Balance vs a spreadsheet
Balance vs your budget spreadsheet.
In short
Spreadsheet and Balance, briefly
Excel and Google Sheets are where many people start budgeting, and for good reason. You decide every column, every formula and every chart. Google Sheets is free with a Google account, and a basic budget needs nothing more.
The cost of a spreadsheet is not money, it is upkeep. Every transaction has to be copied in, categorised and checked. Most budget sheets do not fail because the design is wrong; they often stall after a few months, when the typing stops.
Balance keeps what is good about a sheet (no bank connection, your data, full export) and removes the typing: Apple Pay logs itself, statements (Excel or CSV) import in one step, and rules and merchant recognition do the sorting.
At a glance
Facts about Spreadsheet as of October 2026, from the sources listed below. Prices and features change; check before you decide.
| Feature | Balance | Spreadsheet |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (optional Plus for AI, $2.99/month) | Free (Google Sheets, Excel for the web) or with Microsoft 365 |
| Bank connection needed | ||
| Flexibility of layout and formulas | Fixed, designed for you | Unlimited |
| Adding transactions | Apple Pay and card SMS auto, statement import, quick add | Paste or type |
| Automatic categories | Merchant recognition and rules | Your own formulas |
| Duplicate detection on import | ||
| Budget alerts | At 80% and 100% | |
| Subscriptions and forecast | If you build them | |
| Works well on a phone | Limited | |
| Export your data | CSV and JSON |
Where a spreadsheet is better
- Total control. Any calculation, any layout, any chart you can imagine.
- Unusual situations: multi-currency households, business and personal mixed, shared costs with complex splits.
- Long-term modelling, such as mortgage scenarios or retirement projections.
- Real-time co-editing of every cell with a partner in Google Sheets.
Where Balance is better
- Far less typing: Apple Pay payments log themselves, and statements import with duplicates skipped.
- Sorting happens for you: hundreds of merchants are recognised, and your rules handle the rest.
- It tells you things: an in-app alert at 80% of a budget, a reminder a few days before a recurring charge, and a forecast that shows if your balance could dip below zero.
- Built for the phone, with a daily safe-to-spend number and a calendar of your month.
The honest answer
Which one should you choose?
Spreadsheet
Keep the spreadsheet if you enjoy building it, update it reliably, or need calculations no app offers.
Balance
Choose Balance if your sheet keeps falling behind, you want alerts and a forecast without building them, or you want something that works well on your phone.
Switching
From spreadsheet to Balance in a few minutes
- 1
Make sure you have three columns
Date, description and amount (or separate money-in and money-out columns). Expenses can be negative or positive; you choose on import.
- 2
Save the sheet as CSV
In Excel: File → Save As → CSV. In Google Sheets: File → Download → Comma-separated values.
- 3
Import into Balance
Pick the file, match the columns once and choose the date format if needed. The file is read in your browser.
- 4
Keep the sheet if you like
Export from Balance to CSV at any time and keep modelling in your spreadsheet.
Questions people ask
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Related
Keep going
Try it free. No bank login.
Create a free account in a couple of minutes. Import a statement or turn on Apple Pay logging and see your month.