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Home › Software Index › Microsoft Excel
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Business Email & Office Suites

Microsoft Excel pricing

Microsoft Excel pricing: Free (web); Microsoft 365 Business Basic $7/user/mo (annual). Free plan: yes — Excel for the web with a free Microsoft account. Each figure links to the comparison it was verified in.

Last verified September 24, 2026 Official site ↗Vendor pricing ↗ Methodology Get this as JSON
Compare Airtable vs Excel →
Entry price
Free (web); Microsoft 365 Business Basic $7/user/mo (annual)Per user per month, paid yearly ($8.40 paid monthly), Microsoft 365 Business Basic with web and mobile ExcelVerified in airtable-vs-excel
Free plan
Free planYes — Excel for the web with a free Microsoft account
On HelpCompare
1 comparison ↓2 migration guides ↓
Bill Belcamino
Bottom line up frontby Bill Belcamino, founder of HelpCompare
Editorial assessment

Bottom line up front: Which Microsoft 365 plan do you need to get Excel for your team?

It hinges on desktop Excel: Business Basic at $7/user/mo billed annually gives only web and mobile Excel, and desktop starts with Apps for business at $10/user/mo.

Monthly billing costs more ($8.40 on Basic, $12 on Apps for business), Business Standard is $14/user/mo annually, and Excel for the web is free with a Microsoft account. Every worksheet tops out at 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns. Don't buy desktop for everyone by default. Split the team instead: desktop seats for the few who build the models, web seats for people who mostly read and update them, and before you decide, open your heaviest real workbook in the web version to see whether it holds up. Recheck who uses what at renewal, and if your spreadsheet has quietly become a shared database, read Airtable vs Excel.

My read of the verified data on this page, checked against vendor sources on September 24, 2026. Disagree or spot an error? Tell Bill

Microsoft Excel pricing

Everything we have verified about Microsoft Excel

Every row was recorded on a HelpCompare comparison page. The Source column links to the page it was verified on and the date it was last checked.

AttributeValueSource & date
Entry price Free (web); Microsoft 365 Business Basic $7/user/mo (annual) airtable-vs-excel
Free plan Yes — Excel for the web with a free Microsoft account airtable-vs-excel
Business Basic $7/user/mo (annual), $8.40 monthly; web and mobile Excel airtable-vs-excel
Apps for business $10/user/mo (annual), $12 monthly; desktop Excel airtable-vs-excel
Business Standard $14/user/mo (annual) airtable-vs-excel
Worksheet size 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns airtable-vs-excel
Verified data

Microsoft Excel security, offline access & remote work

Compliance reports, sign-in controls, offline access and the setup details that matter for remote, hybrid and in-office teams. Each value links to the vendor page it came from. Microsoft Excel’s own security documentation: microsoft.com. Scope: Researched as sold to businesses in Microsoft 365; security, compliance and access controls are Microsoft 365 tenant-level (Entra ID / Purview / SharePoint-OneDrive), not specific to Excel.

Security & compliance

SOC 2 report
SOC 2 Type IIsource
ISO/IEC 27001
Certifiedsource
Other certifications
ISO/IEC 27017, ISO/IEC 27018source
HIPAA (BAA)
BAA availablesource
GDPR data processing agreement
DPA offeredsource
Single sign-on (SAML/OIDC)
Yessource
SCIM user provisioning
Not published
Two-factor authentication
Yessource
Admin audit log
Yessource
Data residency choices
Australia, AT, Brazil, Canada, CL, DK, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, IT, Japan, MY, MX, NZ, NO, PL, QA, South Africa, South Korea, ES, SE, Switzerland, TW, UAE, UKAdvanced Data Residency (add-on)source
Encryption
BitLocker disk encryption plus per-file AES-256 encryption at rest (OneDrive/SharePoint); SSL/TLS in transitsource
Self-hosting option
Not published

