Spreadsheets were the last place AI broke through, and the order it arrived in matters. Excel got Copilot baked in. Google Sheets got the Gemini sidebar. Then Bricks came along and rebuilt the spreadsheet itself around AI from scratch. Then Numerous, which took the opposite bet — keep your existing spreadsheet, just put AI inside the cells. Four very different products solving four different problems.
Most reviews I've read pretend you have to pick one. You don't. The honest answer is that which AI spreadsheet you should use depends entirely on what you actually do with spreadsheets, and the four are good at very different things.
Pricing — 2026
- Microsoft Copilot in Excel — $30/user/month (Copilot for M365). Bundled with the broader Copilot suite; not standalone.
- Google Gemini in Sheets — Included in Google One AI Premium ($20/mo) and Workspace Business ($24/user/mo and up).
- Bricks — Free tier (limited generations); Pro at $20/user/month.
- Numerous — Free tier (500 runs/mo); Plus at $20/mo; Pro at $50/mo.
- Claude in Sheets (Workspace add-on) — Bundled in Claude Pro ($20/mo) and above.
Bricks — for when the spreadsheet is the wrong shape
Bricks isn't trying to add AI to Excel or Sheets. It's trying to replace them. The pitch: describe what you want — "a project budget with a category breakdown, a chart, and a slider for headcount scaling" — and Bricks generates the whole thing, formulas, charts, controls, all wired up. It's spreadsheet-shaped output, but you're not building it cell-by-cell.
What this works for: dashboards, calculators, interactive data apps, anything where the format you want isn't a static table. I've used Bricks to mock up pricing-tier comparators in 90 seconds that would have taken me an hour in Excel.
What this doesn't work for: anything where you already have the spreadsheet you want and just need to manipulate it. Importing a CSV and asking Bricks to clean it is awkward. Use Numerous or a copilot for that.
Numerous — for bulk per-cell work
Numerous is a wildly underrated tool. It installs as an Excel or Sheets plugin and adds AI functions you can use inline:
=AI("classify as positive, neutral, or negative", A2)=AI("extract the company name from this email", B2)=TRANSLATE(A2, "Spanish")=AI_TABLE("split this address into street, city, zip", A2)
Drag the function down 5,000 rows and Numerous fans the work out to AI calls in parallel. For data cleaning, sentiment analysis on survey responses, categorization, extraction from messy free-text — it's a force multiplier. I cleaned a 12,000-row customer-feedback export in 20 minutes that would have taken a day manually.
What this is not: a chat interface or a workflow generator. Numerous is a hammer for nail-shaped problems. If you're not doing per-row AI work, you don't need it.
Excel Copilot — for Microsoft shops
Microsoft Copilot in Excel had a rocky first year. By 2026 it's actually good. The formula-generation step is reliable for common operations, chart suggestions are usable, and the natural-language analysis ("what's the trend in column C") returns answers that match what you'd compute manually. The integration with Power Query and pivot tables makes it especially strong on financial and operational data.
The catch: it's bundled at $30/user/month with broader Copilot features and isn't sold standalone. If you already pay for the suite, you're not paying extra. If you're on the standalone M365 plan, the value math depends on how much else of Copilot (Word, Outlook, Teams) you actually use.
Claude in Sheets and Gemini in Sheets — for Google Workspace
Anthropic and Google both have Workspace integrations now. Claude lives as an add-on that reads and edits your Sheets directly. Gemini is baked into the sidebar.
For natural-language questions of the form "what's the average order value by region," Gemini's sidebar is faster and feels more native. For complex analysis tasks where you want to explain the goal in a paragraph and have the AI propose a multi-step approach, Claude pulls ahead — its writing quality and instruction-following show up in spreadsheet work too.
Neither matches Numerous for bulk per-cell processing, and neither replaces Bricks for building structured apps. They're both good for ad-hoc analysis on data you already have.
The use-case matrix
- Bulk data cleaning / classification / extraction → Numerous (no real competitor)
- Building dashboards or calculators from a description → Bricks
- Ad-hoc analysis questions in Google Sheets → Gemini sidebar or Claude in Sheets — pick by which AI you already pay for
- Excel-native workflows, financial models → Excel Copilot
- Combination of all of the above → realistically you end up with two: a copilot in whichever spreadsheet you use + Numerous for the bulk-work cases
What about ChatGPT or Claude directly?
You can copy data out, paste into ChatGPT or Claude, get a result, paste it back. It works. It's also slower than any of the dedicated tools above, breaks when the data has commas or formatting, and you have to manually fix the references when the AI hallucinates a column name. For one-off questions on a small dataset, it's fine. For anything recurring, install the right add-on.
The verdict
Most workers should use the AI that's already in their existing spreadsheet — Copilot in Excel or Gemini in Sheets. These have reached "good enough" status in 2026, and the friction cost of installing a separate tool isn't worth it for occasional use.
If you do per-cell AI work weekly — categorizing, cleaning, extracting, translating across thousands of rows — install Numerous. The ROI shows up the first day.
If you build interactive sheets — calculators, dashboards, structured data apps — try Bricks. It's a different way of working with spreadsheets and not everyone clicks with it, but the people who do swear by it.
If you live in Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus, install their Workspace add-ons. They're free with your subscription and good enough for occasional Sheets questions.
The honest one-line summary: AI in spreadsheets is no longer a missing feature. It's now a tool category with real depth, and matching the tool to the task matters more than picking the "best" one.
FAQ
What's the best AI for Excel in 2026?
Microsoft Copilot if you're on M365. Bricks for app-style workflows. Numerous for bulk per-cell work.
Is Bricks worth $20/mo?
If you build dashboards or data apps in spreadsheets — yes. For one-off sheets, overkill.
What does Numerous actually do?
Adds AI functions you can use inline in cells: =AI("classify", A1) and similar. Drag down 5,000 rows and it processes in parallel.
Can Claude or ChatGPT work in Sheets?
Yes — Workspace add-ons from both. Good for ad-hoc analysis, not for bulk processing.
Excel Copilot or Gemini in Sheets?
Pick by which spreadsheet your team uses. Both are competent in 2026.