup, we've chosen to look at web and desktop apps since that's how most users interact with spreadsheet data. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site-we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software.

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