Sumwise vs Excel
Excel doesn't need defending — it's where FP&A lives, and this isn't a page about ditching it. It's about the part of the month you lose to formula archaeology: the GL export arrives, the questions are simple — variance vs budget by account, run rate on the trailing six months — while the workbook gymnastics aren't.
Sumwise is the query layer for that export: drop the CSV in, ask in plain English, keep the SQL the way Excel keeps the formula. Written by the Sumwise team — the Microsoft facts below are Microsoft's own, linked and dated October 2026.
Sumwise vs Excel at a glance
| Sumwise | Excel (+ Microsoft 365 Copilot) | |
|---|---|---|
| The interface | Plain-English question + the SQL it produced | The grid — decades of muscle memory |
| Pivot tables | Pivot the result of any question | Native pivots — the industry standard |
| Formula-level transparency | The SQL is always shown, editable, re-runnable | The formula bar + trace precedents |
| Where data runs | Your browser tab (DuckDB-WASM) — rows never leave for a query engine | Your machine / OneDrive / SharePoint tenancy |
| Plain-English questions | Built in — the primary interface | Microsoft 365 Copilot, a per-user add-on to a qualifying subscription |
| Free tier | 10 questions/day, 10 MB files | The license you already own |
| Paid price (Oct 2026) | Pro $15/mo or $99/yr | Your Microsoft 365 subscription; Copilot extra, per user |
| Works on | CSV/XLSX exports up to 10 MB free, 100 MB Pro | Everything — it's Excel |
| Re-run next month | Artifacts re-run on the fresh export, question saved with the SQL | Re-point formulas / refresh queries by hand |
| Sharing an answer | Read-only share link per artifact | Workbook via email or SharePoint |
Microsoft/Copilot facts from microsoft.com on 10 October 2026; Sumwise facts from sumwise.co/pricing.
What you keep
The pivot. Sumwise pivots any result — the classic GL expense pivot is one of the live demos, not a dream.
The table. Answers come back as board-ready tables, not chat text.
The transparency. Excel shows you the formula; Sumwise shows you the SQL. Same audit trail, different language — and in both cases you can edit it and re-run.
The file. It never gets uploaded to a server-side query engine — DuckDB-WASM reads it in the tab.
What you gain
Plain-English queries that don't rot. “Variance vs budget by account, dollars and percent” is a sentence, not a formula chain someone built in 2019 and left undocumented.
Re-runnability as the unit of work. An artifact runs on October's export tonight and on November's without edits — the question is saved with the SQL.
Read-only share links. The board sees the number and the query behind it; nobody co-authors a workbook just to review a variance table.
What Excel still does better (honestly)
Modeling. Linked workbooks, scenario tabs, goal-seek — the entire discipline of building a model rather than asking it questions. Sumwise answers; it doesn't model.
The grid. Nothing beats the universal interface for manual entry, one-off scrubs and “just fix that cell.”
The ecosystem. VBA, Office Scripts, Power Query, and every ERP's export button already speaks Excel.
What about Copilot in Excel?
Microsoft's own answer is Microsoft 365 Copilot — an AI add-on to a qualifying Microsoft 365 subscription, priced per user (the old standalone Copilot Pro plan was folded into Microsoft 365 Premium; current figures are on Microsoft's Copilot pricing page, linked in Sources).
It's a general Office assistant that happens to sit in Excel — the FP&A month-end isn't its shape. The clean stack for many teams is both: Excel for the model, Sumwise for the month-end questions on the export.
Common questions
Do I have to stop using Excel?
No — most users don't. The CSV your ERP exported goes in, the answer (with its SQL) comes out, and anything worth keeping gets pasted back or shared as a read-only link. Sumwise is the query layer; Excel stays the workbook.
Can Sumwise open my .xlsx?
Yes — CSV and XLSX up to 10 MB on the free tier, 100 MB on Pro. The file registers in your browser and DuckDB reads it there; nothing is uploaded to a query engine.
Why not just use Copilot?
If you're on Microsoft 365 and want an assistant inside every Office app, Copilot is a reasonable per-user add-on — see Microsoft's pricing page. It's a general assistant, not FP&A-shaped: variance tables and run-rate questions aren't primitives, and the unit of work is the chat, not a re-runnable artifact with a share link.
What's the free tier?
10 questions a day and 10 MB datasets, forever. Pro ($15/mo, $99/yr) lifts it to unlimited questions and 100 MB files.
Run the Excel-shaped month-end questions — no signup
Variance vs budget table, GL expense pivot, run rate — live demos on real sample exports, with the SQL shown for every answer.
queries run in-tab
Sources
Written by the Sumwise team. Microsoft facts checked against the linked page on 10 October 2026.