Best AI for Excel
You have a messy export - mixed date formats, prices typed as text, duplicate rows, a few totals that do not add up - and you want it cleaned, summed and handed back as a file. We built exactly that spreadsheet, with the faults planted on purpose and the right answers known in advance, and gave it to nine assistants.
People also look for this as excel formulas, spreadsheets, google sheets, excel ai or clean spreadsheet data.
Our picks, side by side
Rated for this task · 0–3
Measured
Quality
Effort
Cost
Free tier
From
Why
★ Best overall
Claude
$20/mo · free tier: usableMeasured3 of 3 months · 4 of 4 duplicates · 5 of 5 mismatches · clean file
Quality
Effort
Cost
Free tierChat with web search and file uploads, with a usage cap per five-hour session
From$20/mo
Why
The only tool that did the whole job in one go and showed its working. It named all eight faults, said out loud that it was reading 03/04/2026 as the third of April because the shop is in Portugal, and sent back a three-sheet workbook - the cleaned orders, a summary with live formulas, and a sheet listing what it removed and what it fixed. Every total matched the answer key to the cent; the file opened with 120 rows, real dates and one spelling per product. Three minutes. One quibble - it filled the two blank regions with "Unknown" instead of leaving them blank, and its formula uses a big fixed range rather than a Table.
Also right, if you can find it
Grok
$30/mo · free tier: usableMeasured3 of 3 months · 4 of 4 · 5 of 5 · clean file, folded away
Quality
Effort
Cost
Free tierChat with web and X search within generous limits, no card required
From$30/mo
Why
Every number as exact as Claude's, a clean 120-row file, and the simplest formula of the lot - whole-column SUMIFS you can paste as is. Two catches. It took five minutes of visible sandbox work, and when it finished the whole answer sat inside the collapsed "worked for 4m 55s" panel, so the reply looked empty apart from three suggestion chips until we unfolded it. And its last sentence never finished. The workbook is fine; the in-chat preview shows the dates as serial numbers, but the file itself has real dates.
Best for finding the bad rows, not for the totals
Microsoft Copilot
$19.99/mo · free tier: usableMeasured0 of 3 months · 4 of 4 · 5 of 5 · file has 30 blank dates
Quality
Effort
Cost
Free tierThe Copilot app on web, Windows and mobile with usage limits
From$19.99/mo
Why
In two minutes it found exactly the four duplicate rows and the five orders whose total was wrong, put each in its own sheet with the original and corrected values, got the category totals and the top product right, and gave a good Table-based formula. Then it lost every date written day-first. Its monthly revenue is short by a third, and the workbook it returned has thirty blank dates where 15/05/2026 used to be. Use it to audit a sheet; do not read its month totals. Its composer also warned that a copy of your upload goes to your OneDrive.
Evidence
8 of 8 faults named; monthly revenue 3 of 3, category totals 3 of 3, top product right; duplicates 4 of 4, mismatches 5 of 5; returned workbook checked with openpyxl - 120 rows, 120 real dates, numeric prices, 10 product spellings, 0 blank categories or quantities.
Not on our roster
Rows — A spreadsheet with an AI analyst inside it - the file stays a sheet, the formulas stay live, and there is no round trip through a chat window. Not tested here; worth a look if you do this every week.
