Best Mac Spreadsheet App 2026

There is no single best spreadsheet for Mac. There is a best one for you, and it depends on three questions: how much you want to pay, whether your files need to survive a trip to and from Excel, and whether you want a native app or a browser tab. This guide answers all three for every option worth considering in 2026.

I build one of the apps below, so read me with that in mind. I have tried to be fair, and where another tool is the right answer I say so.

The short version

Microsoft Excel

Excel is still the most capable spreadsheet on the Mac, and if your work depends on pivot tables, Power Query, macros, or the exact rendering of a colleague’s workbook, nothing else is a safe substitute. It is also $99.99 a year for Microsoft 365, it is a large install, and it carries three decades of interface. If you live in Excel all day, stay in Excel. For most people, it is more spreadsheet than they will ever use, at a price they keep paying.

Apple Numbers

Numbers is already on your Mac, it is genuinely lovely to look at, and for building something from scratch it is a pleasure. The problem is the handoff. Numbers imports .xlsx by converting it into its own format, and when you export back to .xlsx the result is a new file rather than the one you opened: formatting shifts, and some formulas and charts do not survive the round trip. If you never send files to Excel users, Numbers is a fine free choice. If you do, the conversion will bite you eventually.

Google Sheets

Google Sheets is the collaboration king. Nothing beats it for several people editing one sheet at once, and it is free. But it is a browser tab, it wants an account and a connection, and opening an .xlsx means uploading it to Google’s servers. For shared, live documents it is the right tool. For a private file that lives on your Mac and occasionally needs to go to someone in Excel, it adds friction you may not want.

LibreOffice Calc

LibreOffice understands Office formats better than most free tools, it is a full office suite, and it costs nothing. The trade-off is that it does not feel like a Mac app, and the macOS download is around 285 MB. If you need serious .xlsx editing on a budget and do not mind an interface that belongs to a different operating system, Calc is the most capable free option here.

Nought

This is mine, so here is the honest pitch. Nought is a native Mac spreadsheet that opens .xlsx files in place, keeps your data local, needs no account and no subscription, and is a 5.6 MB download, 11 MB installed. It writes real Excel charts that open without a repair prompt, and it reads charts made in Excel with their legend, colors and axis titles intact. It is early software, so it does not yet do everything a full office suite does. Pivot tables nest several fields down the rows and across the columns, filter any field, group dates, and save into .xlsx as a real pivot cache that Excel opens. Macros are JavaScript, from a built-in editor; Excel VBA is kept unchanged in .xlsm rather than run. If you need those, use Excel or LibreOffice. If you want a quick, native, offline spreadsheet that respects your files and your Mac, that is exactly what Nought is for.

Get Nought on the App Store. Free, no account, no subscription.

So which one?

• You need every advanced feature and perfect fidelity: Excel.
• You never leave the Apple ecosystem and want free: Numbers.
• You collaborate live with a team: Google Sheets.
• You want a free full suite and don’t mind the weight: LibreOffice.
• You want a fast, native, offline app that opens .xlsx and stays out of your way: Nought.