Best AI for spreadsheets and Excel
Scored 98/100 on our 12-task spreadsheet suite — level on quality with 2 others (GPT-5.6 Terra, GPT-5.3-Codex) — the top spot goes on the tie-break: cleanest rule-compliance, then lowest measured cost; 2 more sit a single point behind.
GPT-5.6 Luna is the engine inside ChatGPT. Go to chatgpt.com ↗ — the free tier is fine to start. Paid plans start at £7/month (go plan, vendor’s own price). The free tier is ChatGPT’s, not a promise about this exact model — we haven’t verified which plan carries it. Not fussed about the last point or two? Any of the top 5 here will serve you well.
Spreadsheet work is where a confident wrong answer costs real money, so this suite is built almost entirely from checkable tasks: write the formula, fix the broken one, normalise the messy column, spot the number that cannot be right. A judge can point at the answer and say whether it works — no taste involved. One task deliberately asks for something impossible, to see which models say so instead of inventing a formula.
updated 14 Aug 2026 · tested by Robert Prime · re-ranks automatically when a new run lands
- All 19 sat the identical 12-task suite — same tasks, same order, one attempt each.
- Every answer marked blind: judges are not told which entrant wrote it.
- Three judges per answer, each from a competing lab. A panel never includes the entrant's own lab.
- Scored 0–10 against a fixed rubric. Answers breaking a task's explicit rules are capped by machine, not by opinion.
- Ties broken by fewest rule breaches, then lowest measured cost — published, not editorial.
- Nobody pays for placement. Last computed 14 Aug 2026.
Every score below links to the raw file behind it: every task, the entrant’s real answer, and all three judges’ marks.
| # | Model | Our score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | GPT-5.6 Lunalatest | 98/100 |
| 2 | GPT-5.6 Terralatest | 98/100 |
| 3 | GPT-5.3-Codex | 98/100 |
| 4 | GPT-5.6 Sol | 97/100 |
| 5 | GPT-5.5 | 97/100 |
| 6 | GLM 5.2 | 96/100 |
| 7 | Qwen3.7 Max | 95/100 |
| 8 | Grok 4.5 | 94/100 |
| 9 | Claude Opus 4.8 | 94/100 |
| 10 | DeepSeek V4 Flash | 93/100 |
| 11 | DeepSeek V4 Pro | 93/100 |
| 12 | Mistral Medium 3.5 | 93/100 |
| 13 | Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | 93/100 |
| 14 | Gemini 3.5 Flash | 92/100 |
| 15 | Kimi K3 | 90/100 |
| 16 | Claude Fable 5 | 89/100 |
| 17 | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | 83/100 |
| 18 | Claude Opus 4.6 | 82/100 |
| 19 | Claude Sonnet 5 | 78/100 |
“API cost” is what software developers pay to build on a model — ignore it if you just use the website. Each model answers each task once. Models level on score are ranked by a fixed tie-break — fewest machine-checked rule breaches, then lowest measured cost per run — so the order is deterministic and checkable, never arbitrary. Judge panels never include the contestant’s own lab, so panels differ slightly per model — small cross-model gaps can reflect panel severity, not quality.
Made by OpenAI — their newest model. You use it inside ChatGPT — nothing to install.
Strongest showing: “Google Sheets QUERY” — scored 10/10 by the panel. Weakest: “Pivot logic in words” at 9.5/10.
“The formula perfectly matches the requirements, correctly referencing the columns, filtering, grouping, and sorting. It also strictly follows the constraint to return only the formula.”— google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview, judging blind · full receipts ↓
12 tasks · 13 Aug 2026 · judges claude-sonnet-5, gemini-3.1-pro-preview, grok-4.5 · API $0.2 in / $1.2 out per 1M tokens · full model page →
Same maker, same score — effectively the same choice as #1; the deep-dive above covers it. Full model page →
Same maker, same score — effectively the same choice as #1; the deep-dive above covers it. Full model page →
See it for yourself
One task from the suite, and what the leader, the middle of the table and the bottom actually wrote. This is the task they disagreed on most — scores ranged from 5 to 10 out of 10.
In Google Sheets, tab 'Sales' has headers in row 1: Date, Rep, Region, Amount. Write one QUERY() formula returning total Amount per Rep for the North region only, sorted highest first. Return only the formula.
=QUERY(Sales!A:D,"select B, sum(D) where C = 'North' group by B order by sum(D) desc label sum(D) ''",1)
Judge: The formula perfectly matches the requirements, correctly referencing the columns, filtering, grouping, and sorting. It also strictly follows the constraint to return only the formula.
=QUERY('Sales'!A:D, "select B, sum(D) where C = 'North' group by B order by sum(D) desc", 1)Judge: The formula is perfectly accurate, meets all requirements, and adheres strictly to the constraint of returning only the formula.
``` =QUERY(Sales!A1:D, "select Col2, sum(Col4) where Col3 = 'North' group by Col2 order by sum(Col4) desc label Col2 'Rep', sum(Col4) 'Amount'", 1) ```
Judge: Correct QUERY aggregates sum(Amount) by Rep for North, sorted desc. Col notation valid with headers=1. Extra markdown code fences.
Trimmed to fit. Every full answer, every judge’s score: GPT-5.6 Luna, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Claude Sonnet 5
How this ranking is made
Every model answers the identical published task suite. Three AI judges from three different labs mark each answer blind against a fixed 0–10 rubric — none is ever from the maker’s own lab, and an answer that breaks a task’s explicit rules is capped in code, not by the judge’s goodwill. The score is the average, out of 100.
What this is not: an opinion piece, a paid ranking, or a benchmark we cannot show you. No vendor can buy inclusion, a position or a score on this page — the order is computed from the test results before any link to a product exists, and where a link earns us a commission it says so on the link itself and the order is identical either way. Every score links its raw outputs and judge verdicts. The full protocol · How we make money · receipts: GPT-5.6 Luna, GPT-5.6 Terra, GPT-5.3-Codex, GPT-5.6 Sol, GPT-5.5, GLM 5.2, Qwen3.7 Max, Grok 4.5, Claude Opus 4.8, DeepSeek V4 Flash, DeepSeek V4 Pro, Mistral Medium 3.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Kimi K3, Claude Fable 5, Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite, Claude Opus 4.6, Claude Sonnet 5
Questions people ask
What is the best AI for spreadsheets and Excel in 2026?
GPT-5.6 Luna leads our tested ranking with 98/100 on our 12-task spreadsheet suite, in a dead heat with GPT-5.6 Terra (98). Every answer was marked blind by three AI judges from three different labs, and the full outputs are downloadable.
How is this ranking made?
Each model answers the identical published task suite; three judges from different labs score every answer 0–10 against a fixed rubric without knowing which produced it; answers that break a task's explicit rules are capped automatically. The score is the average, out of 100. No vendor pays for placement.
What happens when two models score the same?
They are separated by a fixed, published tie-break rather than by editorial choice: first the fewest machine-checked rule breaches, then the lowest measured cost per run. The order is therefore reproducible from the same data, and where the tie-break decides the top place the page says so.
How often does this page update?
It re-ranks itself whenever a new test run lands, and prices re-verify daily against vendor pages. The current ranking was last computed on 14 Aug 2026.
Head-to-heads in spreadsheets
Show all 20 tested pairs ▾
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