Offline access

Offline mode
Works offlineThe Excel mobile/tablet apps can create new workbooks and edit files offline (cloud files must have been opened online once), and pending changes sync when you reconnect.source
Desktop apps
Windows, macOSsource
Mobile apps
iOS, Androidsource
Offline limits
Files on OneDrive, SharePoint or other cloud storage must have been opened online at least once before they can be worked on offline.source

Remote, hybrid & in-office

IP allowlisting
YesMicrosoft 365 Business Premium (or Entra ID P1)source
Device & session controls
YesMicrosoft 365 Business Premium (or Entra ID P1)Entra Conditional Access can require MFA, compliant or hybrid-joined devices, approved client apps or app protection policies; SharePoint/OneDrive can block unmanaged devices or limit them to browser-only access with no download, print or sync.source

Microsoft Excel: worth knowing

  • OfflineEdits made in the Excel mobile apps while offline sync automatically once the device is back online. source
  • RemoteWhen access is limited on unmanaged (e.g. personal home) devices, users get browser-only access and cannot open content in the Office desktop apps. source
  • SecurityLocation (IP) and device rules use Entra Conditional Access, which needs Entra ID P1 licenses or Microsoft 365 Business Premium. source
  • SecurityTenants in 27 local region geographies (e.g. Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, UK) can buy Advanced Data Residency for stronger in-country storage commitments. source
Airtable vs Excel: security & offlineSecurity databaseOffline databaseRemote vs office guide

Checked September 24, 2026 against each vendor’s own trust center, help docs and app pages. Hover or tap “source” to see the exact wording we relied on. “Not published” means we could not find the vendor saying it on its own site; it doesn’t mean the feature is missing. Plan names are the lowest plan the vendor says includes the feature. Security · Offline · Remote vs office · Download the data

Microsoft Excel in context

How Microsoft Excel connects to the rest of the software we track — head-to-head research, switching paths, and the closest alternatives in its category.

Head-to-head comparisons

Full pricing and feature breakdowns featuring Microsoft Excel.

Switching away from Microsoft Excel

What transfers, what you rebuild by hand, and what to budget.

Switching to Microsoft Excel

Moving in from another platform.

Alternatives in Business Email & Office Suites

Other tools we track in the same category, with their entry price.

Where this data comes from

HelpCompare records pricing and feature data from vendor pricing pages and documentation at the time each comparison is researched, then re-checks it on a published schedule. This entity page is generated from those records — it does not introduce any figure that has not already been verified on a comparison page.

  • Vendor pricing and documentation — www.microsoft.com, checked September 24, 2026.
  • HelpCompare research — 1 comparison page listed above, each with its own verification date.
  • G2 — aggregate rating and review count (none recorded for this tool). Review counts change daily; treat them as a snapshot.
  • Machine-readable copy — /data/tools.json, /data/tools.csv, and the open data hub.
Prices change often and vendors do not always announce it. Every figure here carries the date it was last checked — confirm current pricing with the vendor before you buy. If you find something out of date, the comparison page it came from is linked in the table above.
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01 · CompareWhich tool fits your team, side by side.133 comparisons 02 · Price & approveSourced, dated pricing and a one-page brief for sign-off.Decision brief 03 · SwitchWhat moves, what you rebuild, what it costs.264 guides 04 · ShareDownload and cite the data. CC BY 4.0.Open data
Bill Belcamino, founder of HelpCompare
About the author

Bill Belcamino

Founder and author, HelpCompare

Engineer by training, operator by experience, marketer by choice. Bill spent eight and a half years as an engineer at HP, was COO of Auctiva (the number one third-party selling platform on eBay, past 200,000 users) and ran Google’s $70M/year search syndication partnership at Alot.com. Then he spent 13 years building his own web properties with his own money at stake. He has bought, trialled, integrated and cancelled more SaaS tools than he can count, and started HelpCompare because the real cost of switching tools is the part nobody covers.

“I’ve sat on both sides of the table: the agency recommending the tool and the client paying for it.”

Researched and fact-checked by the HelpCompare team. No paid sponsorships, no affiliate commissions.

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