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All 9 tools we tested
Rated for this task only · 0–3| Tool | Quality | Effort | Cost | Free tier | Measured | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ClaudeFree: Chat with web search and file uploads, with a usage cap per five-hour session | 3 of 3 months · 4 of 4 duplicates · 5 of 5 mismatches · clean file | $20/mo | ||||
| ChatGPTFree: Unlimited text chat on the default model, with limits on uploads, images, voice and deep research | refused three times · data-analysis limit, one attempt a day | $8/mo | ||||
| GeminiFree: The default model with usage limits, plus Gemini inside Maps, Gmail and Docs on a free Google account | 0 of 3 months · a how-to, no numbers · no file | $19.99/mo | ||||
| PerplexityFree: Unlimited basic searches with a weekly cap on Pro-model searches | 0 of 3 months · 4 of 4 · 0 of 5 · file keeps the duplicates | $20/mo | ||||
| Microsoft CopilotFree: The Copilot app on web, Windows and mobile with usage limits | 0 of 3 months · 4 of 4 · 5 of 5 · file has 30 blank dates | $19.99/mo | ||||
| DeepSeekFree: The full chat app with web search and file uploads; there is no paid consumer tier | 0 of 3 months · 4 of 4 · 4 of 5 · CSV cut at row 50 | Free | ||||
| GrokFree: Chat with web and X search within generous limits, no card required | 3 of 3 months · 4 of 4 · 5 of 5 · clean file, folded away | $30/mo | ||||
| QwenFree: The full chat app; there is no paid consumer tier | 1 of 3 months · 4 of 4 · 5 of 5 · no file | Free | ||||
| KimiFree: Unlimited basic chat, file upload and web access on the free plan | 0 of 3 months · 4 of 4 · 5 of 5 · no file · 7 h of refusals first | $19/mo |
How we tested
One synthetic order export for a fictional Lisbon shop - 120 orders plus four exact duplicates, dates in three formats including day-first text, eighteen prices written as "€12,50", product names in mixed case and spacing, blank categories, quantities and regions, and five totals that do not equal quantity times price. Because a script generated it, every question in the brief has one right answer.
The same message and the same file to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Grok, Qwen and Kimi on their free tiers, in fresh chats. Say what is wrong and fix it, return an .xlsx, revenue per month and per category, the top product, the duplicates and the mismatched rows, and one formula that keeps working when rows are added.
Every number checked against the key. Every returned workbook opened and inspected - how many rows, are the dates real dates, are the prices numbers, how many spellings per product, any blanks left, do the monthly totals recompute. Formulas judged on whether they work and whether they grow with the sheet.
Claude and Grok got every figure right and returned clean files. Copilot got the duplicates, the mismatches and the category totals right and then dropped all thirty day-first dates, so its monthly revenue is short by a third and its file has thirty blank dates. Perplexity and Qwen listed the four duplicate rows and then summed with them still in - the same wrong Home and Pantry totals from both. DeepSeek diagnosed every fault correctly and then invented the totals, without running any code; its "cleaned" CSV stops at row 50. Gemini ran code that produced every right number, then told us it cannot run code and asked for the file. Kimi turned us away five times over six hours - too many people were talking to it - and then, at the eighth try, diagnosed every fault and named the four duplicates and the five bad totals exactly, before its own log said "tool budget exhausted" - no file, no revenue figures, a script to run yourself. ChatGPT refused twice because the free plan's data-analysis allowance was used up until the next morning, and refused a third time the next morning after the reset - one attempt a day, spent on arrival.
The test was run by, or under the direction of, the one person who runs this site, with AI assistance, and every output and fact-check was reviewed by them. The surrounding text was drafted with AI assistance from our own ratings and evidence, then checked and edited by the same person. If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it and say so.
Questions people ask
Which AI is best at cleaning up a messy Excel file?
Claude, on this test. It found all eight planted faults, fixed them, returned a three-sheet workbook and got every total right, in three minutes. Grok did the same in five minutes, but you have to expand its work log to see the answer. Nobody else returned a file you could trust - Copilot's has thirty blank dates, Perplexity's still has the duplicate rows, and the other five sent no usable file at all.
Why did so many of them get the revenue wrong?
Two ways. Copilot could not read dates written day-first, dropped those thirty rows and summed the rest. Perplexity and Qwen found the four duplicate orders, told us about them, and then added them into the totals anyway. DeepSeek did not run any code and made the numbers up. Whatever tool you use, check one total by hand.
Does the free ChatGPT do this?
Not reliably. Its free plan has a daily allowance for data analysis, and ours was gone before the test began - "try again tomorrow after 09:13". We came back the next morning after the reset and it refused again, and told us to try the day after. On a paid plan it would run; on the free one, do not count on it for a file - use Claude.
Which formula should I actually paste?
Grok's is the simplest that just works - a SUMIFS over whole columns with a start and end date, one per month. Claude's SUMPRODUCT works too. Copilot's, Perplexity's and Qwen's need your data turned into an Excel Table first (Ctrl+T), which is a fine habit but one more step.